Kashmir as Saffron

We’ve discussed in class how Agha Shahid views Kashmir as being a paradise on Earth. He ends the poem with Jehangir’s quote: “If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this.” This is not only to point to the beauty of Kashmir but also describe it as a place of home/rest or a final settlement, as it is preceded by Shahid saying: “on everyone’s lips was news of my death”.

He uses Saffron as symbol for Kashmir; saffron a spice which is derived by smashing flower petals. Agha Shahid thus talks about the present Kashmir as being something fragile and yet exquisite, with both Saffron and Kashmir as being built delicately but rare in their nature/appearance.

But another thing worth nothing in the poem is how he makes references to the commercialization of Kashmir’s assets, from the sale of saffron itself in “floating gardens of the Dal lake that can be towed”, the implication here being the boats that sail on the Dal lake. “Jhelum receded to their accounts” and that “blood censored…will be sold in black”, all reference those very losses incurred, “in interest” of certain capitalist ambitions.

Agha shahid thus talks about this painful present of Kashmir in which there are “boys…[who are] killed” and “men nailing tabloids to the fence of Grindlay’s Bank” as being a complicated place in which Kashmir struggles to retain its pureness and rareness of old as a consequence of a presence of an outsider – perhaps a state – whose objectives Kashmir is not natured to fulfill. 

(CP)

Class Spaces in Zinda Bhaag

                Zinda Bhaag presents an extremely localized account of an exilic experience, drawing boundaries for the exile which constitute his class. Outside of this space he appears to be uncomfortable in his interaction with the higher classes, even though in the act of offering up his labor, he takes the burden of easing the communication and relation possible between his class and the higher one.

The first instance in the film in which the exile comes in contact with a different class shows how adept these working-lower middle class characters are in capitalizing on opportunities that arise due to a close proximity with the upper class. In this scene, Tambi goes to the house of a rich urban woman who has problems with her internet. While she is outside, lying comfortable on her sofa and working on her laptop, Tambi enters her room. But before letting him in, she says: “shoes please if you don’t mind” to which he says: “its ok ma’am”. His prompt reply using her language speaks about the fact that these characters often visit such urban high class gentry and have learnt to communicate with them out of necessity. The necessity is perhaps to earn trust and cash in on certain opportunities. Inside her room, Tambi looks at all her pictures, is incredibly impressed by the tiling and the interior of the room, smells her perfume and puts it on as well. And then when he’s about to set her connection, he looks inside her wardrobe and steals a red dress, which he then hands to Khaldi so he can gift it to his girlfriend. When Khaldi expresses fear for his job because the dress was stolen, Tambi assures him and says: “Kuch nhin honda. Easy hoja easy. Kam az kam ik hazar dress hona hai odi almari ich. Onu pata we nhin lagna”. These exilic characters are aware of the social stratification. And their knowledge of the way the lifestyles of the higher classes work and the complete absence of it the other way around, leads them into certain favorable positions. But sometimes this close proximity can prove insulting as well.

I am speaking of the dinner scene in which Chitta and some other men are caterers serving the gentry when one of the rich men loses his cell phone during the dinner. He is, without reason, suspicious of the waitresses and the chefs, including Chitta, so he has them frisked. Turns out he was overreacting. The gentry resume their dinner as Chitta and company feel humiliated. This scene is particularly telling of the treatment these working men receive in an environment which is not their own. And their reaction to being searched for the phone shows that perhaps that they have been through such ordeals before too but have now internalized that anguish.

In their home in Samnabad, they drink, they gamble, and are at ease because the place and people in it are familiar. The directors do a good job of localizing their comfort into one setting, drawing the language of the characters from local references. But despite this ease, life is far from satisfying within Samnabad because its comfort promises no fruitful prospect for the future. If they leave this space to earn a living and rise socially, they come in clash with a class that does not understand their interests and references and is not conscious of their desires. Their knowledge of this higher class and close proximity with it leads to mixed results, and thus is not enough for these exilic characters to sustain themselves. Hence, the desire to escape these demarcations altogether and emigrate. 

(CP)

Religion and Zinda Bhaag

                There are two crucial scenes in Zinda Bhaag that point to the absence of exile’s association with religion. There’s a minor reference to this in the funeral scene during climax when Chitta’s dead body comes back. Khaldi, who at this point is utterly desperate to leave the country, approaches Chitta’s father and asks him for his passport. It appears somewhat selfish, even though we already see Khaldi sob over the death of his close friend. But the desperate times he is in necessitate such painstaking decisions which Khaldi has to take. And hence he comes off as being irreverent of a religious tradition of a Muslim community which sits together and mourns the death of a person for days on end.

                But there’s also not a lot of understanding of religious ceremonies on the part of the exile during lighter moments. In another scene early on in the film (which was missing in the version we saw in class), Khaldi and his friends go to a bungalow to fix an air conditioner. At the same time a dars takes place at the house which a ceremony delivered by Islamic scholars on traditions and rituals of Islam. Such meetings are usually attended by women belonging to privileged backgrounds who are not exactly working and can afford to spend time discoursing in such activities within social spaces where they meet people from the same social statuses.

Khaldi and his friends are alien to this setting. To them such religious activities are pastimes that the rich afford and amount to mere abstract discussions. The woman leading the meeting says:  “remember, sisters, we have to think in terms of horizontal and vertical.” And then she asks the guests to respond to her when she says: “So, sisters, the horizontal is us, and the vertical is…?” to which the women reply together: “Allah”. Khaldi and his friend (Tambi), through a facial expression shared between each other, show a complete lack of understanding of this interaction between the speaker and the attendants, not understanding one bit, what the women were implying. This lack of affiliation with the dominant religious engagement ties with the film’s overall objective of portraying these exilic figures as being dissociated from the national discourse.

(CP)

Zinda Bhaag-Rida Baqai

This poem aims to encapsulate the mindset of an individual who deems exile inevitable because his nation has failed him. It sheds light on why people take the exilic path especially from countries like Pakistan.
                                                                      زندہ بھاگ        
                                                   اس رات میں عجیب سی بےچینی ہے
                                                  اس رات میں عجیب سی خاموشی  ہے
                                            منزل کے اتنے قریب اور دل اتنا بھوجل
                                                         جانتا نہیں کیا ہوگا کل
                                            سوچتا ہوں کہ ہوجاےینگے سارے مسلے حل
                                               پوھنچ جاؤں گا جب یہ دن جائے ڈھل
                                                           اب روکنے کی وجہ کیا؟
                                                           جب دل ہی ہوگیا سیاہ
                                                   نہ ہے بجلی،نہ پانی، نہ سکوں
                                                     بس پٹھتے بم ،لاشیں اور خون
                                                  اس سے پہلے کہ کفن کہ پیسے بھی لوٹ جاییں
                                          کیوں نہ ایک نیئں دنیا میں گم ہوجاییں؟
                                                         لگنے دو ہم پر بھی گدار کا داگ
                                              .بس یہاں سے زندہ بھاگ، زندہ بھاگ 

Zinda Bhaag
Iss raat mein ajeeb si bechaini hai,
Is raat mein ajeeb si khamoshi hai,
Manzil ke itnay qareeb aur dil itna bhojal
Jaanta naheen kia hoga kal.
Sochta hoon keh hojayeinge saarey masley hul,
Pohanch jaaon ga, jab din jaye dhal.
Ab rukne ki wajah kia?
Jab mulk se dil hi hogaya siyah
Na bijli ,na paani,na sukoon,
Bus phattay bum,lashein or khoon
Is se pehle keh kufn ke paisey bhi lut jayein,
Aik nayee dunya mein kyun na gum jayein?
lagne do hum per bhi gadaar ka daag,
bus yahan se zinda bhaag, zinda bhaag.

