For the longest time, I did not want to learn the Perso-Arabic script used to write Urdu. I had little interaction with those who could read Urdu and with places that had signage in that language. It is a little uncharacteristic because I understood the Persianized Urdu register reasonably well — and faced with similar scenarios in the past (signs in Gurumukhi or in Gujarati script), I had put in the effort to learn the language.
A few months ago, that changed. I have forced myself to learn Urdu orthography and my plan for the next six months is to read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in Urdu where it is titled Harry Potter aur Razon ka Kamra. Unfortunately the first book in the series is not available easily in Urdu, at least not in the US. Here it is.
رازوں کا کمرہ
And here is the name of the author (due to left-to-right direction of Urdu, I cannot just embed the phrases, or so it seems).
ے کے رولیںگ
I can go into a lot of depth here about the stereotypes that prevent people in India from learning another script because it is politically and religiously charged. All four of my grand-parents were refugees from now what is Pakistan and they lost most of their belongings behind. They hated the partition and by association the Muslims that in their mind made the partition inevitable. Yet, in their speech they used a vocabulary more Persian than Sanskritized when dealing with daily life. For example scholarship was wazifa and not shiksha-vritti; writing was ibarat and not lekhni. I am not talking about different shades of meaning here or a conscious effort to be this or that. That’s just how life was and still is in many places.
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