Urdu Lessons

I located my Urdu teacher! Her name is Mrs. Hanfi, a retired Urdu teacher and the wife of an Urdu professor at Jamia Millia Islamia. Jamia is a well-respected and fairly progressive Muslim university in Delhi. It is very Indian to have your first encounter (or mulaqqat as they say in Urdu) over tea. So she invited me over and assessed my Urdu over chai and biscuits, then told me not to worry and said that she would make sure I would learn a lot. I’m supposed to complete a six month course they teach at Jamia by end of December. Let’s see how this goes!

To give a background of Urdu- it is derived from Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit. Before British colonial rule, Persian was the language spoken by the Mughal court. Urdu, which is a synthesis of Persian and South Asian indigenous languages, was born out of the necessity of the government to communicate with its subjects. Urdu is now written and spoken mostly by Muslims in India (a sizeable minority of 160 million people).

I had begun my Urdu lessons two weeks ago by reacquainting myself with the script. I had studied Hindi five years ago over a one year period, so my command of Hindi vocabulary and script is much stronger than Urdu. Hindi and Urdu overlap nowadays into what is known as ‘Hindustani’ in a way that may be superficially indistinguishable. But once you move beyond basic interactions, you start to notice the nuances and complexity of differences in the languages. Already, I see the limitations in my vocabulary as I come across new words on a daily basis. Pride in my own vocabulary has been quickly put to shame.

Some things that I love about Urdu-

1) You address people indirectly and with great respect (or adab as they in Urdu) for even the most mundane and practical aspects of life. For example, my Urdu teacher will ask me if I want to move on to the next lesson when obviously she’s not really asking but transitioning. I have to say this confused me initially.
2) The script. It’s beautiful. I’m told that the beauty of the script reflects the “geometry of the soul.” You can write the most simple phrase in Urdu and it looks sublime.
3) A lot of great literature has been penned in Urdu. While I am not close to reading any sophisticated literary works, it’s somehow worth knowing that I’m closer to that tradition.