Silence and Words in Agha Shahid Ali's "The Country Without a Post Office

In Agha Shahid Ali's poetry, words have very little meaning for the figure in exile primarily because the voices of the exiles are isolated from the rest of the world. “The Country Without a Post Office” depicts the strife of an exiled man who fails to communicate with anyone. Human contact is rendered impossible because letters cannot be delivered or received in a country where stamps have “no nation named on them”. Moreover, man is also unable to communicate with God because: “When the Muezzin died, the city was robbed of every Call” and the “Calls to prayer” fall to “deaf worlds across continents”. It is interesting to note, however, that the narrator does seem to be talking to someone in the poem. At a cursory reading one could assume that this particular aspect contradicts the essence and meaning of the poem. However, a closer look at the conversation reveals that the interaction holds little meaning. For one thing, it is extremely fragmented. It is also extremely difficult to gauge the number of people the narrator seems to be quoting.

When words fail to have meaning and when they do not facilitate communication, the language of exile is silence.

"I must force silence to be a mirror

to see his voice again for directions"

Silence acquires new meaning and allows the 'exiled' to re-evaluate communication. The idea that silence needs to be a “mirror” suggests that the person in exile needs to reflect in order to save or reinstate communication. Silence gives him another chance to interact.

"Only silence can now trace my letters"

Words have died completely because the letters are referred to as a “shrine of words”. This is particularly interesting because a shrine is constructed in remembrance of something or someone and is visited often. Therefore, the letters have become a medium of remembrance instead of a medium of communication. This is evident from the fact that the narrator reads and revisits the letters.  

“I read them, letters of love, the mad ones,

and mine to him from whom no answers came.”

the failure of the particularity of the exilic experience in "Seasons Of Migration to The North" (CP blog)

“and in the journey from the cradle to the grave they dream dreams some of which come true and some of which are frustrated”

This particular quote highlights the narrators attempt to emphasize the problematic distinction between the 'European' and the 'Oriental' figures, yet it presents only a part of the idea of what this similarity implies and where it stems from. “Seasons of Migration to The North” is a novel that proposes a reversal to the oriental discourse, and by presenting a protagonist like Mustafa Sa’eed, on the surface Salih takes the reader into the mind of a man who’s sole purpose in life is becoming one with the ‘North’. But perhaps by presenting such a reversal, and showing the perspective of the oriental male who spends his life “conquering” women, Salih is actually turning the reader’s attention to the fact that the impossibility of the friendship between colonizer and colonized is not so much a reality because their differences cannot be overcome, but is more the consequence of similarity between them that exists in the wake of a post colonial world as a result of the colonial experience.

In fact the post colonial narrative can be seen to represent the disfunctionality of the relationship that did exist before the colonizer had left, the effects of which are deeply entrenched not only into the life of the oriental (Mustafa Sa’eed) who is on a journey to find his identity in the north, but is also apparent in the colonial figure, embodied by the women who are constantly pulled towards the oriental man in an attempt to identify themselves. In essence the post colonial narrative gives birth to two self destructive figures who will continuously be pulled towards each other because their experiences are not as different as they have been thought to be. And in trying to create such a relationship both are fated to die, the women committing suicide and mustafa sa’eed drowning in the Nile. Hence the text introduces a new perspective, where the exilic state is not the consequence of a lost identity but of the muddle created by a multiplicity of identities that are impossible to separate. The exilic figure is constantly seen tying himself to a history, but Salih is able to show that when histories become intertwined and the colonizer and colonised can no longer separate themselves on the bases of a history then the exilic state is no longer the experience of an individual, or that of a particular group of people, but the experience of a particular era that transcends geography. 

"I’m trying to breathe my share of air" (missed blog)

This particular dialogue stood out to me as one that epitomizes Kanafani’s message in his novel “men in the sun”, which is that of an individual struggling to create a place for himself in a land both physically and to some extent spiritually, and in essence looking for some sort of space where he can “breathe” and moreover live. And it is through the course of the novel that we see that there is no place for the three men, that in fact the air for them runs out, and their death then symbolizes a physical embodiment of their mental state, which is utterly displaced and fighting a battle to gain some semblance of a meaningful existence.

Furthermore the words indicate an almost selfish struggle for one’s own existence and apathy towards the other yet all the partaking in a moral struggle to appear more human and justify the decisions each of them have made. We see this clearly represented in Assad’s intention of escaping his engagement and Abu khaizuran drinking the water while the rest watch him. In contrast we see that a relationship does form between the men however this relationship cannot survive because it is neither true nor possible in the exilic figures life. Hence even the journey itself can be seen as an attempt on their part to find air to breathe, and in essence create a life for themselves in a place that although may be alien might be kinder to them then what they have been facing. Finally the phrase is a representation of abu qais’s helplessness where all he can do as he lies between what he has left behind and what lies ahead is breathe his share of air, and hence this symbolizes the lack of control each of them have on their lives, where on one hand abu khaizuran is unable to come to terms with his castration and Marwan struggles to fill his fathers shoes at a point in his life where he cannot even fill his own. 

The troubles of Translation in Agha Shahid Ali (missed blog)

Agha Shahid Ali’s poetry is rife with references to his contemporaries (poets, authors, intellectuals) who share, in some respect or the other, his experience of exile. In a ghazal (pg 73), Ali cites Mehmoud Darvesh “From exile, Mahmoud Darvesh writes to the world”. In another instance, he dedicates a ghazal entirely to Edward Said (“By Exiles”) and finally, he translates many of Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s poetry.

Ali’s translation of Rang Hai Dil ka Mere gives a lot of insight into his own poetic inclinations and interests. After comparing about five different translations, I realized that Agha Shahid Ali gives preference to a particular interpretation over others- one line that struck was “shab-e-taar ka rang” that Francis Pritchett translated as “the color of black night”, Shiv Kumar translated as “sable night”, Naomi Lazard as “lacquered the night black” and Agha Shahid Ali, interestingly, translated as “the black when you cover the earth with the coal of dead fires”. The choice of the words coal of dead fires is an independent insertion into the poem which has a transformative effect on both the mood and the meaning. The trope of coal and ashes (dead fire) appears again and again in Ali’s poetry. The imagery is of death and destruction as a consequence of war.

Ali’s translations are tinged with his own politics. Of course that goes for all people involved in translation projects, however I find that his particular selection of Faiz's poetry and their renditions throws light upon his own poetic agenda. Consider, for example, the poem "City of Lights"/ Roshniyon ka sheher. "desolation everywhere, /the poison of exile painted on the walls. /In the distance, /there are terrible sorrows, like tides"
Another poem he translated is titled "Evening"/shaam "the sky is a priest,/saffron marks on his forehead,/ ashes smeared on his body. Indeed, there is a particular motivation behind the selection of Faiz's poems, and their translations even more telling of the politics of translation

Replacements for Shiraz in Zinda Bhaag

If in Basti the place where the youth would meet, interact and share ideas is Shiraz the café, there is no strict or rigid structure present for the youth in the movie Zinda Bhaag. This could be attributed to the difference in classes of the group of men. In the 1971 moment, there is no really elite setting where Zakir and his friends can go and so they find solace in the mediocre setting of Shiraz, its friendly and amicable attendant and its tea.

In Zinda Bhaag, Khaldi and friends or the members of his community cannot have the privilege of visiting a place like the Imperial Punjab College. As members of the lower class, they do not have that luxury to them. For them places for social gatherings include the small pool club where they can play or the small shop or café where they can collectively enjoy the horse races. Yet these places are not only for leisure and entertainment but have a greater function. They are places where the youth are always reminded of their economic condition, the various legal or illegal possibilities they have for getting out of that situation and finally become the space where unlawful transactions take place. In both the shop and the pool club, we see Khaldi lost in deep thought; in the first instance he chooses to bet on a horse and its chances of winning the race while in the second instance, Khaldi decides on gambling money by playing cards. These locations then become a thinking space for the protagonist as he weighs the pros and cons of stepping into a risky situation.

