Foreigners taste sweetness of Urdu through ‘jalebi’

Alchemy Festival

LONDON: Hundreds of people were able to literally taste the sweetness of Urdu poetry by eating jalebi at the Alchemy Festival here.

Pakistani artists and activists Ali Rez and Saks Afridi brought to festival the unique project, called “Urdu Poetry”, which was designed to revive interest in the language Urdu through the unique medium of jalebi: the sweetest dessert meant to represent the sweetest language. Hundreds of people formed queue to eat jalebis and to know more about Amir Khusro, the founder of Urdu poetry.

Ali Rez and Saks Afridi, who led the jalebi installation at the Southbank Centre, were joined by their friends and volunteers in making jalebi in the form of actual Urdu words, taken from Amir Khusro’s poetry. These words – the jalebi words – were formed by pouring the dough mixture into prepared Urdu stencils that made every single word of Khusro’s famous verse. The jalebi was then served on butter paper that had the entire verse written out in beautiful Urdu calligraphy.

Ali Rez told this reporter that jalebis are a delightful Pakistani dessert treat that are impossible to say no to and the whole concept was to inform the audience how sweet Urdu poetry is but unfortunately the language is now slowly being abandoned by its own people.

“In the pursuit of progression, Pakistanis have drifted away from our very own language that was once the pride and identity of this nation. The younger generation is aware of but not interested in Urdu and, more importantly, its poetry that has made a mark in the past.”

He said the “UrduPoetry” project experience had been wonderful as “we had people of all ages appear at the stall to eat our jalebis: from children to young people to older adults. Different people connected differently with the dessert, some with joy, some with wonder, and others with amazement”.

Saks Afridi said that Khusro's poetry is sweetly enchanting, as is the language it's written in. “We thought it would be the perfect tribute to his words, and to Urdu. The concept is to revive interest in a sweet language that is losing a lot of interest rapidly. Classic Urdu is slowly being taken over by other languages, as is evident today with the increase of ‘Minglish’. Especially amongst the youth, while conversational Urdu might be present, an interest in classical Urdu poetry and literature is dying.”

Saks Afridi said that the project was aimed specifically at bringing Urdu in new forms to the masses, innovatively using media and better content that is in tune with the zeitgeist. Especially with Urdu poetry which is considered a dying art form in or opinion.

He announced that the “Urdu Poetry” project will also be installed at events in New York and Dubai in order to appeal to the Pakistani diaspora, and also of course in Pakistan. “We wanted to launch this for the Karachi Literature Festival to begin with and then take it to New York, Dubai and Pakistan itself. The ultimate goal is with its open source concept to have many jalebi walas in Pakistan replicate the calligraphy.”