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2nd year Urdu essays notes pdf download

 Here you can download the Urdu essay notes for 2nd year. These notes are prepared by Unique Academy and shared on social media with you. 

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2nd year Urdu important Essays Notes with quotations

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Essay On My Hobby Reading Books In Urdu

Back to: Urdu Essays List 1

کتب بینی میرا مشغلہ

انسان کی زندگی میں تبدیلی کا اہم کردار ہے۔ زندگی جینے کے لیے زندگی میں تبدیلی بہت اہم ہے ورنہ انسان بہت جلد اپنے ماحول سے اُکتا جاتا ہے۔ اسی طرح جب کوئی شخص اپنے روز و شب ایک ہی طرح سے گزارے تو وہ اُکتانے لگتا ہے، اس کی طبیعت میں چڑچڑاپن واضح ہونے لگتا ہے۔ اس چڑچڑےپن سے بچنے کے لیے انسان کو وہ کام کرنا چاہیے جس میں وہ دلچسپی رکھتا ہو۔ اپنی پسند کے کام کرنے کی وجہ سے انسان کا وقت بھی اچھا گزرتا ہے اور اس کی طبیعت میں خوش اخلاقی کا عنصر بھی نمایاں رہتا ہے جو اس بات کا ثبوت ہے کہ :                       “انسان دوسروں کو وہی چیز دے سکتا ہے جو اس کے اپنے پاس ہو.”

یعنی جب انسان چڑچڑا ہے تو وہ اپنے آس پاس موجود لوگوں کو کبھی بھی کوئی خوشی نہیں دے سکتا۔ اس کے برعکس اگر وہ پُرسکون ہے تو اس کے آس پاس بسنے والے بھی اس کی ذات سے خوش رہیں گے۔

میرا پسندیدہ مشغلہ (کتاب بینی)

ہر انسان کی طرح میرے بھی کئی مشاغل ہیں لیکن میرے فارغ وقت کا زیادہ تر حصہ میں اپنے پسندیدہ ترین مشغلے میں صرف کرتا ہوں۔ میرا پسندیدہ ترین مشغلہ “کتاب بینی” ہے۔ میں ہر روز کم سے کم ایک گھنٹہ کتابوں کے ساتھ گزارتا ہوں۔ میرا ایک چھوٹا سا کتب خانہ بھی ہے جہاں میں نے مختلف ادبی و سائنسی علوم کی کتابیں رکھی ہوئی ہیں۔

کتب بینی کے فوائد

کتب بینی کے بہت سے فوائد ہیں۔ کتابیں ہماری خاموش دوست ہوتی ہیں۔ کبھی کبھی کتاب کا مطالعہ کرتے ہوئے مجھے احساس ہوتا ہے کہ اس کتاب میں موجود یہ سطور میرے جذبات کی عکاسی کررہی ہیں جنھیں پڑھنے کے بعد میں اپنے آپ کو پُرسکون محسوس کرتا ہوں۔ کتابیں ہماری خاموشی میں بھی ہمارا ساتھ دیتی ہیں۔ اس کے علاوہ کتابوں کا مطالعہ کرنے سے انسان کی معلومات میں حیرت انگیز طور پر اضافہ ہوتا ہے۔

کتابوں میں سب سے مقدس کتاب اللہ پاک کی کتاب قرآن پاک ہے۔ ہمیں چاہیے کہ ہم روز قرآن پاک کو پڑھ کر اسے سمجھیں اور اس پر عمل کرنے کی کوشش کریں۔ اس عمل سے ہمیں نہ صرف دینی بلکہ دنیاوی طور پر بھی بہت فائدہ ہوگا کیونکہ اللہ پاک نے قرآن کریم میں زندگی کے ہر پہلو پر روشنی ڈالی ہے۔

کتابوں کا چناؤ

ہمیں کتابیں چنتے وقت نہایت احتیاط سے کام لینا چاہیے کیونکہ انسان کی پہچان اس کے دوستوں سے ہوتی ہے۔ اچھی صحبت میں رہنے سے انسان کا شمار اچھوں اور بری صحبت میں رہنے سے انسان کا شمار بروں میں ہوتا ہے۔ اسی طرح کتابیں بھی ہماری دوست ہوتی ہیں اور ہماری تربیت میں ایک اہم کردار ادا کرتی ہیں۔ اس لیے ہمیں چاہیے کہ وقت کو ضائع کرنے والی کتابوں کی بجائے معلوماتی کتابوں کو اپنے مطالعہ کا حصہ بنائیں اور ان سے فائدہ اٹھائیں۔

کتب بینی کے اثرات

کتابیں پڑھنے سے میری طبیعت میں واضح فرق نمایاں ہوا ہے۔ مجھ پر سوچ کے وسیع در وا ہوئے ہیں۔ میری طبیعت میں سنجیدگی نے جگہ پائی ہے۔ میری سوچ کو وسعت ملی اور مجھے بہت سی معلومات بھی حاصل ہوئی۔ میں چاہوں گا کہ ہمارے نوجوانوں میں کتب بینی کی عادت عام ہوجائے اور ہمارا ملک ترقی یافتہ ممالک میں شمار کیا جائے۔ آمین۔

aaj ik aur baras biit gayā us ke baġhair

jis ke hote hue hote the zamāne mere

Couplets of Amjad Islam Amjad

Couplets of Abbas Tabish

Couplets of Rajinder Manchanda Bani

Couplets of Sarwat Husain

Couplets of Irfan Siddiqui

Couplets of Shakeel Badayuni

Train Shayari

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Heartbreak Shayari

Chaand Shayari

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Couplets of Adil Mansuri

Compilation of top 20 hand-picked Urdu shayari on the most sought-after subjects and poets