The shop or café takes becomes even more significant when Khaldi starts betting and gambling there. He initially wins, raising his hopes for further successive wins. But eventually he fails and loses a great degree of money. It is not just a place for leisure but for transactions and dealings which cause a huge loss for Khaldi. Moreover, the events that take place in this space have an adverse effect on his friendship with Taambi as he ridicules him. Thus the café is not a conducive space for these young members of the lower class society. It robs them of any possibility of enjoyment and friendship. Here, this space can be compared to the café Shiraz as both places reveal to us that the youth has failed to do anything productive for themselves or for their country. They are not places that grooms and nurtures them but highlight their state of exile in the country.

Zinda Bhaag - A Vicious Cycle of Exile

We discussed in class the possibility of an exilic experience within the confines of ones' own national territory. Zinda Bhaagexemplifies this particular scenario where three young Pakistani men face a terrible situation in their own-homeland and they are left with no option but to 'Zinda Bhaag' from Pakistan through illegitimate and tortuous 'dunkis'.

The interesting thing about this exile within your own country is its' cyclic and continuous character. In Zindabhaag, the national borders become troublesome as they can be seen as a hurdle that the three young men have to cross in their efforts to escape Pakistan- a land with no possibilities and severe marginalization of the middle-class. Obviously however, these borders are not easy to cross and demand risking your own life creating a 'no-way-out' situation. This has been one of the recurrent themes in the movie, where it starts on a melancholy note where a corpse reaches Pakistan and ends on a similar note when another Pakistani guy dies due to suffocation on his risky route to Europe. So this exile works in a peculiar way. First the, middle-class experiences exile at the hands of the wealthy elite and a skewed society which continues to marginalize them through its condescending ways leaving no possibility of a dignified life. As a reaction   when the marginalized try to escape this brutality through quitting this space altogether, even that fails as only misery awaits them outside. This has been highlighted by the stories of Khaldi, Taambi and Chitta. Taambi goes to Germany and gets jailed for two years and back home his father disowns him altogether on account of maintaining no contact with the family. Taambi could not possibly call back home as that would mean informing his family about his horrible situation.  Similarly, Khaldi faces a continuous exile as well where on one hand he is under immense pressure from his mother who keeps demanding money out of him to support the family expenses (amidst growing inflation)  and outside, he continuously dwindles in the 'gambling business' to meet these requirements - it reaches a point where he worsens both his ties with his closed ones (Rubina break up) and his success rate in the derby gamble too. Even chitta faces a similar dilemma, working under Pehlvaan he continues to be enslaved and lives a pathetic life of a sub-ordinate bookie and even when he tries to abandon it - the powerful Pehlvan threatens him with severe consequences.

I think this 'no-way-out' scenario amplifies the atrocious exilic experience. - It focuses on the idea that during exile even 'alternative options' that are normally assumed to work; fail miserably, reinforcing the exile on the subject turning into a vicious cyclic experience. 

Agha Shahid Ali: Farewell (CP Blog)

Agha Shahid Ali’s lamentation of his lost Kashmir is scattered throughout his poetry, yet the emphasis on the sense desolation is evident from techniques such as the constant juxtaposition of contrary statements in the poem “Farewell". The poem is replete with images of implacable bitter mourning and a continuously deepening sense of loss, and the tone employed by the poet itself is deeply pain-stricken “They make a desolation and call it peace”; perhaps Shahid’s resentment is also towards the perpetrators of Kashmir’s destruction, and the lack of response internationally because the “desolation” has been so carefully guised as “peace”, a truth only he as a citizen could have understood. Moreover, this lack of action further alleviates the pain of the “defenseless” who had “no weapons”. Shahid’s wistfulness is perhaps most evident in his poem’s conclusion “If only you could have been mine, what could not have been possible in the world?”; this powerful ending magnifies the loss to almost metaphysical dimensions, because there is a loss of possibility itself, of a different end, had the means of retaining his own nation been possible. Thus the conclusion represents more than just the unbearable pain of loss and estrangement, rather, it symbolizes an unattainable fate. Although the poem is most popularly assumed to be a letter from a Kashmiri Muslim to a Kashmiri Pandit, it epitomizes the larger loss of Kashmir, and the exiles sense of betrayal to a country he could not help save. The suffering of the Kashmiri people is made evident through the children running out with “windows in their arms”. The poem discusses the loss of relationships and culture that were an intrinsic part of the land:

"I'm everything you lost - You won't forgive me. 
My memory keeps getting in the way of your history - 
There is nothing to forgive. 
You won't forgive me.” 

His words then become part of the greater trajectory of the loss of Kashmir itself. The constant referral to non-forgiveness demonstrates a deep sense of guilt on part of the poet/exile. The reference to memory also serves a purpose, Shahid swerves between “My memory is in the way of your history” and “Your history gets in the way of my memory”, demonstrating that history itself played a role in shaping the collective memory of all the sufferers of Kashmir’s fate. Shahid’s depiction of religion with the “arms of temples and mosques are locked in each other’s reflections” in the lake demonstrates his desire for the elimination of religious rivalry, an element that has also played a role in the tearing apart of his beloved homeland, and an emphasis on the possibility of peace between two opposing religions that he grew up amidst. Moreover, the poem also points towards the inadequacy of religion to purport peace; the “Gates of Paradise” themselves are left unguarded. The imagery of the paddle further again reiterates his loss, a loss and pain that is so deep that the poet feels as if he is “being rowed through Paradise on a river of Hell”.

The amalgamation of worlds in Agha Shahid Ali's work (CP blog post)

Agha Shahid Ali's use and manipulation of form in his work, is one of the elements of his writing that gained him world wide acclaim and thus is worth delving into. By combining European form with content that is heavily laden with references to his Kashmiri and Indian background, Ali’s poetry itself becomes a metaphor for the cultural amalgamation of the immigrant. It also serves the integral function of propagating and accentuating the exilic condition that is resonant in his work; the weeping for a lost homeland that provides the thematic skeleton for his entire manoeuvre. 

Another mechanism Agha Shahid Ali employed to amalgamate different cultures and worlds into his work - was the combination of the disjunctive couplets of the urdu ghazal with the language of European and American culture to create something new and exciting. This composite tradition makes the ghazal’s themes of love, exile and loss particularly resonant. Furthermore, his efforts to popularize the ghazal form in the English language can be seen as an act of cultural appropriation and resistance literature in a sense. 

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His hyphenated identity, transgeographical background as a Kashmiri-(Indian)-American who was born in Delhi, raised in Srinagar and exiled to America for most of his life, and the multiplicity of his beliefs enabled him to look at Kashmir from a contrapuntal perspective - broader than the local geopolitics of South Asia. He achieves this by drawing comparisons with conflicts elsewhere in the world — Bosnia, Chechnya, and Palestine — in an approach that is humanist, but also alert to the sufferings of Muslim peoples in recent history. Good examples of the English ghazal, in which he straddles two traditions seamlessly and approaches a hybrid, in-between territory can be observed in the follwoing ghazals. 

   By the Hudson lies Kashmir, brought from Palestine--
   It shawls the piano, Bach beguiled by exiles. (28

Hagar, in shards, reflects her shattered Ishmael.
   Call her the desert Muslim--or Jew--of water. (46)

Imaginary Homelands (missed blog)

Our memories it seems are contaminated, but what is it that contaminates them? Is it perhaps the lack of an identity or the presence of this inescapable desire to cling on to many identities that only deepens our confusion? Rushdie explores the dilemma of an Indian writer who must rebuild India in his mind yet must always do this as an outsider. He believes it is distance from the homeland, and the disconnects in our memories and unspoken tales that causes them to create an “imaginary homeland”, one that can only exist in the narratives and have little room to leave the pages that bind them.

Yet it is perhaps not just the circumstances that separate one person from an another, or the writer from his homeland, but the fact that we try so hard to separate ourselves on our own accord, to believe that experiences of displacement cannot be understood or experienced by the other that leads to the reality of alienation, and moreover isolation. It is maybe the fact that we purposefully muddle and contaminate our memories to fill the gaps that leaves us baffled about our past or is it that we are responsible for creating these gaps because we are not satisfied with the past that our memory connects us to. Just as the colonizer idealizes the oriental space and all that it could possibly encompass, the exile too creates an idyllic version of a homeland one that must include a violent history and tragic experiences.

