// have any of the pundits here visited the place? //

I have not, and have been meaning to for a while. But it would have to be alone – if ever – due to my wife’s principled stand of not letting others dictate what she wears. Besides we are planning a holiday to Israel next year so that may screw things up for potential Iran visits.

However, I have personal family connections with Iranians and my uncle (Dad’s maternal first-cousin) was an Indian diplomat in Iran for a very long time – from before the Revolution through the early years of IRI. A staple of many interesting stories and vignettes…

// that the languages are quite related //

Urdu and Farsi are as related as, roughly, Romanian and French. Urdu and Hindi are as related as RP and cockney, basically registers of the same language.

Farsi grammar is closer to that of Sanskrit in some respects (eg verb conjugation) than it is to Urdu ironically. Mainly because Farsi has been generally conservative (perhaps by design) in preserving the conjugation of its verbs esp in indicative present or perfect tenses.

E.g. Skt ~ Persian

asmi ~ hastam = am
asi ~ hasti = (sing. you) are
asti ~ ast = is

smaH ~ hastim = (we) are
stha ~ hastid = (pl. you) are
santi ~ hastand = (they) are

What I have written above is more of a formal written standard (bookish Farsi), whereas the actual colloquial speech has moved on quite a bit E.g. esme chi-e vs the more formal esme chi ast, i.e. what is (your) name?.

It is as if some Persian scholar or scribe, who wanted to formalize New Persian grammar, took the third pers. sing. tense as the root morpheme and started conjugating that. Perhaps vaguely remembering how conjugations were done in the olden days before Arabs showed up. But languages are like genes, no matter how much you wish to control them they will drift and change.

The languages are related but the grammar is very different. There are some common words but they also sometimes mean something different.

Urdu is a Persianized register of Hindustani just as Hindi is the Sanksritized register. Linguists consider Urdu-Hindi to be one language since the grammar is identical (as is most vocabulary unless you are speaking some very literary Urdu).

Sounds like you had a experience in Istanbul than I did a few years ago (prior to the whole Syria situation). I fell in love with the city, as it felt like a European city with mosques instead of cathedrals. And I found them to be very friendly except for this one tea shop guy who asked where we were from (3 Indian guys and 2 Pakistani) and then only spoke to the Pak guys as he said he could ‘trust’s them more.

Another time we were walking in the square in front of the Hagia Sophia and taking loudly in Hindi when a group of hijabi local girls from a madrassa came up to us and started practicing their Bollywood lines lol. They took us to their favourite markets and tea spots and hung out with us later as well. Guess Bollywood has been a great image booster for desi guys haha

Haha did you mean trip or trap? 😉
Did you see the naqsh e jahan square and the Lotfollah mosque? Isfahan is definitely in my list, Tehran I heard is a bit grey and scruffy.

I would love to add the Nastaliq to the list of scripts I can read – devanagri, Tamil and Telugu. But alas, never had the chance!

The Turks are definitely very attractive – the men a bit thuggish but the women stunning. Knew quite a few during my days in the Netherlands.

Ah ok, thanks. I was under the impression that the languages are quite related. Guess it’s only the script.

The blue mosque is magnificent! So is the Sulimanye mosque but it was the small Sultanahmet mosque that I found the most charming, as it was kinda hidden away and had a great view of the Bosporus.

Iranians don’t speak Urdu. Farsi grammar is very different.

I spent two days in Istanbul a few years ago on the way back from Pakistan to the US. It was a nice trip. We did all the usual touristy things (Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, etc).

Zack,
Most Pakistanis can believe they have West Asian ancestors. Factually, most of them are wrong. 50% of the population is Punjabi and they were obviously Hindu before they converted. Their last names “Janjua”, “Cheema” etc make their pre-Islamic origin very clear.

It is historically accepted that the vast majority of British India’s Muslims were converts from Hinduism. I think most of us are supposed to have been from the lower castes and to have converted because Islam offers formal equality. But of course, there were people who came with the Mughals etc.

Zack,

You seem to have high hopes from S. C. Bose. The 3 year occupation history of Andamans islands by Japanese forces during WW II is suppressed in India, rightly so, otherwise it will expose what Mr. Bose was trying to bring to India by collaborating with Japanese.

A close relative was a Japanese POW in Burma for 4 years. The torture he endured at the hand of Japanese drove him half mad. We kids used to call him “crazy uncle”.

Even Bhagat Singh had a low opinion of Bose. So Bose’s idea of independence (if you can call it that) was batshit crazy.