Urdu is not something Dr Mehr Afshan Farooqi, daughter of Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, first encountered in a classroom. It is something she remembers hearing, speaking, and breathing long before she ever thought of it as an academic discipline.
Her father remains one of the most influential Urdu literary critics of the modern era. Today a professor of Urdu and South Asian Literature at the University of Virginia, Dr Mehr has built a career around a l…