Posts Tagged literature

Finally managed to reach Agra to attend the SAARC Literature festival organised by the inimitable Ajeet Caur. It is a lovely event with people from all over the region bemoaning what has happened to the region when it should be taking off.

The news from Pakistan are disturbing to say the least and the headlines here are not all that flattering. Alas, we are in a tight corner once again.

As part of my paper entitled Silhouetted Silences – contemporary Pakistani literature in the ‘age of terror’. While I am still refining my paper, here is an excerpt:

The current political and social milieu has created deep contradictions for the writers and the poets of contemporary Pakistan. If on the one hand they are bruised by the widespread violence and desecration of humanity, on the other they are equally aware of the public mood on the way imperial powers are playing another great game in their neighbourhood. This is what makes the task of the poets and writers extremely difficult.

I quoted this powerful poem called A Mourning poem for Bajaur by Pakistan’s eminent poet Kishwar Naheed here:

Coffins have become so numerous
That the city is shrinking

The eye is oozing
And not even a word of association
Like an open wound
On the lips.

The sky looks over everything
And remains silent.
Why does it go on believing
That mankind will awake once again
From its deep slumber
And laughter will ring again
On the threshold of houses.

No, it was not yesterday
But many years ago,
We held hope with our hands
We sat in the shadow of wide-awake walls
And used to think:
Yellow-gold wheat smiles and laughs
In our court-yards

We have the same court-yards, the same threshers
But bullets jump through them,
Riddle holes in my fields
and in the bodies of my children

With my tear-soaked pillow
I sit in the court-yard, watching

Coffins have become so numerous
That the city is shrinking.

Translated by Asif Farrukhi

More later….

Last night I stumbled upon this translation of Parveen Shakir’s poem (Navishta) rendered by C M Naim. This is where she addresses her only son on the perils of living with a famous mother. Parveen was extraordinary and her poems continue to cajole, haunt and address the readers.
“. . . then Zaid cursed Bakar, ‘Your mother
is more well known than your father!’ ”
My son,
this curse is your fate too.
In a fathers’ world you too, one day,
must pay a heavy price
for being known by your mother,
though your eyes’ color, your brow’s
expanse,
and all the curves your lips create
come from the man
who shared with me in your birth,
yet alone gives you significance
in the eyes of the law-givers.
But the tree that nurtured you three
seasons
must claim one season as its own,
to comb the stars, turn thoughts into
perfumes,
make poems leapfrog your ancestors’ walls . . .
a season that Mira couldn’t send away,
nor could Sappho.
Now it must be this family’s fate
that you should frequently feel abashed
before your playmates, and that your
father
must grin and bear it among his friends.
The name on the doorbell means
nothing;
the world knows you by one name
alone

This excellent post brought found here back so many memories – of my two memorable visits to the famed but neglected Haveli

Gali Qaasim Jaan was wrapped in fading darkness. A few tattered curtains hung listlessly on some doors. Pigeons flew overhead and some kids fought over marbles. Somewhere a goat tethered to a threshold, bleated timidly.This was Ballimaaran in the walled city of Delhi more than 150 years ago where one of the greatest masters of Urdu Poetry, Mirza Ghalib once lived.Mirza gave a whole new dimension to the world of Urdu Poetry, and has been hailed as one of the the true Masters. My desire to visit Mirza’s Haveli was soon going to be realized. Regardless of how well one knows the streets of Delhi, it is no joke to locate Gali Qasim Jaan where Mirza’s Haveli still stands.
It is a crying shame that what once was a two-storey Haveli has been reduced to barely a neglected remnant. Years of government indifference has led to severe misuse of the place.

Finally, the Archaeological Society of India took matters into its own hands and two ushers now look after the Haveli. Visiting hours are observed for tourists who long to feel the air, which still echoes with Mirza’s recitals. (more…)

Himal Magazine had published this article on the resistance poetry in Pakistan. I had uploaded it on the Pak Tea House some time back. However, I just realised that it should be published here as well..

The long spells of authoritarian rule in Pakistan have nurtured a rich dissident literary tradition. This tradition has its roots in the Progressive Writers’ Movement, which originated in colonial India with major Urdu poets and writers as its vanguards. Faiz Ahmed Faiz was, of course, the best-known torchbearer of this tradition, while other luminaries included Sajjad Zaheer, M D Taseer, Rashid Jahan, Kaifi Azmi, Ismat Chughtai, Sahir Ludhianvi and Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, to name only a few.