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Chacha Chhakkan, an unforgettable comic character created by Syed Imtiyaz Ali Taj, is etched deep into our collective consciousness. It all started with English writer Jerome K. Jerome’s famous novel ‘Three Men in A Boat’ in which a character named ‘Uncle Podger’ humorously struggles to hang a portrait on the wall. Later, in 1944, the editor of the magazine ‘Nairang-e-Khayaal’ requested Imtiyaz Ali Taj to translate this section of the book for the magazine’s Eid issue. Instead of translating the section, Imtiyaz Ali rewrote it afresh, and Uncle Podger came to be known in Urdu as Chacha Chhakan. Owning to the great reception of Urdu readers, more such columns were demanded, and thus, about ten such articles came to being in which facets of Chacha Chhakkan's private life are humorously depicted, too. It’s also noteworthy, that recently Danish Iqbal wrote a play with Chacha Chhakkan as the central character, which has been staged well several times.

The word Eid means the day of happiness that returns again and again. Eid-ul-Fitr, an important Islamic festival, is often referred to as “MiThi Eid” in India. This festival is celebrated all over the world on the first day of the Islamic month of Shawwal after the fasting of Ramazan. On this day Muslims also give away ‘Fitrah’ or alms to the poor, and that’s why the occasion is called Eid-ul-Fitr. In Urdu poetry, there is such an abundance of couplets that center around “Eid ka Chand dikhna” and “Eid Ke Din Gale Milna” that an entire book could be compiled around them. Eid Ka Chand tum ne dekh liyaa Chand Ki Eid ho gayi hogii “Eid Ka Chand Hona” is a proverb quite common in everyday parlance that means to meet after a long time. Wonder what “Eidi” is all about? Well, the bounties or gifts offered by the elders of the house or relatives to children are known as Eidi. Additionally, a Nazm or couplet that Ustads wrote on fancy-pages and presented to their students just a day before Eid as greetings of this auspicious event in exchange of a tutelage was also known as Eidi. Moreover, the fancy-pages upon which these verses were written were called Eidi as well. Also, fruits, sweets, and cash offerings that are exchanged among in-laws are known as Eidi, too.

Ever wondered what’s the connection between the word ‘Pahar’ and ‘Pahre-Daar’? In ancient India, ‘Pahar’ used to be the unit of keeping time - with each day consisting of 8 Pahars, and each Pahar as long as 3 hours. During each Pahar, a ‘Pahre-Daar’ would be performing watchmanship, and at the end of each hour, he would strike a metal bell and announce that he was on guard; besides, it was also the way to know what time it was. ‘Pahar’ is derived from the Sanskrit word ‘Prahar’. The word ‘Pahre-Daar’, however, has now been limited to meanings such as watchman, guard, or sentry. In Urdu poetry, the phrases ‘Aath Pahar’, ‘Raat Ke Pichhle Pahar’, and ‘Sih-Pahar’ are abundantly found. Like: sih-pahar hī se koī shakl banātī hai ye shaam ḳhud jo rotī hai mujhe bhī to rulātī hai ye shaam

In Persian, ‘Sih’ means three. And, the third Pahar of a day is also known as ‘Sih-Pahar’.

The Hindustani tradition of celebrating the first roza (fast) of a child in the month of Ramadan is called Roza-Kushai. The word Kushaaii means to open, begin or to initiate. When a child fasts for the first time in their life, it is honoured by inviting friends and family for iftar on that particular day. The Roza-Kushai event is celebrated by making new clothes for the child and friends and family present gifts and money to the child as well. Every child remembers this day for the rest of their lives.

Ever wondered what is ‘Gulabi Urdu’, and what is its connection with Mulla Ramuzi (1896-1952)? Well, it is noted as one of Urdu language’s standout prose works in which Mulla Ramuzi has parodied the difficult, word-to-word Urdu translations of the old times. Born Sadiq Irshad, Mulla Ramuzi, was a well-known journalist, satirist, and poet from Bhopal. So unique was his style of highlighting political and social issues in his Gulabi Urdu that the British government’s press act seldom caught hold of it in the newspapers, while Urdu knowers could wittily made sense of it. But in addition to this style, he also wrote satirical and humorous articles on common people's issues in simple language which became very popular. In Bhopal, the office of the Madhya Pradesh Urdu Academy is located in the building named, ‘Mulla Ramuzi Sanskriti Bhavan’. Nowadays, the term ‘Gulabi Urdu’ has also come to be known as the confluence of regional vocab and accents in the Urdu language.

