kolhapur badruddin ahmed a 73year old doctor could have comfortably enjoyed his retired life in the united kingdom instead he choose to revisit the passion he put aside in his younger days to pursue the field of medicine he converted his retirement into adabi safarnama a literary travelogue for the past four years as he journeys across india to study urdu while he took his first trip in 2012 he started travelling rigorously last year and visited 15 places he has travelled to chennai bagalkot bengaluru belagavi belgaum in southern india as well as delhi lucknow kapur banaras in northern parts exclusively to meet people who are reading and writing in urdu i found much needed peace in urdu the language must be preserved and nurtured that instinct took me to india and i started my safar journey i have visited more than 20 places to discuss the status of urdu to meet new writers people working for the language said ahmed who was in kolhapur to attend a urdu sitting ahmeds journey began with facebook in 2010 it transformed into travelogue in 2014 when he came to india to meet the people working in the field of urdu with whom he had connected over the social media site i was going through a tough time in 2010 my wife was ill and on the deathbed i was started feeling the loneliness and some point i realised urdu will restore me i was using social media to reach out to the people interested in the language that connected me to aziz belgami and some other people across the world i decided to retire from my medical profession so i gave up my medical registration and started exploring urdu explained ahmed ahmed is originally from kolkata he migrated to uk in 1975 and settled there he completed his mbbs at calcutta national medical college and at the same time graduated in urdu from surendranath college in 1968 after getting special permission because of his passion for the language i couldnt pursue my passion for urdu after 1975 it stopped completely but when i started to explore social media i found people were using the roman script to communicate in urdu very few people were writing the language in its purest interestingly those were not from the northern india where urdu was born but from southern parts so i decided to meet them personally to study the language he said ahmed feel often discouraged about the condition of language in the cities however expresses his surprise to find it preserved in comparatively smaller cities like kolhapur or bagalkot belgami who accompanied him to kolhapur and ichalkaranji terms ahmeds passion as an extraordinary effort to revive urdu his journey is a unique example of how to follow your dreams the doctor came here just to attend urdu sittings and to meet urdu promoters and teachers i havent seen people taking so much interest in languages these days said belgami who is