With the post-Independence Pakistani state continuing the old-style approach to ruling over the masses, the progressive movement too carried on its dissent long after 1947. Those who had migrated to Pakistan faced a new reality, which, in the words of Faiz, was far from the dawn for which they had hoped. “This blemished light, this dawn by night half-devoured,” Faiz wrote ruefully. “surely not the dawn for which we were waiting.” (more…)

Another translation of Faiz rendered by a Toronto based poet – Anis Zuberi. This is a timeless poem or nazm, aaj bazaar main pa ba jolan chalo has been translated and explained below. I am also posting a video that shows Faiz reciting the poem followed by a beautiful rendition by Nayyara Noor. (more…)

Sahir Ludhianvi’s immortal poem Taj Mahal has always fascinated me. It takes a most unconventional take at this beautiful monument where the poet protests at the choice of a romantic rendezvous.

Today, I found a lovely translation of this poem. I am reproducing it below – but first a few lines from Urdu:

Yeh chaman zar yeh jamna ka kinara yeh mahal
Yeh munaqqash dar-o-deevar yeh mehrab yeh taaq
Aik shahanshah nay daulat ka sahara lay ker
Hum ghareebon kee mohabbat ka uraya hai mazaaq

Taj Mahal

The Taj, mayhap, to you may seem, a mark of love supreme
You may hold this beauteous vale in great esteem;
Yet, my love, meet me hence at some other place!

How odd for the poor folk to frequent royal resorts;
‘Tis strange that the amorous souls should tread the regal paths
Trodden once by mighty kings and their proud consorts.
Behind the facade of love my dear, you had better seen,
The marks of imperial might that herein lie screen
You who take delight in tombs of kings deceased,
Should have seen the hutments dark where you and I did wean.
Countless men in this world must have loved and gone,
Who would say their loves weren’t truthful or strong?
But in the name of their loves, no memorial is raised
For they too, like you and me, belonged to the common throng.

These structures and sepulchres, these ramparts and forts,
These relics of the mighty dead are, in fact, no more
Than the cancerous tumours on the face of earth,
Fattened on our ancestor’s very blood and bones.
They too must have loved, my love, whose hands had made,
This marble monument, nicely chiselled and shaped
But their dear ones lived and died, unhonoured, unknown,
None burnt even a taper on their lowly graves.

This bank of Jamuna, this edifice, these groves and lawns,
These carved walls and doors, arches and alcoves,
An emperor on the strength of wealth, Has played with us a cruel joke.
Meet me hence, my love, at some other place.

Translation by K.C. Kanda, appeared in Masterpieces of Urdu Nazm published by Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd. – found here

The literati in India and Pakistan are grappling with the larger question of Qurratulain Hyder’s stature in Urdu, and some would say, World literature. The Daily Times, Pakistan has published an appropriately titled editorial, Quratulain Hyder, Urdu’s greatest novelist. This paragraph struck me:

…her view of culture was intensely pluralistic, explaining Muslim culture too in a transmigratory technique in her big novel Aag Ka Darya. The Pakistani public paid her a back-handed compliment by making her books bestsellers in Pakistan; but most of them were pirated, meaning that someone other than her got rich selling them. She was always a chronicler, a kind of Tolstoy in Urdu that our critics have ignored. When someone asked her in Bombay to write about the Iran-Iraq war she naturally began with the Arab conquest at Qadissiya.

Outlook India had to say this:

Only a few days back, to mark the 60 years of Independence, when we asked an eminent jury to pick out 60 Great Indians in 60 years of our Republic, the name of Qurratulain Hyder was introduced prominently as Urdu’s Marquez.”Through her novels and short stories, this prolific writer gave Urdu fiction a brave and endlessly inventive new voice,” we wrote, and quoted the London Times: “Her magnum opus, Aag Ka Darya (River of Fire), is to Urdu fiction what A Hundred Years of Solitude is to Hispanic literature

In C M Naim’s piece, published in the Outlook:

What counts, for her, is the human spirit and the relationships it generates and nurtures. That is where the linearity of time seems to curve into a spiral, urging us to recognize a past that never quite disappears…..What, then, is our choice as individuals? Here it may be worthwhile to recall the characteristically modest, even self-mocking, remarks that Hyder made in 1991 in her acceptance speech at the Jnanpith Award function: “My concern for civililzational values about which I continue writing may sound naive, wooly-headed and simplistic. But then, perhaps, I am like that little bird which foolishly puts up its claws, hoping that it will stop the sky from falling.“

and he concludes with this superb analysis:

…what Hyder tacitly offers us is nothing but that wise Candidean response: even in the best of all possible worlds, it is best not to neglect to tend our garden. Certainly, through the several thousand pages of her writings, she has shown herself to be an eloquent witness to that truth.