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dil kī āvāz meñ āvāz milāte rahiye

jāgte rahiye zamāne ko jagāte rahiye

dil ki aawaz mein aawaz milate rahiye

jagte rahiye zamane ko jagate rahiye

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Importance of Book Reading: Urdu Article by Nadia Umber Lodhi

by Ravi Magazine · Published 18th September 2018 · Updated 23rd September 2018

کتاب کی اہمیت

——————-, پاکستان میں کئی اقسام کی کتابیں چھپتی ہیں جن میں سے کچھ تو اس لئے مجبوراً پڑ ھی جاتی ہیں کہ یہ نصابی کتب ہیں لہذا ان کو پڑ ھنا مجبوری ہے ۔ یہ خریدی جاتی ہیں کیونکہ خریدنا لازمی ہے ۔ رٹی جاتی ہیں کیونکہ امتحان پاس کرنا کامیابی ہے ۔ دوسری قسم کتابوں کی غیر نصابی کتب پہ مشتمل ہے اس میں دینی کتابیں ، حکیمانہ کتابیں اور ادبی کتابیں(شاعری،افسانہ ،ناول )وغیرہ شامل ہیں ۔, دینی کتابیں بانٹی جاتی ہیں خریدی جاتی ہیں تحفتاً دی جاتی ہیں ۔, ادبی کتابیں لکھی جاتی ہیں اور بانٹی جاتی ہیں ان کو خریدنے والے دن بدن کم ہو تے جارہے ہیں کسی شاعر/افسانہ نگار /ناول نگار کے لیے صاحب کتاب ہونا سند ہے لیکن قاری کے لیے صاحب ادراک ہونا سند نہیں ۔ پاکستان میں اردو ادب تنزلی کا شکار دکھائیدیتا ہے کتب بینی کا مشغلہ بے وقت کی راگنی بن چکا ہے چند سال قبل کتب بینی محبوب مشغلہ تھی ۔مرا بچپن نونہال، تعلیم وتر بیت اور اشفاق احمد کے ناول پڑ ھتے گزرا۔ لیکن مرے بچوں کو کتابوں میں کوئی دلچسپی نہیں ہے اردو ان کے نزدیک مشکل ترین نصابی مضمون ہے اشعار انہیں یاد نہیں ہوتے ۔اردو لکھائ کا مسلۂ درد سر بنا رہتا ہے ۔ مری اردو سے محبت ان کی سمجھ سے بالاتر ہے ۔, آج کی نسل کو کتابوں کی دنیا بہت روکھی پھیکی دکھائی دیتی ہے وہ بڑی یا چھوٹی سکرین میں زیادہ دلچسپی لیتے ہیں ۔ کارٹون ان کا محبوب مشغلہ ہے ۔وہ لطف جو کتب بینی میں پنہاں ہے اسے سمجھنے کے لیے ان کے پاس وقت نہیں ہے ۔ لکھاری کی انگلی پکڑ کے قاری جن فہم و فراست اور درون بینی کی وادیوں سے گزرتا ہے وہ وادیاں کارٹون کے شوخ رنگوں میں کہیں گم ہو کے رہ گئی ہیں ۔ پھر یہ نئی نسل پیزا ،بر گر اور فاسٹ فوڈ کی دیوانی ہے تو تعجب کیسا , جن بچوں کو نیٹ تک رسائی حاصل ہے ان کے اندر سے حیرت اور استعجاب کی معصومیت ختم ہورہی ہے ۔ کارٹون میں بچوں کو جنسی تعلیم دی جاتی ہے ۔, اچھی باتیں سیکھتا تو کوئی نظر نہیں آتا ۔ کتاب کی جگہ آئی پیڈ ، لے رہے ہیں ۔ آئی بکس پڑھنے کا رجحان بڑھ رہا ہے کتاب مسلسل نظر انداز ہو تی جارہی ہے ۔ آئی بکس پڑ ھنے والے بھی تعداد میں بہت کم لوگ ہیں ۔, شاعری کی کتاب تحفتاً بھی مل جاۓ تو کوئی نہیں پڑھتا ۔ گوگل اور فیس بک پہ اشعار پڑ ھنے کا رجحان کافی اچھا ہے افسانے اور ناول کو فیس بک اور گوگل پہ بھی کوئی خاص پزیرائی حاصل نہیں ۔ نثر شاعری کے مقابلے میں غیر مقبول دکھائی دیتی ہے ۔ لیکن اس رجحان نے معیار کو گرا دیا ہے ۔ غیر معیاری کلام کو بڑے بڑے شاعروں سے منسوب کر دیا جاتا ہے اقبال اور فراز سے جوڑ دیا جاتا ہے ۔ اردو لغت اور انگریزی ڈکشنری کی جگہ ایپ نے لے لی ہے ۔, نیٹ کے بے شمار فوائد بھی ہیں لیکن یہاں کتاب کے حوالے سے تبصرہ ہورہا ہے کہ کیا کتاب بھی ایک دن نوادرات میں شامل ہو جاۓ گی یا اس کی اہمیت پہ کوئی عملی قدم اٹھایا جاۓ گا جب کہ مغربی ممالک میں پاکستان کے برعکس صورت حال ہے ۔وہاں کتاب کو اہمیت اور مقبولیت حاصل ہے ۔ کثیر تعداد میں کتابیں پڑھی اور چھاپی جاتیں ہیں ۔ پبلک پلیسز پہ افراد مطالعے میں گم نظر آتے ہیں ۔ جبکہ پاکستان میں افراد موبائل میں گم دکھائی دیتے ہیں ۔ حتی کہ محافل میں بھی لوگوں کی ایک تعداد موبائل میں مصروف نظر آتی ہے ۔, اخبار پڑھنے کا رحجان بھی موبائل فونز اور کیبل کی سہولت کی نظر ہو چکا ہے ۔ خبریں سنائی دیتی ہیں دکھائی دیتی ہیں تو پڑ ھنے کی کیا ضرورت ہے ۔ لیکن یہ سب رجحانات صحت مندانہ نہیں ہیں جو کہ معاشرے میں تیزی سے بڑ ھتے جارہے ہیں اور ہمارے لیے لمحہ فکریہ ہیں , نادیہ عنبر لودھی.

