In Urdu, chain means comfort — the quiet that settles when the heart finally feels at ease. Its opposite, bechaini, is restlessness — the ache that keeps you awake, searching for something you can’t quite name. Between these two states lies the emotional landscape of Urdu poetry.
In this episode of Urdunama, Fabeha Syed explores how poets like Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Shaikh Ibrahim Zauq, and Josh Malihabadi capture this delicate tension between calm and chaos. Their verses move through the ebb and flow of emotion, from moments of serenity to waves of yearning, revealing how both chain and bechaini coexist within us.
Maybe that’s what the poets were telling us all along: that life is not about choosing between peace and restlessness, but about learning to hold both, to let them speak to each other inside us.
Tune in to Urdunama to hear how these timeless voices turn inner turbulence into verse, and silence into song.