(photo left- Gauri Gill 2005) The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also expressed the sense of loss: “..In her unfortunate passing away the country especially Urdu literature has lost a towering literary figure. She will be truly missed in literary circles in the country.’

Read Jawed Naqvi’s piece in the DAWN; and reactions of various writers in the daily NEWS . Rediff has published an article entitled, She was one of a Kind. Javed Akhtar, the eminent Indian lyricist has paid this grand tribute and held that she was a true genius and rightly said that he felt sorry for those people who read fiction but had not read Hyder:

“When I say that it is a great loss, it’s not only to Urdu literature, not only to Indian literature, but to the word literature. I am not exaggerating at all.. the years to come, Haider’s novels will reach everywhere.”

“The kind of work she has done… its only because she was born in a third world country and wrote in a language that is not of the imperialistic powers, her novels have not reached everywhere. I am sure the time will come when they will reach..”.

The blogosphere is also remembering Ainee Apa with great respect. Desicritics published An Enigmatic Icon, Adnan wrote a lovely piece on Ainee Apa and her books entitled A legend passes away and 3 Quarks Daily also remembered her. Urdu India has a brilliant post here and another tribute can be found here. Pakistaniat carried my post – click here to see the comments. And the best was from Delhi Walla, who went to the Jamia graveyard and took some great photos.

This will continue given the sad traditions of our literature – the literary and civilizational merits of authors and poets have often been discovered after they left this world. Having said that Ainee had established herself given her powerful voice and unique style of writing. But her real stature as Javed Akhtar says is yet to be discovered.

About the photo (top left): Gauri Gill in the Outlook writes:

Qurratulain Hyder was first photographed by Prashant Panjiar in what was a coup of sorts, everyone talked of how elusive and difficult she could be. When I met her last week to persuade her, she said, ‘Tell the magazine I’m a difficult woman.’ I told her that was her reputation anyway. For the first time that afternoon she cracked a grin. She seemed flattered.

Last month, in the freezing climes of Islamabad, we talked about Parveen Shakir, Pakistan’s popular poet who died at a young age.

One of Parveen’s poems invokes the legend and metaphor of Dr Faustus:

‘The name ‘Faust’ has become deeply rooted in European mythology as the name of a man who sold his soul to the devil in return for eartly power and riches. The Faust legend has been embellished and retold in many formats …’

Source here

I found this skillful translation of her poem – We Are All Dr Faustus – by another noteworthy poet Alamgir Hashmi on this site.

We Are All Dr Faustus

In a way we are all
Dr Faustus.
One from his craze
and another helpless from blackmail
barters away his soul.
One mortgages his eyes
to trade in dreams
and another offers
his mind as collateral.
All that one may need sense
is the currency of the day.
So a survey of life’s Wall Street says
that among those with the buying power these days
self-respect is very popular.

The Urdu version was found with the translation

This is an appropriate commentary on what constitutes self-respect and the all-pervasiveness of Wall Street culture in our contemporary existence.

While responding to the comments on my ATP post on Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi , I rambled a little on the literary feuds among the Urdu stalwarts. However, this post has two parts: first, a little more on the literary cross currents; and second our collective treatment of literary and cultural giants.

As Adil Najam pointed out in his comment, Qasmi was criticized by those on the left as being right wing. Interestingly, the conservatives also criticized him for his outspoken views on the abuse of religion and Zia’s dictatorship.

But Qasmi remained a humanist till his last and never allowed ideology to taint his creativity. This aspect of his long literary career has been astutely analyzed by Sarwat Ali has rightly titled him Un-Progressively Progressive in his obituary published in the News on Sunday, and he aptly describes the Qasmi predicament:

When Pakistan was created the question of the identity of the new nation became the trickiest one to handle, especially in its cultural context. Muhammad Hasan Askari took the issue by the horns and called for a specific entity known as Pakistani literature. Of course, this prescriptive drive was not received well in the camp of the artists and writers. On the other extreme were those who did not see the need of manufacturing a specific identity but liked to see it grow and evolve with an evolving sensibility. This was taken as denial by the more hardline writers, and a war of words ensued which pushed the central issue into the background and brought forth the battle lines on ideological and political affiliations of the writers. (more…)

Why would a poet of Mustafa Zaidi’s stature decide to end his life?