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Paul Scheer Is Most Nervous About Sharing This Part of His New Book (Exclusive)

The comedian and actor’s new essay collection, ‘Joyful Recollections of Trauma,’ is on sale May 21

Carly Tagen-Dye is the Books editorial assistant at PEOPLE, where she writes for both print and digital platforms.

Abby Stern is a writer-reporter at PEOPLE. She’s been writing about entertainment, fashion, beauty, and other lifestyle content for over fifteen years.

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Paul Scheer originally had some reservations about a chapter in his forthcoming book. Speaking with PEOPLE at a Los Angeles party for his new essay collection, Joyful Recollections of Trauma , on May 16, the comedian, 48, shared that there was a chapter that he was initially hesitant to include.  “The one chapter I struggled with the most was the ADHD chapter that's at the end because it was something that I got diagnosed with as an older person, as a person with a child,” he said. The Veep actor said that both his publisher and his wife, Grace and Frankie star June Diane Raphael , encouraged him to include the section in the essay collection, which details the ways his childhood experiences have impacted his life. 

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“She's like, ‘It's the first time I feel like I understood you, like I understood what having your issue is like,'" Scheer said of Raphael. "And it's been odd because it's the one thing that I've told really no one."

Despite how difficult it was for Scheer to write that part of the book, he recalled that early readers were impacted impacted by the chapter, and that they told him it spoke to them. “That was really hard for me, to be that vulnerable, because I think it's still fresh with me, whereas the other stuff was a little bit more dealt with on some level,” he said. “And then I realized that what I respond to in any kind of art, whether it's film, TV or books, is that personal thing, that journey. And it's like my book isn't prescriptive in any way, but it is personal.”

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“I felt like I realize now I like that chapter being in it because I'm like, ‘Oh, if I would've read that chapter, I might have checked myself out if someone else wrote it,’” he added. “And really, that's how I found out that I had ADHD, was [by] reading other people's dealing with it. So that was something that was really hard for me to be out there with, but also I'm now proud that it's there.”

Family also plays a prominent role in Scheer’s book, as the actor said that he dedicates the book to his parents, as well as his wife and their sons, Gus and Sam.

“They challenge me in the best ways and they bring me to a place that does make me better, that I want to be a great parent to them,” Scheer said of his kids. “I know I'm going to have faults. I know I'm going to make a mistake, but they make me want to be a person that is aware…they make me want to be better.”

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“I don't think I could have written this book without being a father because that perspective of being a father allowed me to look at my childhood differently, and I think has colored how I treat them and how I am with them,” he continued.

Scheer added that writing his book ultimately became a way to see how far he’s come in his life and career. “I think the reason why I was able to write this book now was because of the work I did,” he says. “I didn't treat the book [as] my therapy as much as a reflection of the work that I've done on myself, so I was able to feel comfortable.”

Never miss a story — sign up for  PEOPLE's free daily newsletter  to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human-interest stories. Joyful Recollections of Trauma will hit shelves on May 21, and is now available for preorder, wherever books are sold.

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Why I Kept My Kinks a Secret

F or the past decade, while I worked on a novel, I clung to a lie. On most days, I recited this lie, out loud, as if praying, hoping to relax the panic that held me in its grip for much of that time, and still hasn’t let me go. It kept me writing, the lie, though it’s about to fall apart. I’ll let no one read this book, I told myself. It’s still what I’m saying. I’m writing this just days before the novel will publish. I think of that fact, which is inexorable, and panic’s harsh grip closes tight again.

I’ve spoken with friends and, at times, in public about this novel-incited panic. If asked what I’m afraid of, I’ve offered multiple explanations, all of which are true, fine, but partial. For one thing, Exhibit explores plural kinds of desire, including physical longing, much of it queer; having grown up Korean, Catholic, and evangelical, I can’t quite escape the triple helping of lust-prohibiting shame and guilt I’ve known since I was a child. I’ve left religion, but the old edicts have proved hard to forget. In addition, the book is peopled with fictional artists, most of them women, aiming high with their work: they’re fired by large ambitions. So am I. It can feel as though, just by divulging this, I’m inviting peril. (Isn’t the phrase “ambitious woman” code for “unlikable woman,” a friend once said; I asked if it was even a code.) Plus, one woman in Exhibit isn’t being faithful to her loving husband; a couple of the artists refuse to be parents. It’s as if I made a list of boxes a person might tick to explain why a woman ought to be disliked, perhaps despised, and then, writing this novel, I filled in each box.

I’m stalling again, though, as I have my whole life, finding it all but physically impossible to put words to it , a longing I depict in the pages most adept at provoking bona fide panic. In truth, the principal origin of my anxiety, the thing that can trap me inside hours-long fits of gasping, crying, and the false if no less potent belief I might be dying, has to do with a word I haven’t yet said here: kink.

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This isn’t my first time writing or talking about kink—in 2021, my friend Garth Greenwell and I co-edited and published a bestselling short-fiction anthology titled, well, Kink . To support that book’s publication, I also wrote essays refuting prevalent, harmful beliefs about kink, fallacies about it being abusive, malign to women, an illness requiring a cure; I spoke about kink for print, audio, the internet, and during panels and readings.

