I stopped reading Urdu poetry in 1988. It was not because I had discovered that “Thirty days hath September” was my favourite poem for the reason that it actually said something or that I had learnt “A poet is a person who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning”. It was just that Faiz Sahib was no more and what Faraz, Munir or Zafar were producing only strengthened my resolve.
Last spring I admired a friend’s taste in Urdu poetry upon which he disclosed that he himself was a poet. This is usually enough to make normal people flee in Pakistan but his other virtues of being an academic and a wonderful person helped me keep my nerve. Being polite, I asked for a sample and he emailed it to me. In a moment of weakness, I read it. What I discovered was both pleasant and overwhelming and not solely because in its values and stances the poetry was my favourite - classical. I appreciated how his passion was balanced by courtesy, transparency by ironies and nuances of design, impersonality by vivid detail and the tidiness of his lines by a richness of implication. I was impressed.
Sohail Anwar’s book “Mein Subhe Azal Say Tera Tha“(Mavra Publishers, Lahore) has since been published. It seems like a fully realized marvel of an emotional journey spread over a couple of decades. A lot of time and effort seems to have gone into its presentation. Looking over the dark and stormy cover and the printing on a snowy white paper, the poetry is both earthy and ethereal - there is a rare equilibrium to it. Throughout the book, the poet keeps appearing as a thespian and a spectator at the same time. In the first role, he balances whatever was surrendered to the dark with light and one rejoices in his ability to face abject truths with a lyrical, resurgent energy. In the latter, he glimpses himself in the corner of a mirror or at the edges of a wood where his emotional self might steal up or sidestep him altogether.
I find his poems e.g. “Teri Sehr Gaahay Jamal Say” marked by a frayed, neurotic humanism and composed with love drawn from our collective conscious. His language borders on prose, making the creation disarmingly accessible and unflinching in its narrations of the struggles of love, life and the everyday rhythms of humankind. He seems to construct his sadness from common sorrow, probably emanating from the same source, but then it is worried and whittled down to something extraordinary where dreams are unpacked with generous offerings of lingering hope. He explores remorse while moving forward with equal abandon; something he perhaps extracts from his own view of life and its mechanics. He seems to find beauty in past addictions and broken promises; in a mesh of impenetrable wordiness, sorrow, and intricately textured environments.
Sohail’s ghazals are organic, alive, and a part of the milieu we live within, but seldom take the time to discuss or dissect. His words are both, for us and of us, becoming at once a celebration of the breathing body and a communion with the words we offer to each other. His gift of language travels effortlessly from one group of people to another, from the poet to waiting listener. There are some ghazals where he invokes the desire to be seen as a physical presence, to share the personal experience of his relationship to the objects in the temporal world and then explain why his own impressions are vital and important. His voice does not allow us to look away from the injured view of the self or the other, the scene he has painted, or the struggling souls swimming through one stage of living into another. He has the knack of saying so easily what is wandering around in our minds “It seems right now that all I’ve ever done in my life is making my way over to you”.
There are stories being told in these nazms and even in the ghazals. When Sohail turns into a storyteller or more appropriately a story singer, he uses language to continue our oldest traditions of gifting the tale, and sharing the fabric of verse through sound. Some of these e.g. “Yeh Aakhir Ik Din Hona Tha” cry out to be read aloud, and more than once. His verses may take you away into another era to other lands living somewhere within our beings. You may recall Sohail’s yearnings in all those places where you go to get in touch with your other half. I harked back to it on the banks of Tagus River (Lisbon) while listening to Faldo’s music recently. Long ago, when men went to the sea, their women waited on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for that tiny ship to appear each evening. When each moment of wait feels like an eternity, in each moment, slow and as transparent as glass, one can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. “I look for your face in the patterns of the clouds above. In the dark, I pore over the loss of you like pale gold”.
[quote]Sohail is a gentleman poet who knows that relationships can be fragile and heartbreak is sometimes inevitable[/quote]
Sohail is a gentleman poet. He knows that relationships can be fragile and heartbreak is sometimes inevitable. When the wounds of heartbreak are fresh, they hurt quite a lot. Some get over it, while others continue to hold on to the ache. However, he himself refuses to believe in second guesses or chances. His commitment to his beloved is total and eternal. He firmly believes in destiny – neither of them could control what had happened to them. They fell in love and once they did, something rare and beautiful was created. He loves everything about her from that little crinkle in her nose when she looks at him to the wrinkle around her eye, which would appear as they grow old together. He shares our belief that relationships are like glass but does not let it break, to avoid the hurt it causes while putting it back together. The beloved remains the last person he wants to talk to before he goes to sleep at night.
Rudyard Kipling was taught at school to loathe the Roman poet Horace. He forgot him for two decades, but came back to love him “for the rest of my days and through many sleepless nights”. I thank Sohail Anwar for bringing me back to Urdu poetry by sharing his wonder. The hallmark of good poetry is that it grows on you; this book had that effect on me. I recommend it for your bedside table with full confidence.