Thirty five years ago, Mustafa Zaidi, a poet of notable standing and a dismissed CSP officer, was found dead in Karachi’s Hotel Sumar. The mystery of his death remains unresolved to date but there is an informal consensus that he committed suicide. He was only 40-years old and had produced several outstanding, original collections of poetry. He had also tasted and fallen victim to intimacy with the state. He was married to a woman of German descent and had two children; yet his final companion was not a member of his family but Shehnaz, the last love of his life. That October day in 1970, Shehnaz was found unconscious along with Mustafa Zaidi’s dead body. His last five poems were a series titled ‘Shehnaz’; and it is through these powerful poems that we know of the woman who was immortalised by Zaidi.

As is often the case, Zaidi started off writing in Allahabad under the pseudonym Tegh Illahbadi. His first volume was published when he was in his teens. He was a disciple of another maestro, Josh Malihabadi, and was well-known by the time he migrated to Pakistan after the partition of India. The later trajectory is also familiar: advanced studies in English literature, a brief period spent teaching and entering the civil service of Pakistan through the competitive examination. However, his poetic side thrived through the various phases and he was published regularly to mixed acclaim.
Inappropriate as it may sound, I have always been fascinated by Zaidi’s death, particularly by his apparent decision to end himself. Perhaps a sub-conscious death wish in me finds this such an alluring case. In real terms, Pakistan lost a fine civil servant and an unsung poet whose stature could be belittled only by a society as dysfunctional as ours. I have followed his path: in Dera Ghazi Khan, where he served as the sub-divisional magistrate; in the medieval resort of Fort Munroe, where he spent his summer, working away and composing verse; and all the places in the inimitable Murree hills. I have had a chance to stay in proximity of where he lived in Murree. For years, I have studied him in order to appreciate the intricacies of his inner universe. Would I be melodramatic in proclaiming that during this Zaidi trail, I have heard the echoes of his anguish, observed flashes of his infinite genius and traces of his apparent hedonism?

Wherever I have been, culturally endowed locals ascribe the following couplet to the houses in which he lived:

Traverse these stones, if you can, to reach me
The path to my house is not studded by a galaxy.

His last collection of verse, Koh-e-Nida (The beckoning mountain) contains a chilling chronicle of a death foretold. Koh-i-Nida is a splendid image borrowed from the Arabian tale of Hatim Tai, concerning a mountain that calls people in and consumes them. How very pertinent for a life such as Zaidi’s that was annihilated by its very intensity. Published in 1970, the book’s foreword is titled: ‘The last word’ and declares that this is the last collection of his verse. For a sensitive poet of Zaidi’s ability, giving up poetry was tantamount to giving up life. If I were to paraphrase the critical stream of consciousness from this piece, it would read as follows:

I shall not write anymore: I have lost the spirit of enquiry over the last few years and my surroundings and circumstances have killed my desire to augment knowledge. In a country where I am considered educated, most people I have come across are devoid even of my ignorance. The kind of poetry that will be appreciated here, I am unfit to write.
Recognition: Is essential for a poet’s soul and I have not achieved even a modicum of what I deserved. If for decades I have not been able to achieve that, why should I write more? I have often composed better verse than many poets whom the critics notice. I was shocked to see an anthology compiled by Wazir Agha that contained the names of lesser poets, but did not find a place for my name. I was heart-broken.

On being a misfit: In all circles, I am out of place. The civil servants consider me an object of entertainment in their drawing rooms and I suspect the poets find me useful. In my society where no ideology is accepted other than in its stultified vision, who am I to complain? Here, great minds such as Josh Malihabadi have been trampled by the state and society. What is the value of my anguish? Therefore, when society does not accept an individual and the individual refuses to conform to society, then composing verse is the most useless of activities. A poet has to be an organic part of the society, not a disconnected irrelevance.

And: In particular where the religious ideology of a country can easily kill you, what is the solution other than suicide, escape? If neither of these, keeping yourself prepared to be slaughtered by knives of the butchers.

Limited appreciation: Throughout the world, I have been taking photographs and the state has not even bothered to provide me with even a little physical space to continue my interests. I have a passion for flying and obtained my private pilot’s license after much ado. In a crash landing, I could not prevent a small aircraft that I was fond of like my children from being damaged. I am so traumatised by this event that even the flying club management cannot appreciate the depth of this sorrow.