But in that deluge of words, I didn’t let slip a thing about my own proclivities. I kept the language general, usually plural: I referred to some people, many people, to groups, subcultures, communities. If I felt obliged to be specific, I alluded to what one might want. I turned fluent in talking about kink while eliding the personal; at least a few readers caviled that, as far as they could tell, I’d thought up and co-edited an anthology that spotlit kink despite having no interest in it apart from the fictional. It was, I felt certain, what I required: to hide. Or, that is, to publish the book, but while I stayed veiled in fiction’s opacities, a disguise integral to the form. I relied on Ronald Barthes’s motto, larvatus prodeo: I advance pointing to my mask.

Now, though, I’ve written an entire novel told from the position of a queer Korean American woman artist who, along with her other desires, pines to explore kink. People, I’m aware, will suspect me, a queer Korean American woman artist, of having lifted the book’s events in full from my life.

Even so, I might persist in hiding. It’s still fiction, after all. And isn’t it enough, or so I’ve thought, that I’ve told the world I’m queer? I love being queer; it’s also true that queerness is judged to be an illness by a lot of Koreans both diasporic and mainland. Not long ago—for much of Korea’s Joseon period, which lasted from 1392 to 1910—the law ordained that a Korean woman could be divorced for “excessive” talking, a so-called sin. Expelled, fending for herself, the divorced woman risked dying, a hazard my body has perhaps not forgotten, though here I am, talking about, of all things, sex. Queer sex, at that. But it’s possible this rigid mask, the passed-down fiats, aren’t helping me, let alone the writing, as much as I thought.

Kink is a large, shifting term, with outlines etched less by what it is than is not, this single word applied to an ever-changing negative space. Lina Dune , a prominent kink writer and podcaster, defines kink as any sexual act or practice diverging “one tiny step outside of what you were brought up to believe is acceptable.” So, bondage, sadomasochism, fetishes, and role play are examples of kinks, and these aren’t fringe penchants. By some measures, 40% to 70% of people might be kinky ; given the stigma, this estimate could be on the low end.

For me, kink entails playing with control. Stated, explicit power dynamics; intense physical sensations, including pain; rules—these pursuits are so crucial to my body’s understanding of sex that, in their absence, lust also goes missing. It isn’t optional, a bit of pep to add on top of the chief act. Hence, sex lacking all signs of kink isn’t quite, in any personally significant sense of the word, sex. I’ve known this to be true as far back as I can recall desiring; for about as long, I believed I should keep it quiet, that I’d be thought aberrant, wrong, for craving as I did, the yes of desire paired with this I can’t . Friends spoke about lust in ways I found puzzling, alien. To be safe, I nodded. I feigned being like them. First kisses, initial forays into sexual activity: none of it felt fulfilling, and still, I played along.

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It wasn’t until I met the person who’d become my husband that, months into dating, with great trouble, I began trying to explain. Since kink figures as central a role in who I am as being queer, a woman, Korean, a person, a living being, I had to give him the chance, I thought, to run.

So what, one might ask. Kink is visible, in public, even stylish, to an extent I didn’t think possible while I was growing up, and kink-specific gathering places exist both online and, at least in big cities, in person. No one wishing to fulfill a desire for kink who is also in possession of a phone needs to be afraid, as I used to be, of lifelong failure. People mention kink in social-media bios, in dating profiles. In the milieus I inhabit, full of writers, editors, and artists all tilting left, to kink-shame—to deride a person’s kink—is itself often judged passé, risible. Why, then, as I write this, are my hands shaking, as though my very fingers are urging me to stop, to go back into hiding?

It wasn’t long ago that being pulled to kink was classed as being disordered. Until 2013, sadomasochism, along with fetishism, was pathologized as a mental illness in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or the DSM—a ruling with legal implications for jobs, parental rights. While kink is depicted more than it used to be in popular culture, it’s still so often tied to grave psychic damage, evil, or both that there’s a futile, tiring game I play: if a character in film or television is, say, a serial killer, an appalling villain, I track how long it takes until they’re shown engaging in kink. It can take just five, ten minutes before I’m proven right again.

Read More: Sex Changes as We Age. Let's Embrace That

It’s thus no surprise that lies about kink run wild. On the first day of the anthology Kink’s release, which, again, was a brief three years ago, the most indignant replies came from writers and editors I’d never met arguing that kink is abusive, misogynist, disordered. (Briefly, for anyone fresh to this dispute: a bright, wide line divides even the most physically rough kink from abuse—the giving and negotiating of explicit, detailed consent—and though some people do gain healing through kink, it has no more of a requisite etiology than do other kinds of sexuality.) In my own, less parochial circles, it’s still not unusual for people to question what the purpose of a fictional character’s kink might be, why it’s there, as though it has to be willed, optional, and not, as it is for me, vital.

If otherwise well-educated adults find kink confusing, it’s no wonder that youths might, too. Per a recent survey of 5,000 college students in the Midwest, conducted by Debby Herbenick, director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University, two-thirds of the women said they’d been choked by a partner during sex. While a longing for sexual asphyxiation is possible, and does fall under kink’s rubric, it’s also so dangerous that many kink aficionados consider it entirely off limits. One can’t safely choke a person; lasting damage can result, up to and including death. In the study, women spoke of partners choking them without having obtained consent ahead of time, a flouting of essential, first-priority kink practices.

