Kim's Review : The Taste of Words - An Introduction to Urdu Poetry

The blurb for Raza Mir's "The Taste of Words - An Introduction to Urdu Poetry" read as "Have you ever been enchanted by the spoken cadence of an Urdu Couplet but wished you could fully ubderstand its nuances? Have you wanted to engage with a ghazal more deeply, but were daunted by its mystifying conventions? Are you confused between a qataa and a rubaai, or a musaddas and a marsiya?"

This book was supposed to help me with all 3, but unfortunately it only helped me understand the answer to the last question.

Don't get me wrong, this is a book that has been researched with a lot of love and passion by Raza Mir and I do appreciate it. The first 26 pages which give an introduction to Urdu poetry and a Note on the Poetic Forms is brilliant and I wanted more of it.

However, the bulk of the book was where I was disappointed, because of my expectations.

I learned Hindi late in life (in my 20's) to be able to converse with people in college, at work and then with my inlaws, so my knowledge of Hindi is restricted to the colloquial. I do understand a fair bit of Sanskrit, because halekannada / the classical Kannada (which I learned academically until my graduation) is deeply rooted in Sanskrit (like most Dravidian languages)

So when it comes to Urdu poetry, I love the lyricism, the cadence, the beautiful descriptions, the rhythm - I love everything about it, except I only understand about 50% of it. I was hoping that this book would help take that percentage up a bit further.

However what this book did, was explain to me the technicalities of how Urdu Poetry is classified, it gave me a bit of insight into the History of Urdu as a language (and the multiple events that were portended to bring about its death), it introduced me to a multitude of Urdu poets - some of whom I had heard of, but most of them were a new discovery. The mini biographies included with each, were enlightening.

What Raza Mir has done is assembled a collection of 47 famous Urdu Poets, chosen certain couplets (around 150 poems) from some of their famed works (or his favourites) and then translated them. However, except for a few free verse translations, he has tried to maintain the rhythm and rhyming. He confesses that he internally debated a lot on this point, before choosing this route.

However, for my understanding, I would have preferred a more literal translation with a little note on the double meanings / play on words etc of individual poems.

Rather than a standard transliteration scheme, Raza Mir has chosen a vernacular format, that is easy to read for those accustomed to reading the Devnagari script in English. However, it would be a difficult read for those unfamiliar with this.

This is not a book that can be read at one sitting. There is so much Philosophy and Mysticism in these poems, that each one warrants some reflection.

I commend the author for the amount of work that he has put in, into this book, however it wasn't suitable to what I was looking for and did not help me too much with nuances, which is why I have given it a lower rating.

Rating : 3 / 5

Kim's Review : DK Eyewitness Italian Phrase Book

This was the first time I actually bought a Language phrase book, before visiting a country, but then this was also the first time we were visiting a country where we planned to walk extensively and wander on our own, but where English isn't widely spoken. (USA, Canada, UK, Lebanon, Kenya etc weren't a problem at all) and when we visited Morocco and Turkey, we had a guide/translator with us to help navigate the non touristy parts of the country.

But, the real reason I was convinced to buy this book was because it came with an audio CD and I believe that, THAT is the most important part of a phrase book. Its one thing to read a word or a phrase, its quite another to hear it spoken with a native accent.

I skimmed through this book. Underlined phrases I thought I would most need : drinking water, where is the restroom, I'm allergic to prawns, which way to . . . , etc.

And then I just played the CD while I was busy with some other work. I listened to it twice, but I honestly believe it really helped. It gave me a feel for the accent, so I did not have as much trouble with mispronunciation as I did when we first arrived in Egypt.

People in Italy are really helpful and when they see that you are trying to speak in Italian, they do their best to help you. In fact, I wandered across a Russian church in Milan, when I was searching for the Church of bones. I asked the lady inside if she knew where that church was, when she didn't she came out and asked a couple of senior gentlemen who were eating their lunch at a table in the garden if they knew where it was. They tried to give me directions, but it was a bit complicated. So they asked me to hold on for a minute, finished their lunch extra quick and accompanied me through a couple of twists and turns until the church came into my view and only then did they wish me Ciao!

I do pick up the basics of a language easily, so my husband was pretty amazed that by day 4, on the train from Rome to Florence, I was having a conversation with 2 Italian couples opposite us on the train who only spoke a bit of English and I was using my extremely basic Italian, but we understood each other almost 90-95%.

That's also because the Italians use a lot of hand gestures when speaking and since body language is just one of the many topics that I've conducted umpteen number of training sessions on, I found it quite easy to catch the gist of a conversation, since I knew a few basic words.

So, if you are planning to do any exploring on your own in Italy, that is outside of the tourist circuit of hotels, airports, train stations and large museums, I would highly recommend picking up a few phrases and this book with its CD is an ideal way to do so.

Its also less than a 100 grams (3 ounces) in weight, so its easy to slip into a bag when walking around and its also small and square, making it easy to slip into a pocket too.

Rating. 4.5 / 5