Harassment: On April 24, 1969, when I was living in a bachelor’s hostel with my family, a subordinate brought thousands of rupees to me as a bribe. The following day, when I complained in writing to the chief secretary of the province, I was harassed for months and tortured to the extent that it was beyond the endurance of any normal human being. What was my fault? I had refused a bribe but my subordinate was enmeshed in the corridors of power and he ensured that my life was a living tale of misery.

Zaidi’s dramatic soliloquy is self-explanatory and a microcosm of the larger existential woe of Pakistani society. It encompasses the dying values of inquiry, creativity and integrity, and bemoans the limited space for individual passions and interests. Notably, it also mentions religious bigotry and the lack of space for individual liberties, even in the pre-Islamised Pakistan of late 60s. Small wonder, then, that Zaidi uttered forebodingly:

On whose hands shall I find stains of my blood
The whole city is gloved in anonymity.
Yahya Khan’s famous list of 303 summarily dismissed civil servants included the name of Mustafa Zaidi, who above all, suffered the biggest stigma of non-conformity. Zaidi was a wanderer, a bit of a philanderer and outspoken in his poetic expression. He never refrained from a candid assertion of sexual desire and experience, or from expressing his artistic contempt of all that surrounded him. As a classic misfit, he also had something in him reminiscent of Lord Byron, albeit in a different context.

‘Aesthetics is a fire not aware of its in-flammability’, said Zaidi, and continued to ignite the flames of his creativity until these consumed him. His poetry is diverse: from troubled relationships with women to a poetic critique on the unjust functioning of the United Nations; a dialogue with Polonius (from Shakespeare’s Hamlet ) and on the country of his choice Pakistan. In Musafir (Traveller), written before his death, he addresses his homeland after a long sojourn abroad:

There is nothing that I carry from my homeland
Merely a dream and the fortifications of a dream
Accept the gift of my soiled shirt
For its dirt carries the dust from the mosques
This apparel cannot be washed for it enfolds
The splashes of Biafra’s sacred blood
This is the soil from Vietnam and its grains contain
The radiant brows of the prophets.
(translation by author)
His troubled soul had predicted the pattern of emigration:
“I hope you may not end up desolate
Anarchy may not replace the law
Oh my country, so many of your citizens
Are left with no choice but migrate.

By late 1970, Shehnaz, his true declared love, was moving away from him. The five Shehnaz poems document in effect the evolution and climax of his passion, the decline and fall of their relationship and his underlying disappointment with life. The early Shehnaz poems profess:

She was not an artist herself, but shared my art
She shared the body in the journey of the spirit
Whose modesty had been revealed page by page
She accompanied me in every crease of the bed
In one way, I was a fire-worshipper
She experienced every angle of the garden.
And the last poem in the Shehnaz quintet complains:
The way you insist on separation now
Even my vows of love did not have such intensity
This new found comfort in our shared unfaithfulness
Eludes the heart’s life-blood and the blossoming colour of henna.
(translations by author)

Is it not a sorry tale of forgetfulness that no authoritative work has been produced on Zaidi and perhaps the first PhD on his works was undertaken abroad? He complained bitterly about Pakistan not acknowledging his worth. Have things changed in all these years? He has surely been printed and read much more after his death but has not gained the attention that his original and diverse poetry deserves. Zaidi had an almost romantic craving for recognition and never concealed it. It is tragic that his competence as a civil servant has been forgotten by ruthless power-mongers and his poetry has not been given its due by aficionados of Urdu literature. Even today, he remains on the wrong side of the literary establishment and his poetry has been reduced to the sexual explicitness of some of the poems. Zaidi was never a sentimental poet and he knew it. This is why he complained that he could not write the poetry defined as right by the critics. However, as Josh said at Zaidi’s memorial, he was the greatest poet of the future and aficionados can do little to undermine his creative genius.

Unfortunately, the reasons why Zaidi finished his existence remain valid even today; some would argue, in fact, that conditions have become worse. He yearned for artistic freedom, the actualisation of self-worth and esteem and he felt stifled. His fears of growing bigotry were not unfounded, as was witnessed in the decade after his death. Unlike many medieval and modern masters of Urdu poetry, Zaidi was politically active and international in his perspective. He felt that there was no place for him in Pakistani society perhaps we never do have any room for deviants!

Zaidi was punished for his dreams but they exist beyond him, continuing to haunt us yet often eluding our contemporary consciousness. We owe his tortured soul a lot; not the least of which is remembering why he decided to die.
Zaidi was starved for love and artistic freedom; and punished for his dreams. His dreams still fill our contemporary consciousness, reminding us each day of all that we have lost as a nation.

More comments here