Kink, as Dune says, isn’t about one person forcing their will on another: instead, it’s “an ongoing conversation, a collaboration between consenting equals.” Preludial talk of desires, limits; figuring out where there is and isn’t overlap; deciding on safewords; finding ways to check in along the way; segueing from a sexual encounter into aftercare, which folds in activities that can include talking about what took place, to bring oneself back to a less charged state—all this, too, is part of kink.

For a lot of people, kink can be a less bewildering landscape to navigate than more orthodox types of sex. In lieu of abiding by fixed scripts of what sex ought to be, one listens to one’s individual body, following and articulating what’s desired. Zoë Peterson, a scientist and clinical psychologist who directs the Kinsey Institute’s Sexual Assault Initiative, notes that, with the U.S.’s dearth of sex education, some people might never be asked, “What do you like and not like?” It can be highly difficult for people to think about this, let alone speak it aloud, and to another person. Sex-related shame bedevils most of us, not just the kink-inclined. And so, Peterson says, she tends to “hold up the kink community as a good model of sexual-consent communication.” In other words, these consent practices can be useful to people at large.

I ask Peterson how she’d respond to a still-widespread objection to this kind of dialogue, that consent made so precise is off-putting, clinical, lacking space for abandon, spontaneity. Here, too, she says, kink communities provide a model. “I don't think anyone's like, ‘Kink isn't sexy,’” she says, with a laugh. “No one says that.”

I’m doing it again : referring to people , to one . Scientists pointing to kink as a benign model, the talk of detailed consent—it all sounds so logical, so calm that I almost forget the panic stifling each attempt I’ve ever made to voice my own desires.

But along with the pervading stigma, here’s what else I find terrifying: part of what I want, the shape of how I lust, could be mistaken as lining up with painful, absurd lies about women who look like me—that we’re docile, hypersexual, pliant, willing to be ill-used. It’s a myth distorting our histories in the U.S., codified in the 1875 Page Act , which stopped the immigration of Chinese women on the pretext that they were “immoral.” It’s also present in any number of violent acts toward Asian women, and people who present as women, including the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings , which the killer tried to explain with a so-called “sex addiction,” a concept not recognized in psychiatric literature but one many people, not excluding the media, quickly accepted as a real disease.

Both after and before the Atlanta shootings, I’ve written and spoken about injustice from the vantage point of being a Korean woman, an Asian woman. I’ve heard from thousands of Asian people, most often women, about their own experiences of racism . It was, and is, a profound honor to be trusted with such griefs. I’ve also received death threats, rape threats, as replies to what I wrote; I’ve been chased down the street by men, had my ass grabbed in bars. Less violent, but also infuriating, are the times people have fancied it’s right to tell me what to do, have assayed to push me around. None of this is special. It’s not unique, is the problem. But as a result, for a long while, I’ve tried, with how I dress, talk, and hold myself, to project what others might interpret as strength, an effort that’s felt all the more urgent as I publish words that people read.

I’m afraid that, by unveiling desires I’ve kept hidden, I’ll spoil this effort. And that, given the nature of some of what I want, I’ll add to the terrible lies about us. Might, then, get more of us hurt, killed. On the one hand, this sounds histrionic, over-the-top: it’s just a novel, I tell myself, and I’m one person. Still, the bigoted and ignorant can be so easily misled, by almost nothing. Each novel births a world. Shame, guilt then spring up: what am I, a Korean woman, doing, talking about sex at all? I should hide again, back where it’s safe.

But this, but that: the abiding panic spirals, its coil tight. In the lulls, when its grip goes slack, I’m able to trust in what else I believe about books. The solitude I used to know, when I thought I was alone with strange desires, my body wrong, abnormal—that long isolation, too, twined me with the pall of something like death. Other people’s words, books, and art, by offering kinship, pulled me free, provided a refuge. It felt salvific, finding the solitude to be an illusion: learning that even I, at least in private, could live as my full self.

Despite the panic, I did write Exhibit , a chronicle of kinky, queer, Korean American women intent on pursuing what they want. Striving to bring to the novel all the skills I possess, I hoped to claim that this, too, the it I’ve often wished gone, belongs in literature. Which is also saying it belongs, period, as do I. Our bodies aren’t wrong. If allowed the option of changing, excising kink from my body, I’d refuse. For what else could I be, and why would I want to? Kink has brought me such delight. Exhibit’s narrator, Jin Han, spends much of the novel working to move out of hiding. I’m trying to follow her there.

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Arooj Aftab Knows You Love Her Sad Music. But She’s Ready for More.

The genre-crossing songwriter’s introspective “Vulture Prince” was a pandemic hit. Now she is returning with “Night Reign,” an LP that reveals her many dimensions.

By Sam Sodomsky

In a remote studio in North Brooklyn, the actress Tessa Thompson stood behind a camera and instructed a young model how to project a precise but elusive expression of longing: “Almost like you can’t help it,” she suggested from beneath a black beret. Thompson was making her debut behind the camera, directing a music video by the Pakistani composer and vocalist Arooj Aftab .

“This is a dream come true,” Thompson said between takes on an afternoon in March. “A dream I didn’t know I had.”

The clip was for Aftab’s latest song, the dusky “Raat Ki Rani,” from her fourth solo album, “Night Reign,” due May 31. Drawing inspiration from Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 thriller, “Persona,” the treatment weaves an imagistic love story between two women into a trippy meta-narrative that takes place on the set of a perfume commercial. Accordingly, the room was filled with fragrant bouquets as Aftab, 39, observed quietly from the sidelines.

