Website review: A Handwritten Daily Paper in India ...
Someone discovered this in Journalism
•4 reviews since Jul 6, 2007
journalism, urdu, calligraphy
•wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2007/07/last...
People who like this website
- kundrol
Berkeley
- Freeda1961
Wisconsin
- trillian42
Ontario
- revo4
Pennsylvania
- StockTrader
New York
- renrutia
Northampton
- Thamus
Ireland
- Anndaluz
Leeds
- tofflemiffle
London
- Persiana
Shiraz
StumbleUpon is the best way to discover great web sites, videos, photos, blogs and more - based on your interests.
Everything is submitted and rated by the community. Discover, share and review the best of the web!
Reviews of this website
revo4 rated 7 days ago- Pretty interesting! Wow, nice to know that people are still very excited to handwrite things vs using computers. I must admit that with time my handwriting has gotten worse and worse. I think a first grader writes better than I do. It's a shame! Even worse if I can't have the courage to write love letters!
- Anndaluz rated 3 months ago
- CHENNAI, India -- The fax machine on 76-year-old Editor-in-Chief Syed Fazlulla's crowded desk is by far the most sophisticated technology in the room. It whizzes and burps forth a stream of scribbled notes from a correspondent in New Delhi. Fazlulla, who is deep into creating the next issue of the handcrafted The Musalman daily newspaper, frowns as he deciphers the handwriting and searches for a cover story. After some consideration, he passes the page to his brother who translates it into Urdu. He in turn sends the text to the back room where writers take calligraphy quills in hand and begin. Here in the shadow of the Wallajah Mosque, a team of six puts out this hand-penned paper. Four of them are katibs -- writers dedicated to the ancient art of Urdu calligraphy. It takes three hours using a pen, ink and ruler to transform a sheet of paper into news and art. "I write because I love the language," says Rehaman Hussein, a mustached katib who has written the paper's front page for more than 20 years. "Urdu is a clean language. It is the language of our Koran." But the Musalman's future is uncertain because the art of Urdu calligraphy is a fast-fading tradition. The newspaper has no clear successor who would produce it in its handwritten form when Fazlulla can no longer do the job.
The newspaper employs both women and Hindus in senior positions and enjoys a loyal local readership and the patronage of prominent literary figures. More pictures linked from the site.
I've never seen this newspaper, never heard about it before seeing this website, know no Urdu and have never visited the area: but I'm sad that something which connects to both an old and developed culture and the idealism of the generations who kept that culture alive in the face of colonialism may soon be no more. - CHENNAI, India -- The fax machine on 76-year-old Editor-in-Chief Syed Fazlulla's crowded desk is by far the most sophisticated technology in the room. It whizzes and burps forth a stream of scribbled notes from a correspondent in New Delhi. Fazlulla, who is deep into creating the next issue of the handcrafted The Musalman daily newspaper, frowns as he deciphers the handwriting and searches for a cover story. After some consideration, he passes the page to his brother who translates it into Urdu. He in turn sends the text to the back room where writers take calligraphy quills in hand and begin. Here in the shadow of the Wallajah Mosque, a team of six puts out this hand-penned paper. Four of them are katibs -- writers dedicated to the ancient art of Urdu calligraphy. It takes three hours using a pen, ink and ruler to transform a sheet of paper into news and art. "I write because I love the language," says Rehaman Hussein, a mustached katib who has written the paper's front page for more than 20 years. "Urdu is a clean language. It is the language of our Koran." But the Musalman's future is uncertain because the art of Urdu calligraphy is a fast-fading tradition. The newspaper has no clear successor who would produce it in its handwritten form when Fazlulla can no longer do the job.
- skillregister rated 5 months ago
- The real masters are all dead, or they are so old that they are blind and their hands won't work anymore," Fazlulla said. But the Musalman has survived and operates much as it has since it was founded in 1927. The biggest change came in the 1950s when Fazlulla unloaded a massive offset printer from a cargo ship. He salvaged the machine from a defunct American newspaper, and the paper has used it ever since. Each katib is responsible for one page. If someone is sick, the others pull double shifts -- there are no replacements anywhere in the city. When calligraphers make mistakes they rewrite everything from scratch. They earn 60 rupees (about $1.50) per page. The final proofs are transferred onto a black and white negative, then pressed onto printing plates. The paper is sold for one cent on the streets of Chennai. The paper's popularity may not be enough to save the handwritten calligraphy tradition when the last of the katibs retires. Fazlulla worries what the digital revolution might mean for the future of his paper and his brand of calligraphy. It'll be a shame if the paper lands on our highly modern, sophisticated, simplistic, "ignore everything that is not easy enough to understand" scrap heap. Any loss of cultural diversity in our global society, will bring us towards a puritan and boring lifestyle that nobody really anticipates to go along with.
- Thamus rated 5 months ago
- The last handwritten newspaper It's calligraphy to a daily deadline. Not only has the The Musalman Indian newspaper not yet reached the digital age - it hasn't even reached the Gutenberg age. The editor creates the rough outline of a page and sends the chosen scribbled texts to a translator to be turned into Urdu. Then it's on to the back room, "where writers take calligraphy quills in hand and begin to write tomorrow's newspaper." Quote: "Here in Chennai, in the shadow of the Wallajah Mosque, a team of six puts out this hand-penned paper. Four of them are katibs - writers dedicated to the ancient art of Urdu calligraphy. It takes three hours using a pen, ink and ruler to transform a sheet of paper into news and art. But The Musalman's future is uncertain because the art of Urdu calligraphy is a fast-fading tradition. The newspaper has no clear successor who would produce it in its handwritten form when the present editor can no longer do the job. In the meantime, the office is a center for the South Indian Muslim community and hosts a stream of renowned poets, religious leaders and royalty who contribute to the pages, or just hang out, drink chai and recite their most recent works to the staff.
