Rekhta Foundation's offering : Collection of 1250 Urdu couplets on love, longing and loss

The Rekhta Foundation that Sanjiv Saraf established in 2012 has digitalised more than 50,000 e-books that are available online and has taken Urdu to various geographies through a series of events. Now he has come out with 'Love Longing Loss in Urdu Poetry', a priceless collection of over 1250 'shers' (couplets) written by 120 and odd shaayars (poets). The cover of the book has been illustrated by the multi-faceted Muzaffar Ali, “a good friend”, informs Saraf.

Saraf ’s company is one of the world’s largest producers of PET films with manufacturing plants in India, Thailand and Turkey with markets across the US, Southeast Asia, South America and Turkey.

"I was introduced to Urdu shayari by my father. I grew up listening to ghazals and this poetry deeply touched me. I was fascinated with the language and my love for Urdu poetry remained constant," Saraf maintains."

After fulfilling my responsibilities, I decided to revisit my passion and started learning Urdu script and language. The journey of learning Urdu and reading poets was full of wonder, revelations and self-discovery. I realized that it was a struggle for someone from a non-Urdu background to access the rich literary heritage of Urdu literature and poetry and felt that remedying this was something that I could contribute to," he added.

"I felt that this collection of the best of the best (in my opinion) should be available to readers in a single volume. While there are a large number of collections of couplets by topic, there was none which wove together all the shers around love (the dominant subject of Urdu poetry) into a readable and interesting narrative.

"Also these shers were not fully accessible to the English reading audience. So, over a period of about 18 months collected, sorted, strung together and transcreated these into, what I hope, is a unique book," Saraf explained.

A far greater proportion of couplets are from the 18th and 19th centuries of poets such as Mir Taqi Mir (also known as Meer), Mirza Ghalib, Mohammad Ibrahim Zauq, and Bahadur Shah Zafar et al. There are also couplets of poets from the 20th and 21st century but fewer in number.

Rekhta Foundation started with the goal of presenting selected works of major poets in three different scripts - Urdu, Devanagari and Roman. "However, it gained such immense popularity that it acquired a life of its own. It kept demanding more and more and kept growing without bounds. We are now engaged in areas which we had never even dreamt of. Poetry, prose, dictionary, script learning, education, festivals and events and we don't know where it will take us. To quote Ghalib:

"Rau mein hai Rakhsh-e-umr kahaan dekhiye thame;

Ne haath baag par hai na paa hai rikaab mein

(The steed of time moves apace: where it halts, let's see; Neither reins are held in hand, nor feet in stirrups be)."

"God has been kind in enabling me to support this initiative but I am not alone in this effort. Many friends, associates and lovers of Urdu language have supported Rekhta in various capacities and their love continues to be Rekhta Foundation's driving force," signs off Saraf.

(This article was first published in National Herald on Sunday)