A ghazal so loved that people now think of it as Begum Akhtar's, not Shakeel Badayuni's.

Begum Akhtar made "Ae Mohabbat Tere Anjaam Pe Rona Aaya" hers — so completely that audiences would demand she sing it again, once five times in a single sitting. Kshitij and Burair trace its journey from her raga Bhairavi rendition to Osman Mir singing it at Morari Bapu's Ramkatha gatherings, then take a detour into how poets' pen names end up outliving them as their sons' surnames — Jan Nisar Akhtar's "Akhtar," carried forward by Javed and Salman; Harivansh Rai Bachchan's "Bachchan," carried forward by Amitabh.

Then back to the ghazal itself, sher by sher — ending on the couplet where Shakeel loops the whole poem back to the very word he opened on.

मिरे हम-नफ़स मिरे हम-नवा, मुझे दोस्त बन के दग़ा न दे — Shakeel Badayuni's "Mere Humnafas Mere Humnawa" is one of Urdu poetry's quietest, most devastating ghazals. Begum Akhtar refused to sing Shakeel's ghazals for almost 20 years after a falling-out — until his death in 1970, when she broke that silence for this one.

No Urdu script required — every sher gets translated and unpacked in English as we go.

Kshitij Kawatra and Burair Ashary sit with the ghazal sher by sher — the plea to a "hum-nafas" not to be saved, the fear of a healer's "brief kindness," and the maqta where the poet calls out to himself by name. In this episode:

🎙️ The three singers who've made this ghazal immortal — Begum Akhtar's original, Jagjit Singh's rendition, and Ali Sethi's contemporary cover💔 Whether this is a toxic relationship dressed up in classical Urdu — and who's actually the toxic one: the poet, the beloved, or both📜 The ghazal-vs-nazm question this poem keeps raising — there's a theme running through every sher, which isn't how a ghazal is "supposed" to work

Let us know what you think — ghazal or nazm, and who's the toxic one here — over on Instagram [link].

Hosted by Kshitij Kawatra & Burair Ashary. Technical Direction by Antonio Rodriguez.

Kavinaama is a Hindi-Urdu-Punjabi poetry podcast — ghazals, nazms, and shayari, translated and unpacked. Follow for new episodes every week.

Burair's upcoming vacation becomes the unlikely entry point into one of the most sung ghazals in Urdu — Ahmad Faraz's Ab ke hum bichhde to shayad kabhi khwabon mein milen. The image of a dried flower in an old book pulls Burair toward Parveen Shakir's answering couplet, where the same flower is reimagined entirely differently. Then comes a claim from a Salman Akhtar interview: that Faraz made a grammatical error in the very first sher. Ab ke or ab ki? What changes — and what doesn't?

We move from the personal to the political. Faraz was imprisoned, banished from Sindh, and exiled for years under military rule. The couplet about the gallows (aaj hum daar pe khinche gaye jin baaton par) was written by someone who had lived it. This is what it means for love poetry and resistance poetry to be the same poem.

Kavinaama is hosted by Kshitij and Burair Ashary. Antonio Rodriguez is Technical Director.

We open Javed Akhtar's Seepiyaan — his anthology of Kabir and Tulsidas dohe — with two of Kabir's most piercing couplets: one on the hypocrisy of appearances (the heron vs. the crow), and one on a heart empty of prem. This tradition lives on only if it's carried forward — pick up Seepiyaan and pass these words on. Hosted by Kshitij Kawatra and Burair Ashary.

A YouTube comment about 2 AM, open windows, and this ghazal on speaker becomes the unlikely anchor for this episode. Kshitij and Burair go couplet by couplet through one of Ghalib's most quoted ghazals — predestination, insomnia, silence, and a death-wish that never resolves — with a detour through Gulzar teasing Javed Akhtar about "Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga" along the way.