Perhaps a mistake on Rushdie’s part is to believe that Indian writers in a foreign world are alone in experiencing uncertainty when it comes to their past and feeling of alienation due to their physical separation from the land. Yet we see in both colonial and post colonial narratives such as “A Passage to India” and “Men in the Sun” that the land will reject those who may be ‘living at home’. This is because the state of the exilic figure is such, that it is beyond just a physical manifestation of exile but perhaps is more effective as a state of mind and has a spiritual paradigm that is perhaps much stronger. As represented in his own work as well the exoticism and muddled uncertainty that surrounds the mere idea of India thrust the ‘Indian’ towards creating an imaginary homeland and his very own “version” of India. 

Aurora as a symbol of resistance (missed blog)

Aurora perhaps epitomizes Rushdie’s own convictions, his imagination and finally a vision that is manifested in a number of ways; in acts of defiance, in fantasies, in perversity and finally in her paintings. Art unlike any other paradigm is one which goes beyond temporal and spatial constructions; it is in a sense universal in its message and purpose. It is hence fitting that Aurora must use art as her medium of expressing her loss, hope,  a violent resistance and her sheer inability to bend to the will of any who wish to contain her.

Her rejection of realism and embodiment of a surrealist approach to her paintings is not only a representation of her voracious imagination but is emblematic of Rushdie’s ideas about the world, the role he plays as an interpreter of history and his uncertainty about the reality of reality. Aurora seems to peel away the layers of reality to bring attention to what may not be visible yet is just as real, and emphasizes the inversion placed on reality itself where fantasy and the imagination might be more realistic then anything we come across in the world that has been muddled with deception, politics, the fragility of nationalistic thought and what it entails. It may also be a representation of the events that took place in India during the resistance and the uncertainty that surrounded them. We see a physical embodiment of these ideas in her mocking dance “speaking incomprehensible volumes with her hands, the great painter danced her defiance, she danced her contempt for the perversity of humankind”.

While one side of her character seems to embody the writer’s views, Rushdie does develop her character as separate from the rest and from his own, one troubled by a failed motherhood, by pain and by loss. Just as her father Cameons' notices when she first introduces him to her work that despite all the meaning and history that seemed to be embedded in her paintings in essence “Aurora’s art was the simple tragedy of her loss”. Similarly it seems as though she attempts to fill the void of her own failures and incompetence by creating alternate realities in her painting and more than that, by creating possibilities in her work, which is what she seems to do with her “Moor paintings”. Hence Aurora becomes a symbol of resistance for the larger narrative of mother India (whether it in essence will remain) and of the political movement. At the same time she shows resistance at a more individual level “so that her own disappointment with reality, her anger at its wrongness, mirrored her subjects”.

Politics and Violence in Rushdie's Protagonist

Rushdie uses his protagonist in a political context to critique elements of post-colonial India that he found distasteful. The violence Moraes undertakes under the command of Mainduck becomes symbolic of Rushdie’s pessimism regarding the fundamentalism he believed had seeped into India. Indeed, the Moor becomes more than just a political symbol; his “mongrel” (172) status by birth shuns him from the normal socio-political life of the educated elite he belonged to i.e. “he did not belong amongst these thoroughbreds” (240), and Rushdie emphasizes that the city of Bombay too, like Moraes, “had expanded without time for proper planning” (161), thereby critiquing the deterioration of Bombay with the exit of the colonials. To further emphasize this point, Rushdie’s protagonist, after suffering a terrible first encounter in a Bombay Jail laments how the “post-Independence made-in-India institution” went beyond one’s “worst imaginings” (287).

Rushdie’s purpose in elaborating the detailed suffering and filth of the Moor’s jail experience is to prepare the reader for the violent life Moraes later takes us, which becomes a culmination of all his suffering and repentance of sorts, a fate he embraces “unhesitating” (295). In fact, the “simplicity” and “straightforwardness” (305) of the brutal work designated by “little Hitler” (297) gives him an almost strange peace, a peace absent from his previously confusing and dilemma-stricken existence. Indeed, his “true self” has been forever hidden in his “deformed limb” (295). Rushdie’s work contains many political overtones, but his critique is more than just one on extremist leaders like Mainduck, rather it is almost a lament of the Nations lost ideals, an inability to stop the “national tragedy” that was occurring on a “grand scale” (352), in a country which he believes “engineered” its own demise (372), eliminating the hope of peace the exit of the British had signaled, and with the Moor becoming symbolic of this fragmentation and violence.

Agha Shahid Ali’s Kashmir

* late submission 

In our class we closely analyzed the rhetorical practice of repetition employed by the author- either used to emphasize a particular word or phrase or to elicit a particular meaning.  In the case of Agha Shahid Ali’s poem, ‘The Blessed Word’ he employs the rhetorical device of Diacope- the uninterrupted repetition of a word to proclaim his homeland, Kashmir. However, here it is critical to note that Kashmir takes various pronouncements, each differing from the one before it.  What purpose do these multiple renditions serve? 

One conclusion, based on our class discussion, is that the multiple names render the place almost meaningless. This interpretation has merit given that this evocation emerges directly out of the dark black velvet void of Mandelstam -“Let me cry in that void, say as I can. Write on that void: Kashmir…Kerseymere?”This intertextuality of juxtaposing Mandelstam’s experience in the Soviet Union with that of Ali’s experience in Kashmir places hope in an unrealistic category and the possibility of a homeland for the exilic figure an inaccessible reality.

However, in my opinion there is another interpretation that renders this multiple evocation of Kashmir significant. In the words of Salman Rushdie, in the case of Indian writers who write from outside of India (about India), “…our physical alienation from India almost inevitable means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely that thing that was lost; that will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind”.

The same follows for Ali, he says, “”He reinvents Petersburg (I, Srinagar),  an imaginary homeland, filling it , closing it, shutting himself (myself) in it”. It is both the impossibility of reclamation and of total recall which makes leads to multiple versions of Kashmir by Ali. Ali’s Kashmir is an imaginary homeland, one to which he has given various names, signaling the multiple reasons for his place attachment with Kashmir.  But like Rushdie’s India, Ali’s Kashmir can only be one to which he belonged. Perhaps then, the question mark at the end of the various names of Kashmir lends this interpretation credit. In this context the multiple names reinforce the idea of place as meaningless- because without deciphering the Kashmir to which he inevitably belonged to the possibility of return is impossible.

Moin Ahmed

A poem on "Farewell"

This is my response to the poem “Farewell” by Agha Shahid Ali. I have emphasized something we have discussed at length during the course, which is a banality that exists for the character in exile.

Battling forever the raging sea

O you lost in the waves, Breathe!

Dwell no longer on questions moot

Embrace life, its ashes, its filthy soot!

Angels forever sing in a melodious choir

Have you ever felt the pain of dreadful ire?

Only a slave is doomed to forever exist

Perhaps someday he will fight with his fist!

Alas that I am lost among men!

Falling into an abyss, does this ever end?

It rained a fortnight on the infernal land

Yet the tree I love still solitary stands

I took a bow on the stage of life

Yet the silence? Ah that there were a knife!

Would I not have plunged the dagger in my throat?

No longer would my voice in a vacuum float

Yet this play will perhaps forever go on

I will continue to sing, and place this crown

Upon my own head, and clap without sound

Till the tree solitary I love still stands on

I See Kashmir poem...

