During an interview to an Indian newspaper, while promoting his new movie London, Paris, New York, Ali Zafar expressed his disappointment in the decline of Urdu in theatre and films. The only solution according to him is to promote Urdu with better cinema, which he thinks can really help bring back people’s interest in the language.
He was asked about the Urdu poet Akhlaq Muhammad Khan, who used the pen name Shahryar for his poetry and died recently on February 13, Monday, due to lung cancer. Ali Zafar said:
“I feel the use of pure Urdu has declined. It is important to keep it alive as it is a beautiful language. It should be used in mainstream theatre and Bollywood. It’s important for the new generation to learn Urdu.”
Ali Zafar is a person with deep thinking and solid ideas. He admires creative writers and said:
“Someone once asked me, who do you like spending time with and who impresses you the most? I said, writers. The might of the pen is the greatest. So I felt sad after hearing the news of his demise.”