Stirred by 16/12 incident, Khurshid turns poet

The horrific rape and murder a year ago, which stirred the nation, has brought out the inner poet in external affairs minister Salman Khurshid, who had turned playwright with his acclaimed “Sons of Babur” three years ago.

The horrific rape and murder a year ago, which stirred the nation, has brought out the inner poet in external affairs minister Salman Khurshid, who had turned playwright with his acclaimed “Sons of Babur” three years ago.

Khurshid has written a set of poems as tribute to Delhi rape victim, inspired by the brutal December 2012 incident. The poems, titled Damini, have been rendered into songs by Ustad-e-Maa Zila Khan, a renowned Sufi singer of the Imdad Khani gharana (tradition) and daughter of maestro Vilayat Khan.

Khurshid told HT the poems were inspired by various trials and tribulations of women in society, as much as the death of his own daughter, Ayesha. The musical album will be launched by Vice-President Hamid Ansari on Wednesday.

The poems are written in “Hindustani”, the north Indian lingua franca, which derives most of its vocabulary from the Hindi “khariboli” dialect as well as Persian, Urdu and Sanskrit.

Hindutva organisations had slammed Khurshid’s play “Sons of Babur”, which searches the identity of the Indian Muslim through centuries of Mughal rule. Last year, law minister Kapil Sibal had penned a Bollywood song.