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.