Shahr Ashob is a classic genre of Urdu poetry that was once written a lot. It is a poem that describes a city’s plight due to its political, social, and economic crisis. Shahr Ashobs have been written in the form of Masnavi, Qasida, Rubai, Mukhammas, Qita, and Musaddas. Shahr-Ashobs written by Mirza Muhammad Rafi Sauda and Mir Taqi Mir, are amongst the most noteworthy and memorable ones of Urdu, and relate the unemployment of the people, economic misery, and plunderage of Delhi. Nazir Akbarabadi has portrayed the economic misery of Agra, the plight of the army, and the utter disregard of nobles in his Shahr-Ashobs. The catastrophe that befell Delhi after the War of Independence of 1857, has also been made the motif of many a poet’s writings, including Ghalib, Dagh, and Maulana Hali. In 1954, Habib Tanveer, based on the poetry of Nazeer Akbarabadi, tellingly staged his famous play "Agra Bazaar", using the Shahr-Ashob in the form of a chorus.

Last year, one of the world's most credible English dictionary, Cambridge, added a frequently spoken Urdu word, "Achcha” to its wordlist. The word was added since it is also commonly used in Indian-English. The dictionary cites its meanings in terms of ‘happiness (khushi)’, and as ‘an expression of wonder, or something like, really?’ It has also illustrated its use by citing a few sentences as examples.
But in Urdu, the word ‘Achcha’ gives away several other meanings which include, Theek, dusrust (okay, fine); as an opposite of bad; Bahut Khuub! (yeah, great! – used sarcastically); as an expression of comforting or pacifying (it’s all right); prevaricating or procrastinating- dekha jayega! (we’ll see!); Sun liya? (Understood? - used emphatically/admonishingly), and last but not the least as, Samjhe? (get it?)
And, like this famous film song:
“Achcha! To Hum Chalte Hain”
The word is also used to refer to being healthy or free from any illness, as in the case of Ghalib’s couplet:
dard minnat-kash-e-davaa na hu.aa
mai.n na achchhaa hu.aa buraa na hu.aa

Hajw (Lampoon), is a kind of poetry in which a poet expresses his anger against a person or a rival. Some people consider it to be a kind of Qasida. In Urdu, the practice of composing Hajw precisely started with Muhammad Rafi Sauda (1713-1781). He composed his Hajws in all genres of poetry like Qasida, Masnawi, Qita, Ghazal, Rubai, etc.
Muhammad Hussain Azad writes in ‘Ab-e-Hayat’, that Sauda had a slave named "Ghuncha", who was always in his service and carried Sauda’s pen-case around him. Whenever Sauda was affronted with someone, he’d call out, ‘Arey Ghunche, laa to Qalam-daan, zaraa main is ki khabar to lun, ye mujhe samjha kya hai?’. 
Sauda wrote a variety of lampoons, some are charged with the bantering of rivals, some possessing accounts of moral mending, and others imbued with satirizing the political turmoil and financial misery of the times. Sauda also lampooned upon on an elephant and a horse. ‘Tazheek-e-Rozgar’, Sauda’s famous Hajw, centers around an incapable horse, that was actually a metaphor for the last days of the Mughal empire and hinted towards the political and economic catastrophe of that period.

Ever thought how are Lughat (dictionary) and Farhang (lexicon) different from each other? Well, a Lughat lists all possible meanings of the words used in a language, while a Farhang lists only those meanings of the words which are particular to a book, divan or subject. Farhang-e-Asifia, however, is a very authentic and comprehensive four-volume Urdu dictionary containing Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Sanskrit, and English words which have become a part of the Urdu language.
The author of Farhang-e-Asifia, Maulvi Syed Ahmad Dehlavi, was born in 1844 in Delhi. As a young man, he worked for seven years with Dr. Fallon, an English Orientalist who was compiling an Urdu-English dictionary. It was from here that he came up with the idea of compiling this dictionary. In 1878, he set this dictionary project in motion in the form of a magazine called Armughan-e-Delhi. Later, as he earned the backing of the Nizam of Deccan, Mahbub Ali Khan, he titled the dictionary ‘Farhang-e-Asifia’ which was eponymous to the Nizam’s title, Asif. The dictionary is the very confluence of the nineteenth-century Ganga-Jamni civilization, and contains a very important collection of words related to the customs, costumes, poetry, literature and science, ornaments, edibles, etc. of that period.