A Novel Idea: UrduStudio.com
In a time when Pakistan is fast becoming a confused, a very confused nation. When toddlers know how alphabets are rhymed but mothers take pride in telling other mothers “my son can’t even read Urdu… their school promotes English language only”. In a time when all universities’ syllabi are in English and a person conversing in Urdu is stated as downright middleclass and in a time, when good Urdu literature is hard to find and when Urdu writers are given minimal encouragement in a country whose mother tongue is Urdu, someone has taken the initiative to launch urdustudio.com. Some courage, I must say, and needs a lot of encouragement to go on, all of you must agree.
Urdustudio.com is a third panel in a series of novel ideas. First we got The Readers Club, catering to Karachi memebers only and offering a library owned by, Usman Siddiqui and Jawad Yousuf, the owners of the website. To cater to the huge demand in the national market for a books buying and selling platform, we were gifted with Kitabain.com, where anyone could upload books they wanted to sell and which became a huge hit in all age groups. Now the third pillar, Urdustudio.com is unique in the sense that it provides books in digital audio form. At the moment only short stories and story books for children have been uploaded and work on classics and other literature is pending for market response to the idea. Short introductory clips to the stories are available online to about 1000 books that are already available in audio form. Full downloads are offered at very economical rates. Site is easy to use for all age groups.
I thought I’ll write in order to support the entrepreneurs who have taken forward the thought of promoting our language, our culture, our literature and the love for books, which is suffocating in the fire burning for modern gadgets, computer games, internet chatting and all other digital mediums of spoiling our time. I thought I’ll write to let them know my mother would like to listen to Urdu literature while she is working in the kitchen, my father is too old and his eyesight too poor to let him read as much he wants and would welcome someone reading books to him, I want my daughter to be familiar with Islamic short stories and Tarzan and Umro Ayyar instead of watching BabyTv and Nick while I work. I thought I’ll write in order to gather support from you and yours who would welcome propagation of this novel idea. Do you have an opinion on it? Please share it in comments.
Related Links
http://dawn.com/2012/05/10/a-novel-idea-the-readers-club/
7:37 pm
Isn’t it any irony that your post is in English? And this comment too?
1:05 am
@Jaywalker. You are right. Currently, I am myself trying to recover from an educational background where we weren’t allowed to speak in Urdu, let alone encouraged to do so. If I had written the post in Urdu perhaps I wouldn’t have been able to put my point across. One day, hopefully, I will. Urdustudio.com, with their audio narration will not only correct my Urdu pronunciation and vocabulary but others’ who unfortunately fall in the same category.