HYDERABAD: It was last month during his visit to Hyderabad that director Manish Gupta from Mumbai left a promising career in the US to try explore the creative world fell in love with Dakhini Urdu. However, he also laments that a language so rich is laughed at by people and now even the Hyderabadis don’t acknowledge its value.
“Even the work of art in Dakhini are only sattires of mushairas, when this ancient language has the scope of being turned into rich literature. It has only become a “hau nakko” language which is spoken mainly within the restriction of households now,” laments Gupta.
Gupta, who started his direction career with two feature films and a serial Roomies which starred on Channel V, took up the initiative to promote regional languages while he was on a trip. “I was not enjoying the television world much and then I decided to travel. While on tour, I happened two read two extraordinary Hindi novels Kamayani and Urvashi. Being touched by these great works of literature, I felt deeply saddened about the fact that Hindi or our other languages are underestimated by us.
None of us take pride in building our vocabulary or speaking these languages in their original dialect. Henceforth, I felt the urgency to promote these languages and change people’s perception about them. And then, I came up with my first project K se kavita,” reminisced Gupta.
Ever since, he with the support of Bollywood celebrities like Naseeruddin Shah, Swara Bhaskar, Manoj Vajpayee and Piyush Mishra, has recorded several poetry reciting sessions of the greatest ever Hindi writers in his Mumbai studio and have assured that they reach the masses through Youtube. So, after Hindi, Maithili, Punjabi, the “language enthusiast” strongly feels that Dakhini has to be preserved in its original form.
As he goes on to plan his next project to promote the language, he does have the support or Dakhini Urdu writers, patrons and afficianados like Geelani Bano, Aslam Farshori, Narendra Luther, Anant Verma, who he happened to interact with on his fortnight long stay in the city.
On his support to Gupta’s project, Narendra Luther, a Dakhini Urdu writer said, this rare language which is Urdu language with grammar of Marathi with some Telugu, Marathi and Kannada words in it have a very handful of people knowing it in its original form. It’s advent dates back to the 14th century.
It has so few people to stand for it now. In the given status it seems to be in, preserving it is the responsibility of Hyderabadis. Uploading videos on YouTube which reflect its literary grandeur will be a great idea to promote the language in the present times. I will look forward to Manish Gupta’s project and he will have my full support.”
How extinct is Dakhni? Sajjad Shahid, heritage expert on Hyderabad, says, “The Dakhni which is spoken now is in the adulterated form. It will not be an exaggeration to say that old Dakhini is almost extinct.
My first question is how can you revive the vocabulary which is lost. Though, this project under plan gives me the hope that a change might come if people tend to take more pride in the language. My regret, however extends to the entire culture of the Deccan shrinking.”