“A poet’s eyes are his country, whose boundaries extend as far as his imagination could go; yet he wants to return to his land, to his people” – Hassan Dars (1966–2011).
Hassan Mujtaba
Saanjh Publications, 2015
Almost 30 years ago, when the Sindhi poet Hassan Dars etched the realms of poetry written in exile in this verse, Hassan Mujtaba was one of the very first people to hear the poem and take it to heart. The late poet may have been referring to Czech writer Milan Kundera or to the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, but his first listener was, ironically, destined to the same fate as the subject of the poem.
But Mujtaba’s dilemma is twofold: he has a poet’s heart and a journalist’s eye – the two cannot always reconcile with each other. Rather, the combination triggers an even greater nostalgia and sense of despair. What else then could be the outcome of this other than verses as melancholy as the voice of the proverbial koel? Koyal Shehar ki Katha is a moving body of work by a roving poet in an alien land: an ode to his homeland, to be precise.
Born in the Sindh–Punjab bordering town of Obauro, Mujtaba has never confined himself to the domain of a single language. Before joining Newsline in the 1990s under the late Razia Bhatti, he had already proved himself as a leading Sindhi poet and journalist. Presently, he lives in New York City and composes poetry in Sindhi, Urdu and Punjabi; he also writes a weekly column for a leading Urdu daily. Koyal Shehar ki Katha, his first anthology, comprises both Urdu and Punjabi verse, with an elegant foreword by his old friend, novelist Mohammed Hanif.
Mujtaba sets the tone at the outset. It has been 16 years since he left Pakistan, but he reminisces with warm affection. Immersed in the poignancy of the past, his verses paint vivid images of his village and its streets where, perhaps, he thinks he may never return. But for Mujtaba, a poem is a magical voyage to lost lands – what he calls his “koel city”. He might find himself clutching the finger of any one memory of the shores of the Indus while dancing in the streets of Sehwan in the next:
O my beloved country!
I return into myself
Whenever I sing the songs of our separation.
And return, he does frequently. They say that, in exile, dreams die first, but Mujtaba outlives his dreams by giving them the form of verse. Unlike many exile poets, he does not wait for someone to come from his homeland and tell him about it. He has the remarkable knack of cherishing his own memories and invites his readers to share this journey. Although his poetic diction is essentially imaginative, he does not have to weave a story for his poems. Mujtaba can mesmerize with his simple words and lyrical style alone:
In the season of ripened fruits,
No longer do stones target the tree standing in your courtyard,
Nor will any letter arrive tied to it.
The main gate of your home has been locked for eons
And is besieged under the termite’s net
Where now dwells a happy termite,
Which smiles and weaves another net,
As though it weaves my past and present.
Not surprisingly for a poet who was active during the Zia years, Mujtaba’s work contains a clear political idiom. He is a rebel almost to the point of being cantankerous. A substantial number of his verses in this book rail eloquently against what he sees as history’s wrongdoers. Verse, for the poet, is a form of open rebellion against any form of tyranny. Whether it is the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb’s orthodoxy or the dogma that underscores our modern times, he lashes out at all such self-styled saviours.
As Mohammed Hanif has written in the foreword to the book, Mujtaba is the “only poet of his generation who is ravaging the Indus and dried-up Sutluj at the same time”. This metaphor of ebb and flow is the hallmark of Mujtba’s poetry. Although he gives his exile the shape of the poet’s beloved, many of his poems are flooded with longing for his homeland:
That city calls me back,
Whose valorous sons left half-heartedly
Their homeland, streets and the soothing shade of the banyan tree,
Some in search of livelihoods, others for war,
Some in the night, others at dusk,
Some were heartbroken, other were defeated.
That city...
In whose gardens a cuckoo would sing and disappear,
She was like my friends,
She was like your love,
That city calls me back.
Mujtaba has a poet's heart and a journalist's eye - the two cannot always be reconciled
Commenting on Mujtaba’s poetry almost three decades ago, the doyen of Sindhi poetry Shaikh Ayaz quoted a Persian couplet, a crude translation of which would go like this:
“Do not presume that the vintner’s work is over
Ample liquor still lies un-extracted in the veins of the raisin.”
Koyal Shehar Ki Katha is, hopefully, just the first vintage from that stock.