On the Recordings

The voices reciting these ghazals are not human. Each recording is an AI rendition, and I want to say so plainly, along with why I chose to use them.

They are not perfect. A word sometimes lands differently than a native speaker would say it; a vowel runs long, a stress falls in the wrong place. That is the limit of such renditions today, not a judgement of how these poems ought to sound.

I use them for one reason: my daughters. Like many children raised far from their grandparents' language, they find Urdu and Punjabi hard going. The transliteration gives them the words; a voice, even an imperfect one, gives them the sound: the cadence of the ghazal, the radif coming home at the end of each sher.

My hope is that the recordings draw them in, imperfect as they are, and that sher by sher these pages become a vivid portrait of their grandfather. If a rendition ever stands between you and a poem, set it aside and read. The words are the memorial; the voice is only a lamp lit beside them.