India, Aug. 25 -- In the pantheon of Urdu poets the names of women hardly come up. Mah Laqa Bai Chanda was an extraordinary poet and courtesan who lived inHyderabad in the 18th century. The U.S. Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation has helped to restore her garden tomb which could bring into focus her contribution to art and culture, and charity. SPAN writer Paromita Pain reports

A professor of South Asian and Islamic Studies at Emory College of Arts and Sciences in Georgia, Scott Alan Kugle was always deeply interested in the intricacies of Urdu poetry. "It largely celebrates its male poets and writers," he says. "But one of the first novels in Urdu, Umrao Jan Ada, centered on a powerful female protagonist." Intrigued, Kugle start...