Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Nasheman: Reading the weekly Urdu newspaper from Karnataka

That's Nasheman, the Urdu newspaper, on my table.

It comes to me from a distant place--1500 km away i.e. Bangalore.

So when it comes from that far, you do take sometime to read it, at leisure.

The paper that has a pan-India circulation, has been running for 54 years.

I grew up reading this paper and hence I was dejected when it ceased publication for a while. I had written a post on this blog about Nasheman, its uniqueness and its history. But, Rizwan Asad sahab has revived it.

Now the paper looks more impressive. It also has a website that has English news, apart from plan to put up the Nasheman epaper. Of course, the columns, the tone of the paper and the satirical style remains same.

Karnataka has a large population of Urdu speakers, however, it is a mystery that overall on the map of Urdu, this state is not given its due. While Hyderabad has far more Urdu speakers and newspapers, surprisingly, none of them could get pan-Indian readership to such an extent.