Agha Shahid Ali's poetry frequently deals with the dichotomy between history and memory, and the need to counter a false history by elevating one's own memory and the collective memories of a place.
In the "I See Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight" poem, the subtitle affixed is from W. B. Yeats' poem "Easter 1916": Now and in time to be,/ Whenever green is worn, ... A terrble beauty is born. Yeats poem dealt with the Easter Uprising in Ireland against Britain in 1916, and the deaths of the movement's revolutionary figures at the hands of the British. Although Yeats' poem starts with a dismissive attitude towards the movement and its proponents, the execution of its leaders was as much a shock to Yeats as it was to the ordinary Irish people. The oxymoron "terrible beauty" can refer to the unintended effects of the execution which spurred further nationalist sentiment in Ireland rather than dissipating it or all the needless death that occurred during this uprising, which was terrible yet beautiful because it opened the eyes of Ireland. However, Ali's selection of these last lines of the poem refers to not only the green colour symbolizing the nationalist movement, but how these revolutionaries may be dead and buried under the green grass, but they will live on forever in Yeats' words.
Thus Ali's poetry can be presented as an attempt by the poet to rewrite history, or the official reading of history which "In your absence you polished me into the Enemy./Your history gets in the way of my memory" ("Farewell" 22), subject as it is to suppression in "news, the blood censored,/for the Saffron Sun and the Times of Rain" ("The Last Saffron" 27). More explicitly, Ali expounds on this conundrum in "A Footnote to History", emphasizing the urgency of the situation as "their words reach/ the shoe, demanding/ I memorize their/ ancient and recent/ journeys in/ caravans ambushed by/ forests on fire" (70). But relating this Yeats extract to the poem he chose to suffix this to, the green can be a reference to the thread he tied at Shah Hamdan, a tradition customary for both Hindus and Muslims who would visit the Sufi shrines. A rooted, ethnic and local tradition, it underpins the melancholy of his memories, colored as they are of the terrible beauty that ravaged Srinagar and severed his bond with Rizwan.

Desolation in Kashmir

The poem, “Farewell” by Agha Shahid Ali depicts the various destructions and losses experienced by Kashmir due to its history. It is a reminder of the turmoil, a call for people to imagine the better life that could have existed if it weren’t for the war. Agha Shahid Ali specifically notes the religious nature of the struggle in the sentence:

                “In the lake the arms of temples and mosques are locked in each other’s reflections.”

In constructs such as this one where multiple references are made not only to the cause but also the resulting destructive effect on the natural beauty. Kashmir is renowned for its forests, vast gardens, lakes and other forms of natural life. The repetitive use of terms such as “desolation” and “desert” bring descriptive imagery for the reader. Desolation is defined as a state of complete emptiness or destruction. It’s the feeling of loneliness one experiences where great destructive forces destroy all other forms of life. This poem is reflective of the “A country without a post office” where there is an experience of mass loss in communication with other beings. This is generic exile. A state brought on by the very defenders of the land according to Agha Shahid Ali. He makes the reference in Farewell:

                “They make a desolation and call it peace. Who is the guardian tonight of the Gates of Paradise”

He is referring to the very paradise which has now been destroyed and goes on to make references to a desert.  A desert, as can also be referred to the story “Men in the Sun” is known as a place of exile. War has turned Kashmir to a place of desolation, a desert. A place where Army Convoys are like desert caravans. “Farewell” is touching poetry, which reminds the readers of the destruction and the exilic state brought onto the populace of Kashmir due to War.

Basti

Make up blog

The novel Basti does not give much in terms of the description of geographical spaces, sketching them out only in minimal strokes. Zakir’s house in Lahore, the streets he roams, are not clearly defined and thus the associations they raise are as a space for the elderly to discuss issues and a place for Zakir to delve into his memories and compare them to his idyllic past.

An exception to this is the Café Shiraz, which Zakir and his friends frequently visit and is the novel gives a very clear description of it. Here we see the crowd, Zakir and his friends at their most energetic and the most vocal and active then at any other place. It is a place full of opinion and jazbaat, and the instances in Shiraz are the only ones which break the rather passive tone of the novel.

The Café is also important because unlike other spaces, such as the domestic household dominated by their fathers, it becomes a place dominated by the youth and is a place that they can own. Zakir and his friends experience a sense of comfort, of political agency as they discuss the happenings in their lives. The café is also a place where even Zakir feels more active, and his passive “pata nahin” turns into more vocal admissions of “Iss shikast ka zimaidaar mein hoon.” This is not only important because it signifies Zakir taking a more proactive role in the conversation but also because the conversation deals not with the past (as Zakir is prone to doing) but of present happenings in the country.

The Writer in Exile: As Seen Through "The Blessed Word: A Prologue"

We discussed in class a particular trait of a writer in exile: that he/she is a figure longing for home and in that desire he/she attempts to beautify that home. Agha Shahid Ali, in "The Blessed World: A Prologue" does precisely that: he empowers his homeland with a mythological aspect. He starts off by listing the different names through which one can refer to his homeland: "Kashmir, Kaschmir, Cashmere, ... Kerseymere?" This puts forward his homeland as an entity the true essence of which cannot be captured by the materialistic constructs one tries to describe things by: precisely this enhances that certain mythological aspect which Agha Shahid Ali is trying to empower his homeland with.

His narrative of the tragedy of Habba Khatun, a historical figure, furthers that aspect of mythology attached to the homeland. It also serves another purpose. Given the tragedies that existed in Kashmir at the time when he was writing this poem, the narrative of the tragedy of Habba Khatun serves to establish a smooth continuum between a historical tragedy and the ones that exist now. Precisely this can be viewed as an effort on the part of the exiled Agha Shahid Ali to view his tragedy as a continuation of a historical tragedy: something which can be easier to do considering that he has mythological-y empowered his lost home. In short, the narrative of Habba Khatun provides him with a lens through which he can view his own pain.

And this, even if it fails to provide hope for a solution, does bring solace to the exile because he/she knows that his/her home, even if it is being deviled by tragedy, will not lose that which makes it home: "the blessed women" will continue to sing songs, "create their rustic fuel for winter ... set fire to the leaves, sprinkle water on them as they burn, and transform them into fragile coals".

The Figure in Exile Speaking Through Poetry

It is interesting how the various tropes we have discussed regarding figures in exile present themselves in overlapping ways in Agha Shahid Ali's poetry providing a certain completeness to the image of the exile that we have built up over the semester. Throughout the course we have identified certain characteristics and traits of the characters we have read about, but in Ali's poetry the writer is the character in exile himself speaking directly to us; providing a new clarity that extends beyond identifying the traits of a figure in exile as a third person to how the figure in exile identifies himself.

He reinvents Petersburg (I, Srinagar), an imaginary homeland, filling it, closing it, shutting himself (myself) in it.

At the very beginning, in The Blessed Word: A Prologue, Ali expresses affinity with Osip Mandelstam, another exile of another homeland, yet familiar to him because of their common state of exile. Not only does this one line enunciate the affinity between exiles it also expresses the need for the exile to create a new world (as Said puts it, "Much of the exile's life is taken up with compensating for disorienting loss by creating a new world to rule.") in place of homeland.

Another principal theme is the obscuration or loss of identity. In I See Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight, there is depiction of a scene of torture: the ultimate process of stripping one of identity. The scene ends with the tortured screaming "I know nothing." explicitly proclaiming the loss of identity (if you don't know yourself, then who does?). Thereafter the tortured boy is repeatedly referred to as only a shadow--the imagery is striking because it is a formless and difficult to identify image. 

Alone, in words whirled in the hospital, 

her heart had set--forever solitaire.  

Yet another reoccurring theme of literature of exile that presents itself in these works of poetry is that of isolation. In the piece, I Dream I Am the Only Passenger on Flight 423 to Srinagar, the poet's only company is the memories of a woman already dead. A woman who is herself alone (She had sung "Everyone Will Be Here But I") and even the memories he has of her are those of "departure". The woman's ghazal fades, hence the only company the poet has on the lonesome flight fades. 

