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.