Abdul Ghaffar inspects the line of Urdu I have written and then bursts into laughter. “To me, people like you who know how to read and write Urdu in normal script are padhe hue (literate). Not padhe ...

He was a schoolboy in the summer of 1976, keen on playing in the scorching heat of Rawalpindi. But his mother wanted him to remain indoors, so she taught him to write Hindi in the Devanagari script.

An Islamabad-based corporate lawyer Syed Mohammad Anwer has been fusing Urdu and Hindi calligraphy together beautifully and has encased the unique form in a coffee table called ‘Samrup Rachna: Apni ...

Native speakers of the Urdu language instinctively know that the language is read from right to left but the numerical values mentioned within an Urdu sentence are read from left to right. To the ...

Some time back, Sanket Avlani had a chance to tag along with a friend to meet artists, who practise Urdu calligraphy, in Purani Dilli. The katibs (calligraphers) not only gave them a glimpse into ...

HYDERABAD: Seated on a wooden stool, under a tinted glass chandelier, Mohammed Abdul Gaffar peered over a handmade paper on which he made a slow swish with a reed pen dipped in black ink. Standing ...

It’s an art widely admired for its beauty, and the skill and creativity required of the artist. But khatati or the fine art of Urdu calligraphy is in danger of dying out in India, because there’s ...

In the show titled, Baaton se Baat Nikalti hai, the artist personifies conversation, making her the muse in two and three-dimensional forms. Using sheets of wasli (a type of paper traditionally used ...

“Urdu is a mixture of Persian, Arabic and Turkish words formed with the intermingling of invading Muslim armies and local Hindi-speaking Hindus. It’s a Turkish word which means Army camp, hoard, etc.” ...