Reading Zaheer Kashmiri’s short and brutal dirge for womanhood on his 101st birthday

Kashmiri is regarded among the very few prominent poets who gave a new colour to Urdu poetry, especially the ghazal

‘Hamen khabar hai ke hum hain charagh-e-akhir-e-shab

Hamare baad andhera nahi ujala hai’

(We know that we are the lamp at the end of the night

After us there won’t be darkness, but light)

This verse by Zaheer Kashmiri – who was born 101 years ago today in Amritsar – has now become proverbial among leftist circles in South Asia, versifying the eternal conflict between hope and despair, light and darkness, good and evil, thesis and antithesis. Kashmiri was a distinguished Pakistani progressive poet and critic whose verses have been immortalised by celebrated singers of the Indian subcontinent. His real name was Pirzada Ghulam Dastgir. He did his matriculation from M.A.O. School in Amritsar, then his B.A. from M.A.O. College in the same city, before taking admission in Khalsa College in Amritsar for his M.A. in English, but he could not complete it.

He began his practical life with journalism and remained the editor of Savera, which recently published its 100^th issue. He also wrote columns for the dailies Ehsan, Nava-i-Waqt and Pukar. Later he was associated with the dailies Musavat and Halaat. He had migrated to Lahore before partition and become associated with films; going on to write several film scripts and also to direct a few films, most famously Teen Phool.

Since his student days, Kashmiri had fully participated in politics. He is regarded as a progressive poet and he joined the Progressive Writers Association at its inception, and added to his progressive views by joining with the major leaders of the Association. He was also associated with many trade union movements for the international rights of workers, which led to his imprisonment. He is regarded among the very few prominent poets who gave a new colour to Urdu poetry, especially the ghazal. Among his poetic collections are Admi Nama, Jahan-e-Agahi, Chiragh-e-Akhir-e-Shab, Harf-e-Sipas, Raqs-e-Junoon, Auraq-e-Mussavir, Azmat-e-Adam and Taghazzul; and a book of literary critique, Adab Ke Maadi Nazariye. Kashmiri passed away in Lahore on December 12, 1994.

Today also marks the end of the centenary celebrations of Kashmiri’s birth and I have chosen to translate his dirge to womanhood, simply titled Aurat, which forms part of his well-known collection Azmat-e-Adam (The Greatness of Man). One is tempted to read this short poem as a feminist ode, but in fact it is a dirge, a lamentation on the exploitation and ownership of women and their beauty by a few self-appointed patriarchs. Unlike Kashmiri’s contemporaries, the realist beauty and savagery of the poem is not marred by any reformist prescription to the women’s plight, which has been suggested in similar poems by Majaz, Sardar Jafri, Kaifi Azmi, Sahir Ludhianvi and Qateel Shifai, as noted in this space before. For the uninitiated, it will suffice to explain that in the second stanza of the poem the ‘gemstones without perforation’ is the translation of the Urdu term Naa-sufta guhr, a reference to the sordid practice of monarchs and landlords who resort ‘to the despoiling of virgin girls’; the translation has been literalised to preserve the beauty of the rhyme.

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‘In the ownership of the shepherds

There were punishments upon the cheeks and beards

The passion for praise of beauty was blunted

The feet of beauty were fettered.

 

In every emperor’s and landlord’s possession

Were many gemstones without perfection

Which, becoming the light of the night party

Were bequeathed for the morning affliction.

 

At the crossroads of fire and steam

Life began to mould like iron

When the rakes jingled the coins

It began to run like an engine

On an unseen arm

A silken body will tip

Youth spilling over with the wine of modesty

Will overflow at a mere kick.’