If you didn’t know she was the star of the show — not to mention, the beautiful, Auto-Tuned voice pouring from the speakers all day — you might have assumed she was one of the crew members assessing the scenery, keeping the mood light, checking if anyone needed bottled water. As the team reset for a complex shot accompanied by a relentlessly looped fragment from her track, Aftab whispered offhandedly to a cameraperson, “Thank God the song is good!”

“Raat Ki Rani” is Aftab’s first official music video and a rare instance of the musician outsourcing her distinctive vision. Many listeners first encountered her hypnotic and immersive style via her 2021 breakthrough, “Vulture Prince” : a minimalist blend of jazz, folk and ghazals, a form of Urdu poetry that incorporates themes of longing and loss.

The album became a rare pandemic-era success for an independent artist, partly because its quiet, introspective music aligned with the times. It was forged in grief as a tribute to Aftab’s younger brother, who died in 2018, and the emotional intensity often came through her stunning vocals.

With more than six million plays on Spotify, the slow-building, eight-minute ballad “Mohabbat” has become something like a signature song. Its fans include Barack Obama, Elvis Costello and the Grammys, where it picked up best global music performance, making Aftab the first Pakistani artist to win the award. (She was also nominated for best new artist but lost to Olivia Rodrigo.)

“‘Vulture Prince’ bridged a gap in the industry,” Aftab said. “There were renditions of old poems and traditional songs, heritage material from Pakistan and South Asia.” She referred to “Mohabbat,” an oft-covered ghazal written by Hafeez Hoshiarpuri, as a “national treasure” among South Asian artists and is proud to exist in this lineage. But she has consciously avoided instruments or textures that Western audiences might associate with the term “world music” — a philosophy she boils down to “bitching about tablas.”

“Night Reign,” Aftab’s first solo release for a major label, Verve, offers a more comprehensive self-portrait, with vivid songs veering as close to pop music as she has ever come while still making room for explorations like “Na Gul,” the first time the writing of the 18th-century Urdu writer Mah Laqa Bai Chanda has been set to music.

“‘Vulture Prince’ was a sad record because I was sad,” Aftab said with a lucidity and self-awareness that seems to come second nature to her. “But in the years that passed, I’ve had this joy inside of me. It would be unfair if it didn’t translate in my music.”

The success of “Vulture Prince” put Aftab on a different track. “I was finally financially free,” she said. “I don’t have a desk job. I don’t have a supervisor. I can be in a different city every night playing.” As soon as pandemic restrictions eased, she got on the road — “like 200 shows in a year” — and observed the way her sound evolved to fit each space. “We learned that it goes in a big room, it goes in a small room,” she said. “It goes in a festival where there’s a rock band onstage next to you.”

GROWING UP IN Lahore, Pakistan, Aftab attended a school with what she called “all-girls convent vibes,” where she played sports and acquired a spirit of collaboration, competition and “solidarity with women.” Much of her free time was filled with music. She learned from her parents’ tradition of curating mixtapes to soundtrack parties — that sprawling, genre-agnostic approach remains crucial to Aftab’s art — and made friends with acoustic guitars and record collections.

Soon, she was fronting a band, performing local gigs and boasting a songbook of heartbroken originals and popular-demand covers. (Her first brush with fame was a performance of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” that went semi-viral on the pre-YouTube internet.)

At Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she studied production and audio engineering, Aftab was electrified by the local jazz scene and the community of musicians. Many of her fellow students moved to New York with her upon graduation, and several appeared on her debut, “Bird Under Water” from 2014, a record she looks back on as an early stab at her multidisciplinary aesthetic.

Touring “Vulture Prince” and its follow-up, “Love in Exile,” a collaboration with the jazz musicians Shahzad Ismaily and Vijay Iyer from 2023, shaped the nocturnal reflections of “Night Reign.” During a trip back to her hometown, the smell of the raat ki rani flower (its name translates from Urdu as “Queen of the Night”) flooded her with memories of childhood. She connected these images to the nightlife in Brooklyn, which she has called home since 2009.

“I am really an extrovert,” she said. “But there’s also the silence of the night, the calmness.” She reflected for a minute. “Also, you know, everyone just looks better when it’s all shadowy and unclear. I don’t want to be seeing people in the daytime.”

A lot of Aftab’s thoughts evolve this way: She will summon the wisdom of her music and quickly swat it away with a self-effacing joke or conversational aside. Despite her rising profile, she remains an unassuming presence. Casually chatting about the album at a hip Brooklyn social club, she drank a cup of tea. She was wearing a North Face vest and a pair of sunglasses, standing out from the loudly dressed attendees of a nearby fashion show. “I don’t know that it’s in my persona to become a persona,” she said.

On “Night Reign,” she seized the opportunity to express different sides of her personality. There’s “Raat Ki Rani,” which features an uncharacteristic use of Auto-Tune that emerged from a whimsical studio experiment. (“I was like, ‘This is not a T-Pain record. We need to dial it back.’”) And “Whiskey,” an English-language love song she started writing in college, with a depiction of drunken intimacy that represents her most direct, unguarded moment as a writer. “I think I’m ready to give in to your beauty and let you fall in love with me,” she sings over a starry folk arrangement.