** The reviewer is a consultant psychiatrist & director of medical education in England
Zainab Mahmood-Ahmad can be reached by email on mahmood.zainab@gmail.com and on twitter at @zainab_m_ahmad
Last spring I admired a friend’s taste in Urdu poetry upon which he disclosed that he himself was a poet. This is usually enough to make normal people flee in Pakistan but his other virtues of being an academic and a wonderful person helped me keep my nerve. Being polite, I asked for a sample and he emailed it to me. In a moment of weakness, I read it. What I discovered was both pleasant and overwhelming and not solely because in its values and stances the poetry was my favourite - classical. I appreciated how his passion was balanced by courtesy, transparency by ironies and nuances of design, impersonality by vivid detail and the tidiness of his lines by a richness of implication. I was impressed.Sohail Anwar’s book “Mein Subhe Azal Say Tera Tha“(Mavra Publishers, Lahore) has since been published. It seems like a fully realized marvel of an emotional journey spread over a couple of decades. A lot of time and effort seems to have gone into its presentation. Looking over the dark and stormy cover and the printing on a snowy white paper, the poetry is both earthy and ethereal - there is a rare equilibrium to it. Throughout the book, the poet keeps appearing as a thespian and a spectator at the same time. In the first role, he balances whatever was surrendered to the dark with light and one rejoices in his ability to face abject truths with a lyrical, resurgent energy. In the latter, he glimpses himself in the corner of a mirror or at the edges of a wood where his emotional self might steal up or sidestep him altogether.
I find his poems e.g. “Teri Sehr Gaahay Jamal Say” marked by a frayed, neurotic humanism and composed with love drawn from our collective conscious. His language borders on prose, making the creation disarmingly accessible and unflinching in its narrations of the struggles of love, life and the everyday rhythms of humankind. He seems to construct his sadness from common sorrow, probably emanating from the same source, but then it is worried and whittled down to something extraordinary where dreams are unpacked with generous offerings of lingering hope. He explores remorse while moving forward with equal abandon; something he perhaps extracts from his own view of life and its mechanics. He seems to find beauty in past addictions and broken promises; in a mesh of impenetrable wordiness, sorrow, and intricately textured environments.
Sohail’s ghazals are organic, alive, and a part of the milieu we live within, but seldom take the time to discuss or dissect. His words are both, for us and of us, becoming at once a celebration of the breathing body and a communion with the words we offer to each other. His gift of language travels effortlessly from one group of people to another, from the poet to waiting listener. There are some ghazals where he invokes the desire to be seen as a physical presence, to share the personal experience of his relationship to the objects in the temporal world and then explain why his own impressions are vital and important. His voice does not allow us to look away from the injured view of the self or the other, the scene he has painted, or the struggling souls swimming through one stage of living into another. He has the knack of saying so easily what is wandering around in our minds “It seems right now that all I’ve ever done in my life is making my way over to you”.
There are stories being told in these nazms and even in the ghazals. When Sohail turns into a storyteller or more appropriately a story singer, he uses language to continue our oldest traditions of gifting the tale, and sharing the fabric of verse through sound. Some of these e.g. “Yeh Aakhir Ik Din Hona Tha” cry out to be read aloud, and more than once. His verses may take you away into another era to other lands living somewhere within our beings. You may recall Sohail’s yearnings in all those places where you go to get in touch with your other half. I harked back to it on the banks of Tagus River (Lisbon) while listening to Faldo’s music recently. Long ago, when men went to the sea, their women waited on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for that tiny ship to appear each evening. When each moment of wait feels like an eternity, in each moment, slow and as transparent as glass, one can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. “I look for your face in the patterns of the clouds above. In the dark, I pore over the loss of you like pale gold”.
[quote]Sohail is a gentleman poet who knows that relationships can be fragile and heartbreak is sometimes inevitable[/quote]
Sohail is a gentleman poet. He knows that relationships can be fragile and heartbreak is sometimes inevitable. When the wounds of heartbreak are fresh, they hurt quite a lot. Some get over it, while others continue to hold on to the ache. However, he himself refuses to believe in second guesses or chances. His commitment to his beloved is total and eternal. He firmly believes in destiny – neither of them could control what had happened to them. They fell in love and once they did, something rare and beautiful was created. He loves everything about her from that little crinkle in her nose when she looks at him to the wrinkle around her eye, which would appear as they grow old together. He shares our belief that relationships are like glass but does not let it break, to avoid the hurt it causes while putting it back together. The beloved remains the last person he wants to talk to before he goes to sleep at night.
Rudyard Kipling was taught at school to loathe the Roman poet Horace. He forgot him for two decades, but came back to love him “for the rest of my days and through many sleepless nights”. I thank Sohail Anwar for bringing me back to Urdu poetry by sharing his wonder. The hallmark of good poetry is that it grows on you; this book had that effect on me. I recommend it for your bedside table with full confidence.
** The reviewer is a consultant psychiatrist & director of medical education in England
Zainab Mahmood-Ahmad can be reached by email on mahmood.zainab@gmail.com and on twitter at @zainab_m_ahmad