It was in school that I discovered the beauty of the urdu language, especially poetry. Mir and Ghalib. Momin and Zauq.
That grew into a passion for reading and writing Urdu poetry.
The writing became event recitals and mushaira appearances but the reading remained reading for a long time until one day, during the lockdown of 2020, I randomly put up a poetry narration video on Instagram. The response was warm. Warm enough for me to do it again, and again. It made me experiment with audio, and learn it as I went on. I soon realized that this also needed a platform where these narrations could be listened to with more undivided attention. Voila! A podcast was born.

It’s been 3 years, Since the first week of April 2020, when I shared my first audio on social media. I honestly didn’t expect much, but the response has been nothing short of overwhelming. The Urdu daan podcast has more than 10000 active listeners across various platforms. Urdu Daan crossed 100k followers on instagram this year. What was initially just a page, transcended itself. Somewhere in between, it became me, I feel. Now it seems it’s a community. The dream grows bigger than the dreamer. As a poet said

“Ye mera karwaan hai, main karwaañ ka hoon”