A Thousand Yearnings: A Book of Urdu Poetry and Prose

Part I: Short Stories and Sketches
1. Prem Chand: A Wife’s Complaint
2. Ismat Chughtai: Tiny’s Granny
3. Rashid Jahan: Behind the veil
4. Krishan Chander: Kalu Bhangi
5. Saadat Hasan Manto: The Black Shalwar
6. Shaukat Thanavi: Love and Prudence
7. Ismat Chughati: Hellbound

Part II: Popular Literature
8. Outwitting the Powerful
9. Akbar and Birbal
10. Mullah Dopiaza
11. Shaikh Chilli
12. Tales of Famous Men
13. The Creation of Adam and the Loss of Paradise
14. Sikandar, Khizar and the water of Life
15. Khwaja Hasan Nizami: Guests are Pest

Part III: Love Poetry: The Ghazals of mir and ghalib
16. Hasrat Mohani and Momin: Lover’s Meeting
17. Mir: the ideal ghazal Lover
18. Ghalib’s more Nuanced view of love
19. Mystic Love
20. The Challenge of Orthodoxy
21. The Humanist Values of the Ghazal
22. God and Humankind
23. The Poet in Society
24. Ghalib’s Personal Philosophy
25. Images and Allusions
26. Eleven Ghazalz of Ghalib
27. A Living Tradition

Part IV: The Lives of Poets
28. Muhammad Husain Azad: Nasikh: The Portrait of a Poet
29. Abdul Halim Sharar: The King and the Singer
30. Farhatullah Bog: A Memorable Delhi Mushaira
31. Altaf Husain Hali: A Memoir of Ghalib
32. Ghalib: Letters

Part V: The ‘New Light’: Responding to Social change
33. Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the Aligarh Movement
34. Akbar Ilahabadi: Satire in a Changing Society

Part VI: The Novel
35. Rusva: Umrao jan ada