Punjabi website attracts millions

By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: APNA, a Punjabi literary and arts website set up by a local group of Punjabi language, literature and music enthusiasts, claimed this week to have set a record of registering the largest number of “hits” of any comparable Indian or Pakistani website.

Safir Rammah, the founder and administrator of APNA, said that as of this month, the site had registered 2.74 million hits representing 165.4 gigabytes of traffic. The largest number of hits originated from the United States (1.06 million), followed by Canada (0.25 million), Australia (0.25 million), Spain (0.18 million), Great Britain (0.14 million), Pakistan (0.14 million), European Union (0.15 million) and India (0.11 million).

The APNA site offers access to the principal Punjabi mystic poets such as Bulleh Shah, Sultan Bahu, Shah Hussain, Khwaja Farid and Baba Farid as well as modern Punjabi poets including Shiv Kumar Batalvi and the little-read but highly-regarded poet, the late Zamurrad Malik. The site also offers access to every leading Punjabi folk and popular singer, including Madam Nur Jehan, Reshman, Tufail Niazi, Abida Parveen, Pathanay Khan, Hamid Ali Bela, Alam Lohar, Surinder Kaur, Prakash Kaur and many others.

The site can be accessed at www.apnaorg.com