A Tempest in Silence

About the Book

This interaction led to the sharing of my Urdu verse with Shanazar. One morning, I was pleasantly surprised to see a translation of one of my Urdu poems by him on Facebook, along with a short message saying that he wished to translate and publish some of my poems into English. One by one he translated sixty-five of my poems from my books “Narendra ke Liye,” “Aasman-dar-Aasman,” and “Shigaf.” He chose only the nazms (poems) for rendition in English, leaving aside the ghazals, which, in his own words, are “untranslatable” as it is almost impossible to capture their rhythm, nuance, and flavour in translation. Through this translation of my verse I hope to share my thoughts and emotions with a wider audience.

About the Author

Born in Lahore, Jagdish Prakash, has been writing poetry from his childhood years. Traumatic experiences of partition leading to his uprooting from the place of his birth, sights and sounds of his familiar environment, pain of separation from friends, created a sad impact on his young sensitive mind making him look inwards to seek answers of his personal pain which found reflection in his poems. In the process of settlement in life he travelled from city to city in India. Completing his post graduation in Commerce, he joined Steel Authority of India in a managerial position. Moving to Delhi in 1990’s, he is now associated with an education company in Gurgaon, India. He writes poetry in Urdu and English. He has published four books of poems in Urdu and one in English. Three of his books of Urdu poems have been given awards by Urdu Academy, Delhi for excellence in the field of Urdu literature. His Urdu ghazals have been set to music and sung by a renowned music composer and singer, Yunus Malik. Album of his poems sung by a well known Sufi and playback singer, Kavita Seth, has been released by Universal Music in 2012. “A Tempest in Silence” is a collection of English translation of his Urdu poems selected and translated by Prof. Muhammad Shanazar, a highly respected name in the field of literature in Pakistan. Jagdish Prakash is married has two children and lives in Delhi, NCR.