It was a full house at Lamakaan as Raza Mir spoke about the four greatest Urdu poets.
“I have been asked to speak about Ghalib and Iqbal but I thought I will speak about four Urdu poets like there are four American presidents in Mount Rushmore,” said author Raza Mir, who teaches management at an American university.
Beginning with a history of Urdu and how it was moved away from Hindi as part of a colonialism project, Raza Mir shared how Mir Taqi Mir (1723-1810) pioneered the metrical system which is now the norm for ghazals and also ‘seeded’ Persian words in the then nascent language.