Mirza Ghalib's Har Ek Baat Pe Kahte Ho Tum Ki Tu Kya Hai is one of the most quoted, most performed, and most misunderstood ghazals in the Urdu canon. Burair and Kshitij go sher by sher through one of Ghalib's most layered and defiant ghazals — wounded pride, jealousy, blood and ash, wine and paradise, and a final, bitter jab at the Mughal court.

Burair wrestles honestly with Ghalib's density — the philosophical leaps and unusual word choices that make this poet famously difficult even for native Urdu speakers. Kshitij offers his own reading of the khum sher, suggesting the wine vat represents something larger and all-encompassing, with the smaller vessels standing in as different paths — each holding a part of the whole, but not all of it. The two also unpack the cultural and religious context behind Ghalib's most provocative sher on paradise and wine, drawing on Burair's own upbringing in an Islamic household.

The episode also touches on Gulzar's 1988 Doordarshan series Mirza Ghalib, starring Naseeruddin Shah, and how lines from this very ghazal were used in that series to dramatize the poet's struggles with court patronage and personal isolation.

🎙️ Kavinaama is a space for South Asian poetry — Urdu, Hindi, and Punjabi.
🎥 Technical Director: Antonio Rodriguez

One of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's most beloved qawwalis carries a mystery at its heart — who actually wrote Sanson Ki Mala Pe Simrun Nis-Din Pi Ka Naam? Many assume Meerabai or Kabir, but Kshitij traces the poem to a book by Tufail Hoshiarpuri, a 20th-century lyricist whose original nazm predates the recordings most of us know.

In this episode, we explore all three layers of the qawwali: Tufail's core poem, the bhakti verses by Meerabai and Kabir that Nusrat wove in, and the couplets from Tufail's original that were never sung — from the prem pyala to birhan ke subh-o-sham. A deep dive into devotion, longing, and how a qawwali performance becomes something larger than any single author.

Hosted by Kshitij Kawatra and Burair Ashary | Technical Director: Antonio Rodriguez

Javed Akhtar didn't just write a love song — he wrote a map. Afreen Afreen moves through the beloved in four deliberate movements: body, face, eyes, hair. Each verse builds its own constellation of imagery before collapsing into that single refrain of wonder.

In this episode we trace what Akhtar is doing beneath the melody that Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan made legendary — the Ajanta sculpture, the narcissus eye, the hair as dark catastrophe and chain. We also look at how Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and others have carried this piece across generations and genres.

If you've known this song your whole life, this listen will change how you hear it.

Kavinaama explores the Urdu, Hindi, and Punjabi poetry tradition — one poem at a time. Hosted by Kshitij Kawatra and Burair Ashary.

Faiz Ahmad Faiz wrote this ghazal from a prison cell in Hyderabad, Sindh — and somehow made it sound like spring. In this episode, Kshitij and Burair sit with Gulon Mein Rang Bhare and ask the question the poem itself refuses to answer: is this a love poem or a call for revolution? They trace the ghazal through three renditions that each find something different in it — Mehdi Hassan's classical composition that gave the poem its first immortal voice, Ali Sethi's Coke Studio version that cracked it open for a younger diaspora ear, and Vishal Bhardwaj's use of it in Haider, where Faiz's longing and Kashmir's grief become indistinguishable. Along the way, the conversation turns to the bandishein of ghazal — the formal rules that hold the form together — and what it means that a structure this disciplined became home to some of the most quietly subversive poetry of the 20th century.

Burair has the Jasmine Sandlas version of Jaiye Sajna — from Satinder Sartaaj's Dhurandar 2 — on repeat. Kshitij? He keeps going back to Sartaaj's own version of the same song.

Same melody. Same longing. Two completely different emotional worlds.

In this episode, Kshitij and Burair sit with both versions and ask what it means when a single sher can feel entirely new depending on whose voice is carrying it — and why Dhurandar 2 keeps pulling people back to the classics it builds on.

Hosted by Kshitij Kawatra and Burair Ashary. Technical Director: Antonio Rodriguez.