One can write on and on about love

KOCHI: When the subject is about ghazals, invariably one thinks of the late Jagjit Singh and Anup Jalota. Where these masters have already proved their mettle, here is a Malayali lady who aspires to be that big through her ghazals. Fouzia Abu Backer, a Urdu ghazal singer-writer, with no formal training in either Urdu or Hindi, has already finished penning over 300 songs. “From childhood I loved the Hindi language. I used to watch Hindi TV programmes to learn the language,” says Fouzia, who is a native of Kozhikode. “Though I loved Hindi as a child, I couldn’t speak the language to anyone, as no one understood or spoke it there,” says the writer who stays in Aluva, along with her husband.   Finally, it was in Oman, where they settled for a few years, that she got a complete hang of the language. She had several Hindi-speaking and Pakistani friends, and that nurtured her talent further. “I learnt Urdu from my Pakistani friends,” she says. Fouzia found Urdu quite similar to Hindi. “Only some words are different,” says the singer who has penned for ad jingles as well. “The jingles for Arabian Jewellery and Akshaya Jewellery are the recent ones," she says. Though ghazals are Fouzia’s forte, she has also written Malayalam ghazals and ‘Mapilla Pattu’ for various albums. “I have written the lyrics for three Mapilla Pattu music albums and one video album,”  she says.      Fouzia's ghazals mostly revolve around the evergreen themes of love and sadness. “One can write on and on about love. They are the truest emotions that come from the heart,” she says.  Amazingly, Fouzia was recently approached by the Aluva Shiva Temple Devaswom to write a poem on Aluva Lake and the temple. She readily agreed.Fouzia believes that in order to fully enjoy ghazals, one has to understand its subtle and deeper meanings. And to make it easy for her audience, she translates her ghazals even as she sings. Unlike artists who look out for solitude when they are at work, Fouzia is most inspired when she is neck deep in work. “While doing household chores, my creativity is boosted. In fact in my kitchen, instead of tins in the racks you will find books and pens. Some of the best compositions came to me while I was cooking food for guests,” says this mother of three.Fouzia who not only writes ghazals, is also a painter. She paints her ghazal lyrics on the canvas. “Ghazals can inspire one to draw or sometimes a canvas can inspire us to write,” says the singer who is now busy bringing out her own Malyalam ghazal album of 10 songs.This will be her first individual album, and naturally Fouzia is a bit anxious. Female ghazal singers are a rarity, and the genre itself has few takers here. “I don’t know how Malayali crowd will accept,” she says.