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’. 

A Country Without a Post Office

What I found particularly interesting about "The Country Without a Post Office" is the calling of Kashmir a country, when it is in fact a a formerly princely state now administered by three countries, Pakistan, India and China. By calling it a country, though without a post office, the poet tries to regain some kind of ownership of kashmir so that it is not just a disputed territory, with no status. By calling it a country he also drags it into the political discourse of what it means to be a country and by association have a nationality.
Though there are attempts at ownership the poet is aware of the inability to actually define Kashmir, due mainly to this fractured nature of the territory. This is apparent in "The Blessed Word: A Prologue"where the poet addresses Kashmir in all sorts of variations, "Kashmir, Kaschmir, Cashmere, Qashmir, Cashmir, Cashmire, Kashmere, Cachemire, Cushmeer, Casmir. Or Cauchemar in a sea of stories? Or: Kacmir, Kaschemir, Kasmere, Kachmire, Kasmir, Kerseymere?"
Thus try as he might the poet cannot reconcile Kashmir under a singular country name even, and even when he returns to the country, as in "The Country Without a Post Office" it is an elusive place, described in terms of fire, and darkness and nothingness. 

Ahmad Durrani: Stories of Kashmir

A recurring theme in Agha Shahid Ali’s ‘A Country without a Post Office’ is of correspondence. Letters, often undelivered, are mentioned in several poems such as ‘Dear Shahid’, ‘The Floating Post Office’ and ‘A Pastoral’ The image of a post office which cannot seem to deliver mail speaks to the isolation of Kashmir and its people, unable to communicate their stories to anyone. This image is also a personal one, as an exile, Ali probably depended on letters to keep in touch with his loved ones in Kashmir. Other images include that of telephones that never seem to work and telephone calls that are often short and confusing. The phone too then is not seen as a reliable form of communication.  (Considering that this is a country without a post office, it may be pertinent to ask; can the exile stay truly -or honestly- connected to his homeland?)

Agha Shahid Ali depicts an isolated Kashmir in his poems, a Kashmir that it is impossible to get in touch with. His poem ‘The Correspondent’ is not about informal letters and phone calls however but about a reporter who wishes to report on Kashmir. ‘His footage is priceless with sympathy/close-ups in slow motion: from bombed sites to the dissolve of mosques in colonnades/Then, wheelchairs on a ramp/burning’ It is unclear whether this footage is of Kashmir or of Sarajevo (from where the correspondent has just returned) but it is clear that Ali wishes to draw parallels not just between these two places but also regarding how their stories have been told by mainstream media.

Ali goes on; ‘I ask: When will the satellites/transmit my songs, carry Kashmir, aubades/always for dawns to stamp/True! Across seas? The stars careen/down, the lamp dies. He hangs up’ Ali is conscious of how the story of Kashmir is being told to the world and wishes to offer the world another narrative of his homeland to which the correspondent responds simply by hanging up the phone.

Agha Shahid Ali’s poems speak not just of the isolation of Kashmir, the country without a post office, but also warns us of the stories that are being told about Kashmir; stories that speak only of violence and destruction and will only teach people to look upon Kashmir and Kashmiris with sympathy. In his question to the reporting concerning the transmission of his songs, Ali makes clear the need for alternative narratives of Kashmir, told by the people themselves.  

Silence in "I See Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight”"

Silence seems to become an imperative device in “I See Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight” in communicating themes of loss and pain, of lamenting an alternative reality that leaves this pain behind. A silence that is manifested in the physical and the spiritual, the living and the dead, in the inversions of polar binaries represented in the poem where darkness is preferred over light and insanity over sanity, and finally in the land that seems to have given up entirely.

In the very first stanza Shahid presents a “city from where no news can come” despite the chaos that seems to swallow it and along with the identities of the people. His imagery depicts a time when the deaths of the Kashmiris have become silent as well, where the ghost is insistent upon not telling his father of his death and becoming another “unburied boy in the mountain”. The land once associated with paradise breeds a silent grief where mothers cannot mourn, and families may not lament their estrangement from their loved ones. Instead the people speak “unheard” and in this quiet cannot be identified separately from “the hundreds of pairs of shoes”.

He then emphasizes the loss of religion, and more than that the loss of the comfort it provides. The image of the men “clutching gods” and leaving is hence an embodiment of the silence of religion. It also emphasizes that while people and houses burn in Kashmir every day, the silence becomes an acceptance of the death and loss that surrounds them. And once silence becomes so deeply instilled within the life of the freedom fighter then preference for darkness only emblematizes the effect of that silence, where the days are marked by blood staining the Himalayas and nights provide a solace and distance from the disturbing images.

