Shanti and I attended an Urdu language book fare where we ran into these little girls picking up children's books in urdu. Urdu is the official language of Pakistan, and before partition of India and Pakistan was very popular in the Punjab and Delhi areas and was definitely spoken greatly in Lucknow....it is a flowery language which allows a lot of respect and deference to once another, and therefore is much used by poets and song writers. It is generally spoken by the muslim communities in the areas where it flourished...but not necessarily by all the muslims. Hyderabad has a lot of muslims (It had a muslim Nawab - the richest man in the world at that time - before partition. However, the population in Hyderabad is also strongly Hindu. The muslims are mostly in the old area of Hyderabad) Many muslim schools use urdu as the main language.
Incidentally, the guys selling the books...did not read or write urdu, as I found out later but were asking these girls to read aloud the titles of the books they were buying.
The photo of the cake is the one someone in S. Africa ordered for Vasant's birthday with a very long message...I thought that was funny, or maybe someone forgot to shorten the message.
The other photo is of my cousins now getting on in years. Jaswant Krishnayya (who is from Pune)is on the right. He turns 75 in mid-April. Vasant Bawa is on the left. I was there for his 80th birthday. Both seem to have plenty of energy for their projects. Vasant is just about ready to publish another book and Jaswant still runs his software solutions company. I was glad to be included in discussions with both of them re their latest projects and felt very honoured when they took my remarks and suggestions seriously
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