Shamsur Rahman Faruqi. | Tausiff / CC BY-SA 3.0
Jate hue kahte ho qayamat ko milenge
kya khub qayamat ka hai goya koi din aur
My beloved bhaiya, Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, departed this world for the next on 25 December 2020, leaving our entire family with a lifetime of memories and an incredible legacy for generations to come. We had all gone to welcome him back home that morning, but destiny had other plans.
It was around noon when we stood around him, clinging to one of the most desperate human emotions that exist, hope, but “to Him we belong and to Him we return”. Bhaiya left us, numb and hollow. His favourite poet Mir Taqi Mir’s couplet came to my mind immediately:
The Friday List: From a dastangoi on Bhagat Singh to Netflix s adaptation of White Tiger, your weekly calendar of virtual events Every Friday, we ll bring you a curated list of online experiences performances, talks, tours, screenings to mark on your weekly calendar. FP Staff January 22, 2021 13:00:56 IST On this week s #FridayList: Netflix s White Tiger, a contemporary retelling of fairytales, an Odissi recital and more. (Top left) Image via Facebook (Bottom left) Images via Wikimedia Commons
Compiled by Aishwarya Sahasrabudhe
The new year has geared us all up to cope with the new normal of surviving in a pandemic, anticipating a vaccine or hoping for this time to pass, and a semblance of calmness has descended on what have otherwise been many chaotic months. Restrictions on public gatherings are being lifted gradually, even the reopening of schools
Shalini Venugopal Bhagat, The New York Times
Published: 08 Jan 2021 01:17 PM BdST
Updated: 08 Jan 2021 01:17 PM BdST Shamsur Rahman Faruqi was credited with the revival of Urdu literature, especially from the 18th and 19th centuries. He died of Covid-19. Photo taken via the poet s official Facebook page.
Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, a creative and critical voice in Urdu literature for more than a half-century, died Dec 25 at his home in Allahabad, India. He was 85. );
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The cause was complications of COVID-19, his daughter Mehr Afshan Farooqi said. (Faruqi changed the spelling of his surname in the 1980s.)
Faruqi has been credited among scholars with the revival of Urdu literature, especially from the 18th and 19th centuries. His output over the years as a scholar, editor, publisher, critic, literary historian, translator and acclaimed writer of both poetry and novels was varied and prolific.
Shamsur Rahman Faruqi (1935-2020): Why this death leaves a permanent patch of darkness in literature
The scholar, poet, novelist and translator, who wrote in Urdu and English, died on December 25, 2020 at the age of 85. Shamsur Rahman Faruqi. | Tausiff / CC BY-SA 3.0
This annus horribilis is not over yet, and it has now taken away from us the greatest doyen and scholar of Urdu literature the world knew over the recent decades, Shamsur Rahman Faruqi. He died peacefully at his home, surrounded by his family and his favourite dogs, having recovered earlier this month from Covid-19.
I had the honour and pleasure to visit him in his study in January this year, which isn’t anything less than a library. It is hard to imagine all those books siting there without their avid reader. Ghalib’s often quoted verse “aisā kahan se laun ki tujh saa kahen jise” – “where do I find another who may be like you?” – doesn’t seem to hold truer than in this momen
NEW DELHI: Celebrated Urdu critic Shamsur Rehman Faruqi, who began his literary journey by waiting for many an editor’s rejection slip and discovered his early success printed on a grocer’s paper bag, succumbed to complications from coronavirus on Friday, a month after apparently recovering from it. He was 85.
Among Urdu’s most respected literary critics, poets and authors, Mr Faruqi died at his home in Allahabad shortly after being brought there by his family from Delhi.
“He had been insisting to go back to his home in Allahabad. We reached here only this morning and within half an hour he passed away at around 11,” nephew and writer Mahmood Farooqui told Press Trust of India.