It is only fitting then, that silence must be overcome in the shadows, that it is the voice of the shadows that persists and moves through Kashmir in search of a voice of hope and possibility and perhaps this is why the shadow must take it upon itself to “find its body”. The shadow tells the writer that “each night put Kashmir in your dreams” because that is a place safe from destruction, untouched by the pain. Hence “I have been cold a long long time” could in fact symbolize the poet’s hope of a future where Kashmir will be revived from the ashes. 

Agha Shahid Ali: The Temperamental Exile

In several of his interviews, Agha Shahid Ali states that even though he is technically not an exile because he was not kicked out of Kashmir, he still considers himself a ‘temperamental’ exile.

Throughout the course we have studied several different characteristics of the exile which include amongst other things both passiveness and insecurity. The exilic state of being, Edward Said has stressed, involves never feeling secure, placid or satisfied. The exile often has a shaky hold on the present and little hope for the future. Considering the fact that Agha Shahid Ali is technically not an exile, does he deserve to be called one at all?

One of Agha Shahid Ali’s poems, ‘Dear Shahid’ is written in letter form, addressed to himself. I feel this poem, due to its form and content, can help us make up our minds about the authenticity of Agha Shahid Ali’s exilic condition.

There are moments in this poem where the distance between the poet and his homeland are established. The writer refers to a café where everyone still asks about Shahid, for example. The smacks of familiarity and nostalgia, a younger Shahid who frequented the cafe and knew all the regular customers- people who have remained while he has left. He goes on to ask Shahid whether he will come soon- ‘waiting for you is like waiting for spring. We are waiting for the almond blossoms.’ One imagines that the return of the exile to his homeland will coincide with the return of spring. The land is, for now, unyielding and, as the poem reveals, it no longer rains. The exile’s relationship with the land has been discussed before in several texts, particularly in ‘Men in the Sun’, however in this poem it is as if the absence of the exile has also led to the absence of spring in the homeland. (An interesting question: Can Kashmir still truly be Kashmir without those who have chosen to leave and never return? The ‘writer’ of the letter does not seem to think so) Nevertheless, the relationship between the exile and physical land has been established in the poem. These questions about the future seem almost rhetorical, the exile is never sure of the future-or indeed of the present- and so if Shahid was to reply to this letter we are sure he would never be able to say anything concerning his return. 

There is also the fact that this poem is in letter form, another way to emphasize the distance between Shahid and Kashmir. Shahid can only really hear about and experience his homeland through the experiences of other people who choose to write to him. There is a heartbreaking image towards the end of the poem ‘Today I went to the post office. Across the river. Bags and bags-hundreds of canvas bags-all undelivered’ Isolated from the rest of the poem, this may simply seem like an annoyance but the reader is aware that the letter, the only way the exile can have any link to Kashmir, has been severed for an extended period of time.

It is easy to be convinced of Agha Shahid Ali's status as an exile not just because of the way he feels about his homeland but also because of how distant he is from it. The case then perhaps could be made for a redefining of the term exile to also include 'temperamental' exiles such as Agha Shahid Ali- those who have not been forced to leave their homeland but have done so and in doing so, have experienced the state of being in exile.  Considering that the state of exile is such an emotional and complex one, it seems naive to simply count out those not legally exiled on the basis of a mere technicality.

The Fleeting World of the Exile: Reflections, Shadows and Memory

“And the glass of wine a mirror in which the sky, the road, the world keep changing.”

In our class discussions, we have repeatedly come across the association of temporality with the condition of exile. Within the poetry of Agha Shahid Ali, the motif of temporariness comes to the forefront – taking over even the symbol of the sky which we have seen has mystical or divine connotations. It is my contention that for the poet, there is an overarching temporality which seeps into every part of his poetry in order to yield motifs of ‘reflections,’ ‘mirrors,’ ‘shadows’ and ‘memory.’

In the poem, “Farewell,” Agha Shahid Ali deals with the relationship between memory and history in three major ways – “My memory is again in the way of your history,” “Your history gets in the way of my memory” and “Your memory gets in the way of my memory.” In this way, he shows memory and history to be fleeting concepts, vacillating between various modes of relationships. “If the switch is pulled you will be torn from everything.” However, what remains constant in this picture is that there exists a relationship between history and memory, whether it be negative or positive. Nonetheless, while he can find some stability in his memory, the memory, itself a double-edged sword, serves after the first instance only to remind him of its own fleeting nature - that it is only a relic of what once was and can never be again. Within this alteration between change and permanence lies the figure of the exile - in a liminal state of existence, belonging, in a sense, to no one but himself.

The motifs of shadows and reflections are also recurrent within the works of Agha Shahid Ali. “The shadow slips out, beckons, Console Me” (“I See Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight”); “in this country I have stitched to your shadow?” (“Farewell”); “but where has your shadow fallen” (“I See Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight”); “She is reliving with me her dream within a dream within a dream within a dream: the mirrors compete for her reflection” (“Lo, A Tint Cashmere!/Lo, A Rose”). It is my contention that the deliberate and recurring use of the motifs of reflections, mirrors, shadows and dreams creates a mood of ephemerality. The figure of the exile cannot but live in shadows and dreams and reflections – states where the “world keep[s] changing” – because, having been separated from his homeland, he yearns for the stability and constancy that only those who are rooted can posses: the uprooted is and will constantly wander and be itinerant; he knows no other way to survive.  