Attempting to Universalize Kashmir

               

There was a lot said in class about the practice of borrowing tropes, metaphors and phrases from the poetry of other poets. Faiz Ahmed Faiz titled a collection of poems ‘Naqsh-e-Faryadi’, taken verbatim from a ghazal by Ghalib; T.S Eliot famously uses various quotations from classical texts in “The Waste Land”. While borrowing from other known poets is perfectly acceptable, and, in fact, considered to be a sign of being an informed poet, one needs to be careful about what poetry specifically is being quoted and re-represented and why. I felt that Agha Shahid Ali’s poem/prologue The Blessed Word engages so deeply with Mandelstam’s “We Shall Meet Again, in Petersburg” that it risks rendering the poem too abstruse. Setting aside aesthetics for a moment, couching the Kashmiri plight in Russian terms seemed to me slightly problematic Of course one can make sense of it and appreciate it without knowing the references to the ‘buried suns’ and ‘blessed women’ who sing and rub the ashes together, the genre itself lends itself to ambiguity and interpretation. However, I would still argue that through the evocation of a culture far removed from Kashmir itself,  Ali’s prologue seems to widen the distance between reader and the problem of Kashmir rather than the opposite. The trans-cultural poetic engagement allows Ali to approach Kashmir, Srinagar via Russia, Petersburg, increasing the length of distance between the reader and the poem. We are made to experience Kashmir through Petersburg, while the poet himself is situated in a third unrelated located i.e., the United States. It is as if the geographical distance widens within the span of the poem and subsequently creates an even longer distance, both literary and physical, between the reader and the poem. The attempt at universalizing the ‘blessed word’, whatever it may be, is largely unsuccessful in my view. 

CP Post: Kashmir and Agha Shahid Ali in "Farewell"

From what we have studied on Agha Shahid Ali’s poetry, certain recurring motifs include the use of letters and addressing another in order to build on this communication within a state of displacement. That there is an invisible no-one whom he addresses adds to the displacement in the works; a shift from a center wherein he may reside; a shift from Kashmir.

In class we discussed his own position towards Kashmir and just how far he can connect to it with authenticity; this appears an unanswerable argument unless a response is taken straight from the poets mouth—and here my concern begins; to understand the poet’s relation to Kashmir in more direct terms—for this is what the poet brings in his poem “Farewell.” Insofar as we are concerned with interpreting the work as directed towards the country rather than a lover, friend or relative, it is quite possible to enter the poet’s description of his intimate relation with his country.

What “Farewell” brings to us is a direct address to Kashmir. His letters are now addressed to the nation itself. Essentially, it feels like he’s addressing the heart and spirit of Kashmir—a loss without which “even the stones were buried”; he compares it to a weaver, a collector of “fallen fleece” who “weighs the hairs on the jeweler’s balance” – where the country’s components are its fallen fleece, where the country stands at judgment on them and ascertains a balance, Kashmir for Shahid takes on a more divine role, and at the same time a role more mortal, a supporting force without which “the defenseless would have no weapons.” The divine aspect is also found in “A Country Without A Post Office” and reiterated in the next line “who is the guardian tonight of the Gates of Paradise?” For Kashmir is lost; Kashmir the divine, lacking omnipresence, has in fact a mortal spirit. “This country I have stitched to your shadow” is the country bereft of the spirit that carried its life; a shadow to which the poet desperately tries forging unison.

 The poet’s direct address also highlights his intimacy with the country; where his “memory” coincides with the nation’s “history.” That this address could also be to someone connected by bonds of blood or love adds to this closeness—the nation may as well act the forsaken lover to the poet’s wanton affections. And herein we find a prevalent theme of guilt; the poets own guilt in his relation, or more specifically his abandonment of that relation, to Kashmir. “At a certain point I lost track of you,” he proclaims, “you needed me/you needed to perfect me: In your absence you polished me into the Enemy”; the poet here takes a turn to accusation, to find fault in the land to match his own guilt. This raises the relation to something more intimate than before as the poet’s accusation holds the taste of a deceived beloved—how, in Shahid’s shift to another land, the country rejected him itself as it could not turn him into what it desired. “In your absence” – for Kashmir, too, played the departed lover—“you polished me into the Enemy”; this reflects Shahid’s view of his place in Kashmir—he the abandoner, the wretched figure who split what was once whole, where memory and history coincided, is now the Enemy, the outsider whose memory now coincides with the nation’s history at a more negative level—perhaps what adds to the distance between both. As Shahid tries redefining that severed bond, his claim of “I am everything you lost” seems to draw him in as the missing soul of Kashmir for which he mourns. Here one could say he refers to his own loss of the Kashmir in him—this may be taking it too far, but cannot be discounted if he once united both nation and himself so that one is the other and the loss of one is the loss of the other. After all, his memory “gets in the way of” the nation’s own, described as though separation of the two is impossible means the former point has some standing in validity.

The chance for redemption, too, seems impossible as the poet ends on “You can’t forgive me” and a lingering sense of loss with “if only somehow you could have been mine/what would not have been possible in the world?” Here the bond of two lovers solidifies and extinguishes simultaneously; the poet takes a more possessive stance toward Kashmir, and yet acknowledges his loss of this possession. He also brings the reader close to his own position once more as we consider the impact of the loss on him as a whole—how the loss of Kashmir means he is bereft of infinite possibilities.

Kashmir the divine, Kashmir the homeland, Kashmir the bereft and scornful lover, Kashmir which will never be attained again—the poet’s own place within and without Kashmir resonates in “Farewell” as he bids this selfsame farewell to a bond, to what was his and was him, forevermore. It is not Shahid with faux claims of having a relation with ones abandoned land, as we argued in class-- in fact, Shahid acknowledges the messy nature of this relation he has, an intermingling of memory and history, of unity and severance, of his own guilty apologies coinciding with accusations, for neither he nor Kashmir stayed or tried for cohesion. This, to Agha Shahid Ali, is Kashmir, and his relation to it; within this there is no room left for redemption. The exilic figure’s own self, his own potential dismembered from that of the nation’s, leaves nothing behind but a profound loss.

Themes in ‘I See Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight’

Celebrated poet Agha Shahid Ali uses his time spent in New Delhi as a lens to view his homeland, Kashmir. His literary works express his love and concern for his people, with The Country without a Post Office being one of the highlights. He pens this book of poems with the conflict of Kashmir as the backdrop. One of the poems ‘I See Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight’ is embedded with a variety of themes and ideas that paint the situation of this disputed territory and the implications of the war being waged there.

Agha Shahid Ali repeatedly uses references to the cold in a multitude of ways to elucidate the notion of isolation. At the very beginning, ‘ice’ sets the mood for the poem (Line 1). The distance of ‘five hundred miles’ from Delhi to Srinagar (Line 18) and the yearning for the home is amplified by the wind blowing ‘sheer ice’ (Line 23), the hands ‘crusted with snow’ (Line 29) and the complaint of cold by Rizwan, the dead Kashmiri boy ( Line 30). The paradoxical comparison of ‘snow’ to ‘ash’ (Line 36) seems to seek to illustrate how the chilly weather is not cold enough to cool the fires that have destroyed the lives and homes of millions of Kashmiris  (line 37-40). The loneliness of the exilic figure is also exacerbated by the gloom and despair of the chilly weather which forces people to stay indoors (Lines 35-36). The emptied Srinagar is another point to note in relation to the notion of isolation (Line 18).

Another trope is that of the lost identity of the exilic figure. This notion is first depicted through the shadow which has lost the body it identifies itself with. (Lines  7-8). The ‘searchlights’ further emphasize the idea of the quest for regaining the sense of self. (Line 7).The torture in the prison and the removal of clothes is in a broader sense read as the invasion of the privacy of the individual person, also interpreted as an attack on the essential identity of a person, the stripping away of what makes us human. The moonlight is another symbol to illustrate how the exilic person may feel he has no identity of his own and is forced to resort to reflecting another being’s identity,  much like the moon has no light of its own and depends on the sun for its radiance. (Line 18). The allusion to the end of Gupkar Road and shrinking into nothing is yet another indication of the crises of identity that Kashmiris are going through (Lines 8-9).

