A NOTE ON TRANSLATION AND TRANSLITERATION

This book is intended for a wide readership. Accordingly, I have broadly adopted the following conventions in order to offer a simplified and readable transliteration of Urdu terms:

•  Song lyrics, dialogue, and concepts follow the Library of Congress guidelines, with the exception of using ch instead of c for the letter ch.

•  In most cases, the final h is omitted (qiṣṣa instead of qiṣṣah).

•  Hindi and Urdu terms in wide usage in English are spelled according to their common usage (ghungroo, munshi, qawwali, et cetera).

•  Titles in the citations and the bibliography omit all transliteration characters except for the ‘ain as ‘ and the hamza as ’.

•  Proper names of people and film titles are sometimes listed in English with variant spellings. I have aimed for consistency based on the most common usage and guided by IMDb listing but have generally retained variant spellings in quotations, citations, and bibliography.

Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the Urdu are mine.