11: Meaninglessness and Visceral Identification: Agha Shahid Ali & the Neurosis of the Elite Writer (Saad Hafeez)

While discussing Mandelstam’s poem in relation to the prologue in Agha Shahid Ali’s works, an interesting distinction came to me with regards to the plight of the elite exilic writer- his quest to identify with something ‘normal’ (the idea of actually belonging somewhere) despite the type of bourgeois and privileged people he surrounds himself with.  

“I will pray for the Soviet night

For the blessed word with no meaning”

This idea of meaninglessness is quite a recurrent theme in Russian literary works as writers as diverse as Pushkin, Gogol and Dostoevsky have constructed narratives of struggles in a world devoid of meaning. The works of existential philosophers such as Sartre, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche have further articulated the issues of abject loneliness in modern times. While these human feelings may craft a universal affiliation between people in the modern world, the world of the exile sees a double abjection which requires an even more careful identification with local troupes of normality and belonging. My contention is that exilic figures such as Agha Shahid Ali situate this universal feeling within the particular to craft a lofty sense of affiliation, which is made real through the employment of troupes that are specifically visceral and bodily in nature.

“What is the blessed word? … One day the Kashmiris will pronounce that word truly for the first time”

These last words reveal the probable meaning behind the referential poetry employed here. Otherwise, the reader would think ‘why in the world is he borrowing from Mandelstam’s work to craft a sense of belonging or a hope for a people who have nothing to do with the Russians?!’ The answer is quite simple: by reacting to a work that articulates a universal form of existential suffering through a local idiom, Ali generates a unique meaning and hope for the Kashmiri people- that these people as the descendants of rich cultures and heritages, though perceptibly torn apart, can have a constructive future which could be used as a model for others as well.

“Each fall they gather chinar leaves, singing what the hills have reechoed for four hundred years, the songs of Habba Khatun, the peasant girl who became a queen”

Again, this line shows the method employed of crafting this lofty affiliation that is, the juxtaposition of diverse universal and localized idioms along with the transformation of historical moments into ahistorical instances of hyper-creativity, of growth and learning for the future of a distraught people. Again, the mode of this juxtaposition is specifically visceral that is, using the body as a conduit to arrive at the feeling of affiliation. For the exilic writer specifically, we note that this technique is probably one of the few ways through which they can bring their elite writing into some sort of relevance or importance for a people who probably don’t even read the language in which it was written.

Be Brave Nafas! Be Brave Agha Shahid Ali! (The Universality of Narrative)

‘Again I’ve returned to this country’- (The Country Without a Post Office)

Both, Nafas and Agha Shahid Ali are migrants who have been placed out of their own home voluntarily putting them in a somewhat of a quasi-exilic state but it is their returning to Kandahar and Srinagar respectively that changes their lives and views about the turmoil their nation faces. However, with this blog I aim to do something different- to show the universality of both these people’s narratives in a quirky way.

If a ‘minaret has been entombed’, a child was expelled from a madrassah in Kandahar.

If ‘his fingerprints cancel blank stamps’, the pseudo family in Kandahar are looted.

If people are ‘empty’, women and men move in a circular motion where emotions are lost and completely drowned.

If ‘flames burn our world to sudden papier-mache’, Nafas’s world is being burned by the thought of her sisters suicide.

If ‘the muezzin died’, the religious instructor in Kandahar lost his spiritual anchor by asking the children: ‘What is a Kalashnikov?’

As ‘we look for the dark as it caves in’, men look for replacement legs.

If ‘we’re inside the fire, looking for the dark’, Nafas is inside violent territory to look for her sister.

If ‘they haunt a country when it’s ash’, Iran is haunted when people need legs for a living.

If Agha Shahid Ali asks us to ‘pray he’s alive’, Nafas’s asks people around her to pray that her sister is alive.

If ‘I have returned in the rain to find him’, Nafas’s has returned to the desert to find her sister.

If there is ‘no nation named on them’, these people have no nation or safety. They find home in United Nations camps.

If ‘I must force silence to be the mirror’, Nafas’s forces the black box to be the recorder of her memories.

‘Should I cross that river?’- Nafas asks whether she should cross borders

If ‘There’s almost a paisley against the light’, there’s colorful burqa’s against the sun.

Nafas wants to find her sister to ‘come before (she’s) killed (her) voice cancelled’.

‘And I reach the minaret. I’m inside the fire. I have found the dark’- Nafas reaches Kandahar. I’m staring at the land before me. I have found the sun.