AMIR SUHAIL WANI
Poetry has inextricably found itself associated with passion and in any activity of creative order passion has acted not only as catalyst but the very base and substructure holding creative space in order. Passion is the treasure of heart and any human, anywhere which seeks to participate in the pathos and pangs of human existence makes his heart to beat not to the biological rhythm, but to emotive passion and universal call for beauty, truth, justice and highest ideals accessible to human imagination. This passionate reception of life with its all attendant anxieties, gorges of existential crisis and hundred thousand modes of alienation from self and world is the first act of poetic daring. Rumi said of sages that these are spies diving into the secrets of universe and becoming intimate to the workings of divine. This holds true for poetry too – the poetry that does not intend to preach or teach or to describe, but the class of poetry which emerges from deepest levels of solipsism and in moments of rare soliloquy. What has of late been the fate of poetry that it has been subverted and has succumbed to the fanciful ideals of teaching and preaching, whereas poetry ought to be, what is usually believed in the tradition of Continental Philosophy and more so in oriental tradition “the revelation of being”. Versification, driven by the false and malicious presumption of propaganda and subtle indoctrination is very much antithetical to the very poetic ideal – the ideal whose sole ministry is to inspire, to purify, to stir the noblest and loftiest of human ideals and stimulate sublime human emotions to the call of transcendental beauty permeating all structures of being and manifest in all forms of existence. In the contemporary oeuvre of mechanised poetry, provoked by the desire of “social commentary” and following in the footsteps of twists and turns taken by literary theory, poetry has sacrificed its essence to temporality and has surrendered its prophetic spirit, so much equated with poetry in tradition and otherwise, to the task of mere announcement and jugglery of words, bereft of stir and spirit. Poetry, it may be further noted is creative not only to the extent of generating new meanings and expressions from the existing datum of words, but this creativity extends itself to the disruption of linguistic normativity, subverting the canonical relationship between word and meaning and bringing into existence an entirely new universe of self-contained linguistic autonomy. This subversion of normativity, the creative engagement with language and the masterly craft of capturing subtlest and sublime issues into the ken of language is what makes poet “Talmeez Ur Rehman” – the disciple of God and it is to this class of poets that Iftikhar Aarif undoubtedly belongs to.
In an attempt to traverse the poetic canvas of Aarif, spread across the all vastness of space as it is, it seems pertinent to investigate the constitutive elements of his poetry and in so doing locate the dominant leitmotif of his poetic universe and contextualise the otherwise loosely connected pieces of poetry into this grundnorm of overreaching synthetic whole. The sense of separation – separation from homeland, from people of yore, from memories and sometimes in extreme cases from the self is reiterated in hundred thousand ways and recurs again and again in his poetry. The exacerbating pain that this sense of separation brings is masterly transformed by Aarif into celebration while it assumes its final expression in his poetry. Few of the couplets that bear witness to his critical engagement with this sense of separation and all phenomenons revolving in its orbit may be thus reproduced here. Aarif writes:-
“khaak mai daulat i pindaar o ana milti hai
Apni miti se bichadnay ki saza milti hai”
Or
“Paiyambaru se zameenay wafa nahi kartiHum aisay kaun khuda thay ki apnay ghar rehtay”
This theme of cultural and territorial dislocation resulting as an aftermath of partition or otherwise emerges as recurring theme in whole generation of poets including but not limited to Nasir Kazmi, Nida Fazili, Gulzar, Amrita Preetam and others. But in Iftikhar Arif, this experience of dislocation reaches the stage of leitmotif and archetype, whereby it becomes a definite as well as defining theme of his poetic order. The separation and the sense of abysmal distance is employed not only in territorial context, but permeates the very understanding of relationships, their crests and troughs and the existential modes one goes through while one is mediating and is mediated by relationships, be they romantic, spiritual or otherwise. Arif writes:-“Inhi mai jeetay inhi bastiyu mai mar rehtein
Yeh chahatay thay magar kis kay naam par rehtein”
Or
“Puranay dard , purani muhabbatu kay ghulab.
Jaha bhi hein, khas o khaashaak kay hisaar mein hein”
If it be assumed that home is where heart is, then Iftikhar Arif is eternal and permanent nomad. His heart doesn’t settle anywhere and in his poetry, home assumes connotations beyond physical. The psychoanalytic may be driven to conclusion that this recurrence of the desire for home is driven by childhood miseries and yearning for a life of stability, dignity and “a room of one’s own”. But, as said, in Arif, home is not only physical, but assumes cultural and more importantly spiritual dimensions. Home to Iftikhar Arif is the abode of soul, notwithstanding its physical and material connotations and in its spiritual dimension, as Dr. Abul Syed Khair kashfi rightly notes, it is Medina and Medina alone, the resting place of the Beloved which attains in Aarif’s poetry and life the status of eternal, life-giving and blessed and blissful home – all other physical spaces becoming ephemeral. With homelessness and separation emerges inevitably the phenomenon of migration and journey, with all its physical, intellectual and spiritual connotative possibilities. Of migration, Arif says:-
“Shikam ki aag liye phir rahi hai shehr ba shehr
Sagay zamana hein, hum kya hamari hijrat kya”
And
“Tamam khana badooshu mai mushtaraq hai yeh baat
Sab apnay apnay gharu ko pallat kay dekhtein hein”
Of home and homelessness, Iftikhar Arif has both a wish and complaint. He writes:-
“Mere Khuda mujay itna tou mou’tabar karday
Mai jis makaan mai rehta hu usko ghar karday”
Or
“Azaab yeh bhi kisi aur par nahi aaya
Tamaam umr chalay aur ghar nahi aaya”
Also
“Muqadar ho chukka hai bay darr o deewar rehna
Kahi tai paa raha hai shehr ka mismaar rehna”
This excruciating experience of homelessness and non-terminating migration which evokes the subtle emotions of global and universal nomadism becomes another leitmotif, inextricably interwoven with the first, in Iftikhar Arif’s poetry.
… to be continued
Amir Suhail Wani is an Engineer., Writer, Research Scholar, Freelance Writer and can be reached at amirkas2016@gmail.com
