Urdu poet and critic Shamsur Rahman Faruqi passes away
New Delhi: Legendary Urdu poet and critic Shamsur Rahman Faruqi passed away on Friday at his Allahabad home, a month after recovering from COVID-19. He was 85.
"He had been insisting to go back to his home in Allahabad. We reached here only this morning and within half an hour he passed away at around 11," Faruqi's nephew and writer Mahmood Farooqui told PTI.
The Padma Shri poet was discharged from a hospital in Delhi on November 23 after recovering from coronavirus.
"But due to steroids, he developed a fungal infection, mycosis, which further worsened his condition," Farooqui added.
Faruqi's last rites will be performed at Ashok Nagar cemetery in Allahabad at 6 pm on Friday.
Born on September 30, 1935, in Uttar Pradesh, Faruqi is credited to have revived "Dastangoi", a 16th century Urdu oral storytelling art form.
His books "Mirror of Beauty" (translated into English from the Urdu "Kai Chaand The Sar-e-Aasmaan" in 2006), "Ghalib Afsaney Ki Himayat Mein" (1989) and "The Sun That Rose From The Earth" (2014) are among others he wrote in his five-decade-long literary career.
He also received Saraswati Samman in 1996 for his work "She'r-e Shor-Angez", a four-volume study of the eighteenth-century poet Mir Taqi Mir.
Writer William Dalrymple took to Twitter to mourn the demise of Faruqi.
"RIP, Janab Shamsur Rahman Faruqi saheb, one of the last great Padshahs of the Urdu literary world. This is such sad news," Dalrymple said.
Sanjiv Saraf, the founder of Urdu festival Jashn-e-Rekhta, also condoled the death of "the century's most iconic figure in the realm of Urdu literature".
"His demise has left us bereaved as an entire generation of literature lovers mourn this loss. I extend heartfelt condolences to his family and loved ones," Saraf said.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
