“Poetry is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility.” Let’s face it, this famous Wordsworth quote sounds so flawed that you even tend to read his poems with a jaundiced eye. Spontaneity and recollection have an oxymoronic relation. If you ask a creative person, she or he will tell you that, most of the time, a poem is composed or a novel is written with a sudden urge inspired by a certain event or incident.

This may not be the case with travel writing. When visiting a foreign land, a writer is either likely to pen his or her thoughts immediately or jot them down after reaching home, in the latter case trying to recollect the impact a particular scene or person had. Asif Farrukhi’s non-fictional collection of impressions, Qaid-i-Muqam, gives off both vibes.

In the realm of erudition, Farrukhi is now an established name. While he has previously penned his accounts, Qaid-i-Muqam is different. It is a book made up of half a dozen pieces about six different parts of the world, but with a thread: they don’t just draw the picture of a cityscape (or in the case of the last chapter, landscape). Rather, they point to the watershed, ep och-making events that occurred in those regions because of which the world today is what it is. To Farrukhi’s credit, he doesn’t philosophise about what he sees or feels when he finds himself at a specific place. Instead, he internalises the ambience and exhales it in a way that it assumes a collective significance.

The first part or chapter of the book is, “Iss Shehr Mein Rehna”.

Unsurprisingly it’s about Karachi, the metropolis where the author lives, and without an iota of doubt, loves to bits. He chooses to draw a picture of it by touching upon the ugliness caused by violence, disharmony and mindless urbanisation that have replaced the quaintness and purity of yesteryears. He goes down the memory lane to when he was young with flashbacks of his scholarly father; to events leading to migration; to the time when he was at a medical college; to the period when bloodletting became frequent. The reader can readily notice the pain which lies beneath the simple narrative.

The next piece is titled, “Rubakari: Aik New York, New York Collage”. It is not just an impression of the Big Apple. Farrukhi mulls over how the things that have happened in and around the city, most of them ghastly, changed the world’s outlook on life. There’s a palpable sense of bemusement in this piece. How can you overlook what’s taking place around you when the backdrop of a story becomes its protagonist? And the one remarkable thing that Farrukhi does to highlight this is to relate Ghalib’s poetry to his bafflement, which in a manner of speaking, soothes his soul.

The focus then shifts to Delhi in particular, and India in general, in “Sarishtadari: Aik Mannati Kahani”. In this particular piece, Farrukhi builds up the tempo like a movie sequence. He doesn’t instantly get to the point where the Indian parliament is attacked by terrorists, bringing the two neighbouring countries to the brink of war. He begins his journey from home, where his child inquires about which country he’s leaving for and isn’t it the same land where his grandfather was born. The father tries to make the child understand why the two countries are separate entities, and embarks on a journey to Delhi. Here he imbibes the milieu that he’s so often read and heard about. And then that abominable incident happens and changes the complexion of a cultural-cum-literary ambience that he earlier tried to absorb. Questions are asked. Answers are sought. And readers are left to make up their own minds.

Farrukhi expresses his observations and experiences in simple language but interweaves them with references to literature and art. This is purely to make the situations he’s in more comprehensible to himself. Inevitably, they add colour to his writing. When he discusses Africa in one chapter, for example, he ruminates on the award-winning film, Out of Africa, and allusions to Hemmingway’s story “The Snow of Kilimanjaro”. Just like when he summoned Ghalib to his rescue while making sense of New York.

The last part of Qaid-i-Muqam centres on the northern areas of Pakistan after they were hit by the devastating earthquake. His descriptions of some of the places are worth reading over and over again.

Some would say that Farrukhi has the knack of being at the right place at the right time or at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or is it right place, wrong time? Whatever may be true, it stirs the writer in him to put pen to paper.

The reviewer is a Dawn staffer

Qaid-i-Muqam (TRAVEL WRITING) By Asif Farrukhi Scheherzad Press, Karachi 256pp. Rs300