The Internet ASAD Archive
Abhay Avachat's "A Sher A Day" series on RMIM

This is an archive of the famous "A Sher A Day" series posted on the rec.music.indian.misc (RMIM) newsgroup by Abhay Avachat. The archive is a connoisseurs' collection of some of the finest specimens of Urdu Poetry written by some of the most acclaimed Urdu poets. The series was extremely popular while it ran on RMIM, and, though it has stopped, Time will hopefully see a revival of the enthralling pen of Abhay Avachat soon. The articles are archived here exactly as they appeared on the rec.music.indian.misc newsgroup.

Also archived here is an extremely informative article by Abhay on The Definition of a Ghazal. An associated article by Ali Minai on GHazal versus Nazm and his comment on Abhay's article also make extremely interesting reading.

Abhay has taken pains to provide meanings to most of the difficult Urdu words that appear in the she'r-s he has profiled in the ASAD series. Lest you should find some confusing and obfuscating words, you can use the on-line Urdu Dictionary from Navin Kabra's homepage. Navin's homepage also has some other interesting stuff like a compendium of Ghazals of Mirza Asadullah Beg Khan 'Ghalib', and a collection of over 1000 Hindi Film Songs, besides a link to Anurag Chandra's site of the famous and priceless ITRANS Song Book. Another interesting site that you *MUST* read is Sami Mohammed's interesting Hindi Film Music Page, but please note that you'll need to use 'netscape' [only] to view it in its full splendour. Sami's page is a veritable treasure trove and contains a lot of information, including several articles from the rec.music.indian.misc newsgroup. You should also check out Arun Verma's Kishore Kumar Page. For the classically inclined, Kedar Naphade's Raag aur Geet series makes entertaining and enlightening reading.

In order to make this archive as widely accessible as follows, this index, and all the articles archived here, are plain ascii files, and you only need to have a simple low-calibre http browser like 'lynx' to be able to view the articles. I am assuming that a majority of people only have monochrome vt100 terminals available to them. Suggestions to restructure this page are welcome.

Would you like to contact Abhay Avachat? Click here to send him an e-mail.

Click on the o to view the contents of the ASAD Article you want to read. Click here see all the articles concatenated together.

There is no "easy" and direct anonymous ftp-site available for the ASAD Articles: my employer does not allow me to maintain anonymous ftp sites. However, if you aren't averse to hacking around a bit, you might be helped by these hints on How to Download the ASAD Articles.

o 1: Mirza ASADullah KHan 'GHalib' [1]
o 2: "chaar_suu"
o 3: Express your frustration
o 4: Zauq: GHalib's contemporary
o 5: The Fate of the Shayars
o 6: Mir and GHalib: The Two Stalwarts
o 7: Pain Beyond A Point
o 8: Penetrating Symbolism [1]
o 9: Shameless and Cute!
o 10: Cleverly Hidden in a Metaphor
o 11: Ahmed Faraz: A Modern Day Shayar
o 12: Amir Minai: A Commonly Misquoted Shayar
o 13: Unlucky and Vulgar
o 14: Is That a Joke?
o 15: *Definition* of 'nazaakat'
o 16: The Doomsday Paradox?!
o 17: The Importance of the Exact Word
o 18: The Vagaries of Virtuousness
o 19: Kaifi Azmi: A Nazm Specialist
o 20: Length, Fluidity and Rhythm
o 21: Ageless Paradise?
o 22: Why are She'rs Beautiful?
o 23: Films, Shers and Plagiarism
o 24: Meena Kumari: A Shaa'iraa
o 25: GHalib and Mir: The Stalwarts Once Again
o 26: Mir Taqi 'Mir': Shahenshaah-e-GHazal [1]
o 27: Mir Taqi 'Mir': Shahenshaah-e-GHazal [2]
o 28: Mir Taqi 'Mir': Shahenshaah-e-GHazal [3]
o 29: In a Lighter Vein...
o 30: Sahir Ludhiyanvi
o 31: Allama Iqbal
o 32: Momin: A Shaayar par excellence [1]
o 33: Momin: A Shaayar par excellence [2]
o 34: A Sher in 'Deccani'
o 35: Penetrating Symbolism [2]
o 36: And Ruthless Realism
o 37: GHazals and Popularity
o 38: Shallow Formalities
o 39: Brain Drain: An NRI Special!
o 40: Friends and Friendship
o 41: A Great Way to Claim Credit!
o 42: Shakeel Badayuni: Three Great Shers
o 43: Daag Dehalvi: An Ambivalent Shaayar
o 44: Expressing Gratitude
o 45: Popular Shers
o 46: The Rigmarole of Saaqi, Paimaanaa and MaiKHaanaa
o 47: Plagiarism, once again
o 48: Popular, but Misquoted Shers
o 49: The Beautiful Expression of Pain
o 50: Mir Taqi 'Mir': Shahenshaah-e-GHazal [4]
o 51: A Bibliography: Some Reference Books
o 52: Faiz Ahmed 'Faiz': Pakistan's Sahir Ludhiyanvi [1]
o 53: Faiz Ahmed 'Faiz' [2]
o 54: Faiz Ahmed 'Faiz' [3]
o 55: Raghupati Sahai
o 56: Firaq Gorakhpuri [2]
o 57: Firaq Gorakhpuri [3]
o 58: Hasrat Mohani [1]
o 59: chupke chupke raat din: Hasrat Mohani [2]
o 60: The ASAD (temporary?) SignOff
o 61: ASAD resurrected - Malika-e-Ghazal Begum Akhtar
o 62: Shakeel Badayuni [2]
o 63: Shakeel Badayuni [3]
o 64: Akhir kyuu.N?
o 65: Radeef[1]
o 66: Radeef[2]
o 67: Radeef[3] - aahistaa aahistaa
o 68: aahistaa aahistaa - Wali Dakhani
o 69: Radeef - zaraa aahistaa chal
o 70: Long Radeef
o 71: Small Radeef
o 72: tumheN yaad ho, ke na yaad ho
o 73: More from a shaa'ir par excellence: Momin [3]
o 74: More from a shaa'ir par excellence: Momin [4]
o 75: Mirza ASADullah Khan 'Ghalib' [2]
o 76: Nida Fazli: A Modern Shaa'ir [1]
o 77: Nida Fazli: A Modern Shaa'ir [2]
o 78: Poverty
o 79: na milataa Gam to barbaadii
o 80: Indian Railways and Poetry?
o 81: Kavi Dushyant
o 82: Iqbal??
o 83: Lata sings Ghalib
o 84: mehendi ke haath
o 85: Vijaypath and Matla Plagiarism
o 86: saaqi ki nazar

Hope you ha(d/ve) a nice time here. Do send me a mail (click on my e-mail address below) with your comments to help me improve the layout of this page.

Acknowledgements:
Many thanks are due to RMIM-ers Sami(uddin Mohammed), Arun (Verma) and Pavan (Kumar Desikan) for reviewing the preliminary outlay of this Page and suggesting modifications. Special acknowledgements to respected ALUP-er Khursheed Ahmed Sahib for suggesting an interesting direction to attack the 'ftp-site' problem. Ashutosh Pathak also suggested another approach.

Thanks are due to Pavan also for keeping a mirror of this site active at http://www.cs.duke.edu/~pkd/asadindex.html.

U.V. Ravindra
uvr@hotmail.com

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