The idea of ignorance as bliss is depicted through how the city comes into prominence when it is under attack and news of the terrible happenings there travel across borders. (Line 5).  Rizwan’s plea of not telling his father of his death also speaks volumes about peoples’ desires to protect their families from the psychological and emotional damage that results from the news of the death of loved ones from war (Line31).

Agha Shahid Ali refers to specific places in Kashmir to invoke empathy in the reader is especially interesting. No blog post can do justice to all the themes, motifs and symbols he has employed to express his anxiousness and love for his homeland. Many of his ideas are reminiscent of several other stories we have studied in the course.

I Dream I Am the Only Passenger on Flight 423 to Srinagar: Recurring motifs

"The writer who is out-of- country and even out-of language may experience this loss (of migration) in an intensified form", writes Salman Rushdie in The Imaginary Homelands. While this applies to the typical literary figure in exile we studied over this course, the case of Agha Shahid Ali appears to be different. Unlike Rushdie or Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Agha Shahid Ali was not exiled from Kashmir/Srinagar like the two were from their homelands. The voluntary migration might be the reason why his poetry is imbibed with not just nostalgia, a yearning and concern for his homeland, but also insecurity, and guilt. While one might argue that his state might not make for exile as understood so far, but it can be said that his mental and physical state of exile arises not much from the particular reason that keeps him away but more from the acute distance he feels (and wishes to overcome) between himself and his land.

Shahid's collection is based mostly on memory and autobiographical references drawn from it. Focusing on one such poem "I Dream I Am the Only Passenger on Flight 423 to Srinagar", there is a move between the past and present, with a particular focus on a certain memory. This poem encapsulates Shahid's relationship with the ghazal singer Begum Akhtar. It is a poem about homecoming, but not in a glorious or joyful manner, but more so along the line of returning to recover something lost, while being aware that it is too late to do so. Much like Kandahar, there is a drive to return, a need to reconnect, recover and reclaim. In fact, the view of the airplane touching down and the cackle of the pilot's radio are images which provide a literal representation of this.   Memory is also shown to be failing, in that your own thoughts, past and identity are not safe even within the confines of your own mind and person. This is a theme which runs through many other works, like Woh Jo Khoye Gaye. There was a similar idea there. Not being able to remember how many companions one had, or what he looked like meant that by losing one's memory, one had essentially lost oneself. The figure in the poet is unable to remember the color of Begum Akhtar's sari as he leaves her in New Delhi. There is a desperation and yearning that comes through when the musings about the sari (Was her sari turquoise, What was it she wore that late morning, Her sari was turquoise!) interrupt the thread of memory. It is also relatable on a basic level as when one has lost someone, little things like these which may be ordinary and mundane, become elusive and of supreme importance. He makes autobiographical references to the announcement of her death, her last concert, and the rush to the Intensive Care.

The second half of the poem is markedly different from the first half. Both center around two disparate figures; one being Begum Akhtar, the other being Sheikh Noor ud-Din. The first weaves through memories in a more personalistic and intimate manner, while the second one relates more to the dream aspect of the poem. However, the biggest difference appears to me in the implications of hope (or lack thereof) in the two sections. The first one, revolves around a death, a sudden and surprising one at that, which violently impacts the figure. The second one, while including the reference to the destruction of Sheikh Noor ud-Din's shrine, has an element of spiritual hope ('Know its time to return there-before ash filigrees roses carved in the wood of weeping trees"). The motif of flowers and flames returns to signify the troubled nature of the homecoming. "...if those smashed golds flying past those petrified reds are autumn's last crimsoned spillage rushing with wings down the mountainside or flames clinging to a torched village." This an image analogous to Faiz Ahmed Faiz's "dehektay huay gulzar", blurring the line between whether what is being witnessed is destructive or creative. 

Recreating Kashmir: Conditions and Limitations

Recreating Kashmir: Conditions and Limitations

ASA’s poems deal largely with the experience of Kashmir and the state of being Kashmiri. The poet finds himself, more often than not, remembering and recreating this experience in spaces and forms that themselves are temporal. I will argue that the state of exile – itself temporal – realizes itself best in spaces and forms that are characterized by both spatial and temporal fluidity.

‘‘The Last Saffron’’ starts with the bold assertion that ‘‘I will die, in autumn, in Kashmir’’ (27) followed by a prediction that this death will be documented –albeit partly censored - in the Saffron Sun and the Times of Rain. A documentation of his death implies an eternal acknowledgement of both his life and death – but he is not even granted this permanence. We are told that these newspapers will be ‘’sold in black, then destroyed’’ (27). Their ‘‘blood censored’’ (27) nature also undermines any attempt at veracity. This form then, is not only unreliable but also temporary.  Moreover, these tabloids will be nailed to the fence of ‘Grindlay’s Bank’, representing and re-creating the experience of Kashmir at a space that is characterized by its inconstancy (the tabloids will constantly be replaced by new ones). The backdrop for the perpetuation of this narrative becomes mundane every-day life: as characterized by the nature of the impersonal bank. The bank also stands for fleetingness: it is the institution through which hundreds of everyday transactions take place. Capital constantly changes hands; there is once again no room for permanence.  Another motif of spatial transience is the taxi and the ‘Zero Taxi Stand’. The taxi-driver stands for endless possibilities with the promise that he will ‘‘take you anywhere, even in curfew hours’’ (27). The bouquet that he gives the poetic persona furthers our trust in him.

A similar argument can be made in ‘‘I Dream I Am the Only Passenger on Flight 423 to Srinagar’’ in which both spatial and temporal transience are represented by the plane. The announcement system of the aircraft continuously reminds the persona of Begum Akhtar. The announcements seem to be part of the same process of remembering given that the two processes take place immediately ‘’they announced DEPARTURE. I touched her arm. Her sari was turquoise’’ (31) – or rather, one can argue that the airport and the airlines, both spaces characterized by a temporal existence, allow the persona to consolidate his memories. Official reportage also comes up in this poem –the death of Begum Akhtar is announced in a newspaper. This newspaper is given by the airhostess – ‘‘the hostess pours tea, hands me the Statesman’’ (32) – once again newspaper reportage is associated with the impersonal and mundane – the newspaper is just ‘handed’ over tea. 

Loss and Destruction in "I See Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight"

Agha Shahid Ali explores various elements in his poem “I see Kashmir from New Delhi at midnight”, but perhaps what is most notable is his repetitive establishment of the themes of both loss and longing. The title itself establishes that the poet is at a distance, where he can only ‘see ‘ Kashmir but do no more, thus merely a helpless observer, yet longing to be more. The poem itself becomes resonant of the intrinsic loss faced by the Kashmiris upon the occurring dispute. The poem contains Shahid’s recurring theme of halted communication “The city from where no news can come” (1.3) and “no news escapes the curfew” (4.3-4). Shahid makes it evident that the souls of those killed are not at rest with the mention of Rizwan’s ghost searching to “find its body” (1.8). Shahid also emphasizes the youth of the individuals being tortured or killed e.g. “boy”, with the vivid description of the torture itself morbidly tying in with his reminiscence of the landmarks in his beloved Kashmir, a torture he wishes to, but cannot prevent, thus emphasizing the pain of the poet at his failure to help his people. Rizwan’s ghost becomes symbolic of the Kashmiri’s in general; mere “shadow”s not existing in the physical world, souls without bodies, unrecognized, existing in an almost suspended time and space, and who have been “cold” a “long,long time” (2.15).

Shahid introduces an element of remorse as the ghost beckons “Don’t tell my father I have died” (3.1) showing that the conditions in Kashmir were such that harboured estrangement of families and a death that often went unknown like that of the “unburied boy in the mountain” (4.4).Shahid emphasises their bleak condition by the mention of the left-behind shoes of mourners as they were fired upon, leaving “blood on the road” (3.2), displaying the inhumanity in the inability to even mourn the dead (the “grieving mothers” are ignored) or have a dignified funeral. Even nature is too weak to save Kashmir, snow falling uselessly as the houses were “set ablaze by midnight soldiers” (3.9). “Kashmir is burning” symbolizes the poet’s pain and lamentation at his own inability and the inability of any significant other to save Kashmir from this plight.

