Difference, non-conformity, and taking pleasure in standing aloof from the rabble are some of the salient features of Khaleel Mamoon’s poetry. Spread over five decades, his writing career, including poetry and prose, marks the apogee for the aesthetic departure from use of language of retelling what has been told myriad times. His Urdu poetry in the genre of short poem as well as the ghazal is a bold departure from release all ghazal-poets who aim at mere outburst of clapping in poetic symposia as their outpourings fail as written text meant to be read on the printed page. Poetry in Urdu, like many other languages of India, has yet to complete its detachment from the oral medium for it has generally flourished in oral culture supported by royal courts. Khaleel engaged in projecting his thinking self, enunciates the purpose of writing variously in various poems that it is the intense consciousness of the flux of the “self” as the flow of remembrance of the past, sensation of the immediate reality, and futuristic aspirations. Without making flat intellectual statements, he places his consciousness amidst the intricate interfaces of past, present, and future:
If the ocean of time has not swallowed my ashes
in the darkness,
how could I remain intact?
How I wish I had also mingled with
waters of Ganga, Jammuna, Saraswati,
lost my memory and my own self
with the invaluable drop of tear
fallen on the dry soil
or into mud and vanished
sleep, my sleep
I would have lost eyes and heart
along with the dreams
(How will Our Lives Attain Salvation, p.225)
The impossibility of this wishful oedipal merger with the nameless primordial oblivion surfaces time and again in variegated images of the contingent moment and milieu in the world, the subcontinent and, particularly contemporary India. Having undefeatable faith in the essential goodness of man, and the self-sustaining cultural fabric of Indian people, he does not lose hope in man’s continuous process of man-making and salvation without a name and habitation. It is the inexorable flow toward that un-named freedom or salvation that sustains the vulnerable hope always challenged by conditions of utter un-freedom – be it megalomania of conspicuous persons, persecution mania of the suffering communities, and sadistic designs and intentions – the all time curses that face human race in different climes and times. Thus Sarasvati endlessly whispers to the ritual-ridden individuals who make pretences of achieving and accumulating knowledge:
Look into yourself
before searching for me
burn down the darkness of your eyes
light up your soul lamp
remove corpses from rivers
let virtue shine from your eyes
make death difficult
and living, simple and easy. (p.225)
Khaleel Mamoon hates unquestioned following, blind repetition of the known, and getting lost by the glitter of the ambient, he rather favors courageous jump into the unpredictable and reinvigorating existence by fresh uncategorized knowledge. In his poem “Night of Transmigration” dedicated to Mark Strand – perhaps for having said, “Each moment is a place you’ve never been”, he uses full force of apostrophe :
A voice rises:
“Awake!”
and all the dead bodies
will wake up and start moving (p.5)
Taking the image of the blowing of trumpet on the Day of Judgment, Khaleel desires that the sound of Israfel’s trumpet is needed whenever tyranny, and coercion deaden the thinking aspect of human beings and, eventually, all turn into cadavers. Khaleel as a non-conformist poet cannot seek comfort merely by uttering “habunallah wa ni’mal-wakil (Allah alone is sufficient for us, and He is the best Disposer of affairs for us.) but like Edgar Allan Poe feels:
Therefore, thou art not wrong,
Israfeli, who despises,
A unimpassioned song:
To thee the laurels belong,
Best bard, because the wisest!
Merrily live, and long! ( Poe: Israfel)
The poets’ vocation, almost deadened by submission to conformity, needs to be stoked to sing “a bolder note than this might swell/From my lyre within the sky” (Poe: Israfel)
Poet is no celestial angelic being among in the horde of houris “whose glances are imbued with all the beauty”, a poet is rather a story teller who despises what has been said; his faculty as being Homo-fictus keeps language safe from getting turned into dead metaphor:
Narrate a story, completely new
but not true
a story that appears to be good and absorbing
if false though appearing true
from my point of view (Khaleel: 109)
The ardor of creativity in the condition of alienation but at the same time commitment is perceived as a work that aims at creating beauty through accepting pain as the way of life. In most of his poems and ghazals, Khaleel Mamoon accepts every moment as an acceptance of pain – the power of asserting conscious self to weaponize pain to fight away all the negative forces, ontologically as well as socially. This is how Khaleel portrays a blossoming bush of bougainvillea:
All resplendent,
yet bearing prickly thorns, bathing
in scorching heat ,knows no shadows,
in its void loneliness of the past and future
coverless isolation in the heat bursting black and long roads
silent yet …. terrific depths
spreads out its rosy and orange garment
in a manner of placid white motherly garment
( Bougainvillea / Staring into the Skies,2007. p.157)
Engrossed in the architectonics of the “self” , Khaleel Mamoon , projects it with a thousand faces throughout his poetry He has chosen himself who, in the words of Kierkegaard, could say authentically, “Now I possess myself, I require nothing more, and to all the changes of the world I oppose the proud thought :I am the man I am?” The dramatic ongoing “self-making” is the aesthetic of Khaleel Mamoon. Here is a ghazal from his 2015 collection, titled saanson ke paar (beyond the breaths):
Much I think of my finitude,
no one is there to witness my being.
Many a doomsday come and pass,
in wait lies time for its predicted good.
Much ahead of my body and soul I took the plunge,
never did I wait for my presence there.
A thousand prostrations and bowings make no difference,
He has no inkling of his existence.
Fell down on the earth, he could not stand up again,
Much did he pride in his being the zenith of the sky.
Every moment I welcome as a new beginning,
I am not in wait my being fortunate.
How long to keep gallivanting without direction?
O Khaleel for a while have sense of your being.
(ghazal: saansoon ke paar, 2015, 121-2. Tr. Shafi Shauq)
The defiant protagonist with a thousand heads appears and charms all in the Urdu text of Khaleel’s poetry, yet H S Shivaprakas and Maher Mansoor have brilliantly succeeded in rediscovering real Khaleel Mamoon as a rebel poet who has a never-ending “Search for a Poem”. His poetry has the energy to outdo all the limits of prescription set pedagogically for Urdu poetry. He emerges as an eminent poet of contemporary India who galvanizes society to make the individual think, and by thinking counter the overwhelming nihilism and nonchalance. The quest for finding a poem in every absurd situation makes Khaleel stand out as a indefatigable rebel against frigid and deadened narratives.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Prof.Shafi Shauq is a Poet, fiction writer, linguist and critic. Prof. Shafi Shauq is author/editor/translator of over forty-five books in Kashmiri, English, Urdu and Hindi.
