About Author - مصنف کی کہانی

From an Idea to a Book
خیال سے کتاب تک

Now allow me to introduce you myself, I am Farhan Khan; by profession I am a technologist and researcher. However, my childhood was between hundreds of different Urdu storybooks and novels. Books like Alif-Laila, Umro-Ayyar, Chalosak Malosak, Nonehal, Hakeem Muhammad Saeed, Bacho ki Dunya, Dastan-e-Ameer Hamza, Tulsim Hoshraba, Imran Series, and God knows many others.

My Muqaam journey was started back In 2014 when I could not find enough material for children, especially on Allama Iqbal's poems. The techniques used by different authors to explain Iqbal's poems were similar and lack of creativity, plus they were using the early 19's century approach.

I found that it was hard for the children to grasp Iqbal's context by listening or learning only the poem's words. Any information without understanding will be useless and will remain old-school thought of memorization. In contrast, information is a commodity in our era, and we need to broaden our way of teaching.

The primary reason could be the lack of Urdu literature and culture in our societies. Our priorities are more directed to learn foreign languages as compared to Urdu. It is alarming that regular Urdu, which used to be spoken back in the early 80s, 70s, or 40s, became much harder to understand because Urdu is mutated due to foreign languages and environmental factors. This issue was stuck somewhere in my mind; that it has to be changed. We are reading Allama Iqbal's philosophy just like a parrot rather than understanding the moral and crux of his words. Though these words used to be easier for the previous generation, now we need different ways to send Iqbal's message.

In 2015, I launched Muqaam.com with a mobile app, "Aql o Dil"; it was the poem of Allama Iqbal that I converted into a children's story. It was embedded with interactivity, animation, and images. The app users' feedback on this application was overwhelming, which motivated me to publish more apps. Therefore, by the end of 2017, I had published two more apps e.g. " Aik Pahar aur Gulheri" and "Aik Makra Aur Makri,". These all applications were built cross-platforms to support all mobile devices on Windows, Apple, and Android. These apps were bilingually comprised of English and Urdu.

All these applications were made with the idea to spread Allama Iqbal's message freely on the internet. Hence, these applications were Ads-free and based on a non-profit model.

However, on the other side, I have observed that publishing interactive mobile apps requires enormous effort, plus the durability is weak. In contrast, volatility was very high due to the technical requirement. In addition to these issues, many institutions have shown concern about the negative impact on children's minds who use the mobile screen for reading or interacting.

These analyses gave me a sign that it is better to publish an actual book instead of making interactive applications because my stories cannot be reached to all kinds of children.

Finally, my journey took a new direction in 2018, and I decided to convert at least 20 different Allama Iqbal's poems into children's stories by dividing them into four separate books. Irteqa-e-Shaheen is my first book with five stories with beautiful illustrations based on Allama Iqbal's poetry, which was released in 2019. My book Irteqa-e-Shaheen is available in a physical format, so you can order it online for your children anytime. https://gufhtugu.com/product/irteqa-shaheen/

I am thankful to all those who supported me and recognized my efforts in spreading Iqbal's message around the world between children.