To match the range of the songwriting, Aftab enlisted her familiar collaborators, including the harpist Maeve Gilchrist, the bassist Petros Klampanis, the guitarist Gyan Riley, the veteran percussionist Jamey Haddad and her “Love in Exile” bandmates Ismaily and Iyer. She also extended her circle to Costello (who plays Wurlitzer on “Last Night Reprise”), the guitar virtuoso Kaki King, the Philadelphia spoken-word artist Moor Mother and Joshua Karpeh, the R&B songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who records as Cautious Clay.

Describing their collaboration on “Last Night Reprise,” a jazzy interpretation of a poem by the 13th-century Persian writer Rumi, Karpeh recalled Aftab taking the vantage of a film director, using visual cues to encourage different takes. “There’s a trust in how we approach our music,” he said of their shared approach. “It felt very free and raw.”

Aftab said Karpeh embodies her ideal player: someone who gravitates to the unique. “I search for people like that because that’s 80 percent of the thing,” she said. “There’s nothing I can write down and ask you to play if you don’t have that innate feeling.”

In Tessa Thompson, who Aftab pinged with a friendly DM on Instagram, Aftab found both a natural collaborator and a role model for navigating the business on her own terms. (She had previously met some musical members of Thompson’s family: her half sister, Zsela, and her father, Marc Anthony Thompson, a.k.a. Chocolate Genius.)

“I haven’t been around that type of person who has been in the industry a long time and still manages their mental health and knows how to be chill and natural and not overwhelmed by stuff,” Aftab said of Thompson. “Maybe I’m just a baby!”

ON A WARM April day, Aftab was ready to premiere the final cut of the “Raat Ki Rani” video. In her Brooklyn brownstone apartment, a cozy spot with a lush backyard garden, she made tea and explained the history of a rare instrument she found on eBay — the Sonica, a synthesizer in the shape of a guitar. Discussing her excitement about the video, she zoomed out to place its imagistic depiction of queer romance in a larger context. “It feels natural to me in this moment in culture for the center of desire to not be a man,” she said firmly. “We are in a time that is fluid.”

When the conversation turned to a recent Instagram post in which she announced the imminent retirement of “Mohabbat” from her set lists, Aftab laughed. “I was just [expletive] around,” she said. “Obviously nobody’s going to let me not play that anymore.” Her tone quickly turned more serious. “I’ve never had a hit, so I don’t know what to do. I guess Norah Jones still has to play ‘Come Away With Me.’” Eventually, Aftab confirmed that she still connects with the song every time she sings it, but her impulse to move forward is no joke.

“Let me be more personal,” she said, leaning forward. “Let me be me and not a representative of culture.” She paused. “People still call me, like, ‘the Sufi fusion singer,’ or whatever. And it’s just, like, I actually don’t really know anything about Sufism.”

“I see a lot of artists saying this,” she added. “We want to run away from being labeled — but we can’t. So we have to do it in our music.”

Find the Right Soundtrack for You

Trying to expand your musical horizons take a listen to something new..

Meet Carlos Niño , the spiritual force behind L.A.’s eclectic music scene.

Listen to a conversation about Steve Albini’s legacy on Popcast .

Arooj Aftab  knows you love her sad music. But she’s ready for more.

Hear 9 of the week’s most notable new songs on the Playlist .

Portishead’s Beth Gibbons  returns with an outstanding solo album.

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Book Review: Memoirist Lilly Dancyger’s penetrating essays explore the power of female friendships

This cover image released by Dial Press shows “First Love” by Lilly Dancyger. (Dial Press via AP)

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Who means more to you — your friends or your lovers? In a vivid, thoughtful and nuanced collection of essays, Lilly Dancyger explores the powerful role that female friendships played in her chaotic upbringing marked by her parents’ heroin use and her father’s untimely death when she was only 12.

“First Love: Essays on Friendship” begins with a beautiful paean to her cousin Sabina, who was raped and murdered at age 20 on her way home from a club. As little kids, their older relatives used to call them Snow White and Rose Red after the Grimm’s fairy tale, “two sisters who are not rivals or foils, but simply love each other.”

That simple, uncomplicated love would become the template for a series of subsequent relationships with girls and women that helped her survive her self-destructive adolescence and provided unconditional support as she scrambled to create a new identity as a “hypercompetent” writer, teacher and editor. “It’s true that I’ve never been satisfied with friendships that stay on the surface. That my friends are my family, my truest beloveds, each relationship a world of its own,” she writes in the title essay “First Love.”

The collection stands out not just for its elegant, unadorned writing but also for the way she effortlessly pivots between personal history and spot-on cultural criticism that both comments on and critiques the way that girls and women have been portrayed — and have portrayed themselves — in the media, including on online platforms like Tumblr and Instagram.

For instance, she examines the 1994 Peter Jackson film, “Heavenly Creatures,” based on the true story of two teenage girls who bludgeoned to death one of their mothers. And in the essay “Sad Girls,” about the suicide of a close friend, she analyzes the allure of self-destructive figures like Sylvia Plath and Janis Joplin to a certain type of teen, including herself, who wallows in sadness and wants to make sure “the world knew we were in pain.”

In the last essay, “On Murder Memoirs,” Dancyger considers the runaway popularity of true crime stories as she tries to explain her decision not to attend the trial of the man charged with killing her cousin — even though she was trained as a journalist and wrote a well-regarded book about her late father that relied on investigative reporting. “When I finally sat down to write about Sabina, the story that came out was not about murder at all,” she says. “It was a love story.”

Readers can be thankful that it did.

AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews