The song that made me learn Urdu

Azhar , one of my best friends in University of Hyderabad came from a very traditional and literate urdu family. His father was editor-in-chief for a well circulated Urdu paper in Hyderabad and his mother an urdu teacher. This guy, who was born and brought up in Andhra Pradesh all his life does not speak nor understand Telugu. But, for once he went to IGCAR, Kalpakkam [ Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Reserach, Tamilnadu ] for a 6 months project and came back as a Tamil thespian speaking in long tamil dialogues. It is a shame for all telugu speaking folks that one can live all of their life in Hyderabad without speaking nor knowing Telugu but one can't survive a week in Madras with out Tamil. But, I am digressing  here from the main story.

One day, I happened to hear this song 'Ranjishee Sahi' in the university cafeteria from the walk-man of one of my Northie friends. While I understood less than a quarter of the meaning [ this song uses a lot of urdu language ]  at that time, I spent half day to write down the lyrics in english.

Then I and Azhar sat down together and he explained me the meaning of the song. It is a true K.L.P.D song [ don't ask me what is the meaning of K.L.P.D if you already don't know it  ] and I became a fan of Urdu. To such an extent that I used to go with Azhar to attend a couple or so Mushaira's  [ Urdu poetic concerts ]. That fad lasted for few months and then the research pressures caught up as usual.

Case in point here is that a single experience can make us explore a whole new territory.