Religion too cannot shelter the victims, it’s inadequacy of protection emphasized through the removal of statues, with Shahid’s unidentified “men” (reference to Kashmiri Pandits) walking into the darkness of the night “clutching the gods” whom the poet displays as inanimate and powerless, “asleep like children” in the arms of the carriers. Yet the “green thread at Shah Hamdan” symbolizes hope, a hope Agha Shahid Ali  is not ready to abandon, that indeed justice would occur someday. Moreover, in a repeating technique of verbal ruptures, Shahid emblematizes the partition/loss of Kashmir through the structure of the poem itself.The mention of Yeats “A terrible beauty is born” is a specific critique of the brutality of imperialism, with Kashmir signifying more than just a geographical location, rather, it is emblematic of the displaced, destroyed and homeless.

The Blessed Word?

In our class discussions we have debated the purpose of calling the opening poem, “The Blessed Word”, a prologue. The blogpost will explore the purpose and function of this title. What is the Blessed Word? The purpose of the poem is not simply to express the emotional plight of the author but to trace a historical narrative of what is happening in Kashmir. It is a reminder, an outcry to reach out to the world and narrate the tale of his homeland, Kashmir.

The title is a direct reference to Opis Mandelstam’s untitled poem. The opening lines are as follows:

“We shall meet again, in Petersburg,
as though we had buried the sun there,
and then we shall pronounce for the first time
the blessed word with no meaning”

It is my contention that this intertextuality (i.e.  is the shaping of a text's meaning by another text) shapes the entire meaning and direction of the entire volume. By affiliating himself with Mandelstam’s work the author is reinforcing the idea that he is experiencing something in Kashmir which is akin to what Mandelstam experienced in Petersburg.  From this point onward he traces a historical trajectory of events.

This is further validated by another intertextual insertion by the author. He says:

“And will the blessed women rub  the ashes together? Each fall they gather Chinar leaves, singing  what the hills have re-echoed for  four hundred years, the songs of  HabbaKhatoon, the peasant girl  who later became the queen.  When her husband was exiled  from the valley by the Mughal  king Akbar, she went among the  people with her sorrow. Her grief,  alive to this day, in her own  roused the people into frenzied  opposition to Mughal rule. And   since Kashmir has never been  free”

The prologue takes us four hundred years back in Kashmir history when Habba Khatun’s husband, Yusuf Shah Chak, the Kashmir king was captured by the Mughal King Akbar. And his capture effectively brought an end to the independence of Kashmir.  The blessed word, in this context, then symbolizes freedom for Kashmir and its inhabitants. The Blessed Word is Freedom.

“One day the Kashmiri’s will pronounce that word truly for the first time”

The Ghazal ‘Tonight’ : Defeating Religion in Kashmir

Agha Shahid Ali’s ghazals follow carefully the traditional ghazal form, except for the fact that the contemporary English Ghazal is more thematic than just a poem on unrequited love and longing. In his ghazal, ‘Tonight’ – The maqta of which eventually forms the title of his book, “Call me Ishmael tonight’ - the poem enforces among others the idea of a religious failure. At its most critical level, the ghazal then automatically empowers the poet as it reinforces its historical literary use: where it has continually gone against traditional Shariah to depict religious fanaticism, intoxication, or love for the beloved and its final equivalence with God, something along the lines of Nizam’s Laili Majnun.   

In his poem ‘Tonight’, Ali takes the epigraph off Lawrence Hope’s ‘The Kashmiri Song’-  

Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar,

Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell?

Whom do you lead on Rapture's roadway, far,

Before you agonise them in farewell?

Oh, pale dispensers of my Joys and Pains,

Holding the doors of Heaven and of Hell,

How the hot blood rushed wildly through the veins,

Beneath your touch, until you waved farewell.

Pale hands, pink tipped, like Lotus buds that float

On those cool waters where we used to dwell,

I would have rather felt you round my throat,

Crushing out life, than waving me farewell!

Ali starts ‘Tonight’ with ‘Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar’ perhaps to mock the Kashmir song which seems like an attempt to depict Kashmir wholly romantically. Using the first line of it as the epigraph, he hopes to recondition the outlook towards Kashmir – he focuses more on the idea of pain, exclusion, agony and confusion. While most of it usually lands with questions, it leaves the ghazal form intact. Perhaps making it more sub continental and Muslim. In the exilic context, questions allow for both remembrance and memory but at the same time, are emotional. In its form of questioning, the narrator/ poet describes the possibilities of experience or changed/ altered experience that one can imagine. In ‘Men in the Sun’, the last guilt ridden lines of driver say ‘Why didn’t they bang on the walls of the tank?’.  Questions then become a hope for a changed consequence and depict some rationality with memory. In Agha Shahid Ali’s work then colludes to both memory and representation together which comes out remarkably in his poem: ‘A Footnote to History’ which really tries to construct the call of memory, history and understanding together in the light of a defeated people, exilic literature and religious fanaticism. These ideas are expressed in words  like ‘half-torn’ and the imagery of the sea that ‘demands’ that he ‘memorize’ both the ‘ancient and recent’ workings of time. These ideas of historical relevance in the present of the exilic figure have been seen in all the works we have studied uptil now. The function of memory is hardly as romantic here; it is frustrating, and nonlinear. He describes the movement of the sea in the fluidity that he designs his poetry in. He refers to history as ‘journeys’ and at the same time, makes them Islamic a symbol by introducing the idea of the ‘caravans’.

Half- torn by the wind,

Their words reach

The shore, demanding

I memorize their

Ancient and recent

Journeys in

Caravans ambushed by

Forests on fire.

While this poem remains free style, the ghazal ‘Tonight’ with its poetic form constraints taps into themes larger than just historical ambush and weight. In fact, he rages a rebellion against Islamic dogma, becoming the ‘refugee from Belief’ who ‘seeks a cell tonight’. Written at the time of Indian army’s takeover of Kashmir, the couplet reflects the departure of the exile’s faith - all things Islamic and Godly. He is sure to insert clarity of religion by using capital letters for ‘Belief’ and ‘Prisons’ and the ‘Sacred Well’. This then becomes the real Kashmir Song, as the poet includes national and international concerns in the poem. Religious allusions of ‘execution’, ‘blessing’ and damnation occur together with the ‘loneliness of God’. These become a pointer towards Ali’s attempt to place himself (but at the same time, displace himself) somewhere in the religious orthodoxies of the time. In doing so, he uses the ghazal form to his highest advantage because it has long been associated with the explicit distance from dogmatic Islamic Shariah that comes with intoxication in Sufi poetry and the ideas of love and wooing in the general Ghazal form.

‘Lord, cried out the idols, ‘Don’t let us be broken,

Only we can convert the infidel tonight’

Referring both to the Hindu idea of idol worshipping and the Indian usurpation of Kashmir, Agha Shahid Ali, moves across national exiles by employing alternate religious impieties as the solution to the Islamic displacement and homelessness. It is a violent misuse but smart representation of religious traditions to defeat the universal idea of divine help and the consequential hope one derives from it.  He thinks he has ‘escaped to tell thee’, a biographical reference to his ‘temperamental exile’ which makes him lucky and saves him from the atrocities in Kashmir. He depicts God as lonely, helpless and says, ‘God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.’ He manages to make the Muslim position in Kashmir both unguided and pathetic by implying the weakness of religion. The absence of God, rather, the humanization of God from the narrative points towards the provocative and apathetic outlook on Kashmir and Kashmiris.  In fact, in many of his other poems, for example in ‘The Country without the Post Office’ which previously was ‘Kashmir without the Post Office’ portrays ‘entombed minarets’ and the ‘muezzin who died’  eventually moving towards the death of religion saying ‘there is no sun here’ and ‘Call to Prayer is to deaf worlds across continents’.