"Dil kardaa hun kaday na bolaan/Kalleyaan beh ke akhiyaan kajj ke/Dil di kallar dhaeree pholaan.” [I wish to never speak again/To sit by myself, eyes shut/And sift through my heart’s barren dust.]

‘Adh’, the title poem from Mazhar Tirmazi’s latest book of poetry effectively sets the tone for the collection, striking a nostalgic chord that connects the winding streets of Lahore with the cool ripples of the river Thames in London. Tirmazi’s book features a diverse set of poems, their subjects ranging from romantic love to political polemic. However, what is perhaps most striking is their insight into the diasporic imagination, their telling portrayal of a life and identity split between two cities: London and Lahore.

Tirmazi currently resides in London. He shot to fame with classical singer Asad Amanat Ali Khan’s iconic rendition of his poem, ‘Umraan langhiyaan pabhaan paar’ [A lifetime on tiptoes]. A prolific poet, Tirmazi has published four other collections in the past, namely Jaadga Sufnaa, Thandi Bhubal, Kaya Kagad, and Dooja Hath Sawali. In 2015, he published Adh.

The underlying themes of Tirmazi’s poetry are deeply informed by his affiliation with the contemporary Punjabi movement. The Punjabi movement represents a loose alliance of different activist groups and advocacy NGOs that are taking the state to task for its historical neglect of Punjab’s language, literature, and culture. Tirmazi’s poem ‘Boli naalon turuteya bandaa’ [A man estranged from language] adequately captures the sense of loss and cultural dislocation articulated by the Punjabi movement. In the lines “Chaetay da mein teela teela jor ke/Malka walay note di bhaan turaa ke/Kheesay paa ke turya phirda haan” [Gathering the straws of consciousness/I walk around with spare change from the Queen’s banknote] Tirmazi joins the loss of collective consciousness with the “malka wala note” (the Queen’s banknote), evoking the memory of colonialism when Punjabi and other vernaculars were labelled ‘vulgar tongues’.

The critique of colonial linguistics was central to the Punjabi movement at its origin in the 1970s. During this period, the Maoist-inspired cultural politics of the Mazdoor Kissan Party under Major Muhammad Ishaq served as a rallying point for Punjabi intellectuals. Punjabi was celebrated as a working-class language, and its cultivation was considered necessary for revolutionary politics. Today, the Punjabi movement is but a shadow of its radical self. The focus on the working class has been replaced by a focus on the urban, educated middle class. A search for ‘Punjabiyat’, represented by a regional nationalist identity, has substituted the focus on the struggle for social change.

This transformation in the Punjabi movement is captured aptly in Tirmazi’s poetry. Tirmazi belongs to the generation of Punjabi writers and activists that were produced by its progressive origins, and remain active today, when its discourse has shifted to questions of linguistic rights and state patronage. His poems ‘Hath’ [Hands] and ‘Qaatil’ [Murderer], in particular, evoke the socialist inspiration behind Punjabi literary radicalism and language activism in the 1960s: “Hath kahani karday … jadd hathaan di bani jurrdi/Waag dilaan di honi de wal murdi” [Hands tell stories … When their stories coalesce/Hearts turn towards the truth]. Here, ‘hands’ come across most forcefully as ‘working hands’ and the line “hath kahani karday” places working hands as both the maker and the narrator of stories. The attempt is to establish the marginalised as the subject of history.

A similar sentiment is echoed in his ode to east Punjab’s brazen Naxalite poet, Paash, who was assassinated by Khalistani extremists in 1988. In ‘Qaatil’, Tirmazi eloquently holds Paash’s killers accountable for the murder of the Punjabi literary tradition itself: “Aawan wala waqt tuhanu qaatil likhsee/Wanjhlee te geetaan da qaatil/Rukhaan te chiryaan de qaatil/Dharti te aakaash de qaatil/… Paash de qaatil” [The future will blame you for murder/Murderers of flutes and songs/Murderers of trees and birds/Murderers of earth and sky/… Murderers of Paash].

In ‘Qaatil’ we find another crucial connection that defines Tirmazi’s work. He ties the firebrand east Punjabi poet with the historical cultural roots of the land. In this poem, the geography of Punjab is sketched in terms that combine the landscape — the dharti [earth], aakaash [sky] and the rukh [trees] — with an unbroken poetic tradition connecting Ranjha’s flute with Paash’s rebellious verse. Tirmazi, like many of his contemporaries, acknowledges his indebtedness to the classical tradition in referencing Ranjha’s flute in ‘Qaatil’, and by titling one of his poems ‘Birhon tanaawaan kasseeyaan’ where he evokes Sufi poet Madho Lal Hussain by adapting a line from his kafi.

This internal referencing is a well-worn tradition in subcontinental writing, a device employed by the author to pay tribute to the rich folk tradition that produced and preceded them. While Tirmazi’s love poems offer little by way of intellectual depth in this regard, his unique contribution lies in bringing this cultural geography of Punjab to bear on the diasporic self.

A vast majority of the poems in Adh address this theme. ‘Thames de kanddhay’ [By the banks of the Thames], ‘Wales chonh langhdeyaan’ [Passing through Wales],‘Jahaaz vichon’ [From inside the airplane], ‘Wazirabad’, and ‘Lahoron parat ke’ [Returning from Lahore] are among many that blur the boundary between the ‘three Punjabs’ — east, west, and diasporic: “Akh parchaanwayn di tassawur banaawndi ae/Duuron naeray, naeraeyon duur le jaandi ae” [The eye makes shadows/Brings the far near, the near far]. The poet’s akh [eye] is his perspective, his subject position. It makes the “far near, and the near, far”, allowing Tirmazi to conjure the Chenab in his walk along the Thames. The poet accomplishes this by creating a sense of familiarity through simple, colloquial language.

Yet the tone of familiarity is often punctured by a single line that brings into relief the poet’s sense of diasporic dislocation — the view from the airplane (“jahaaz vichon”) is necessarily distant, disengaged. We see here Tirmazi grapple with an important theme in Punjab’s history and poetry: migration and separation from the motherland.

Beginning with Ranjha’s exodus from Takht Hazara in the classical epic, Heer Ranjha, the motif of migration finds a new interpretation in the modern period in Ghadar di Gunj [The echo of Ghadar]. This was the first anthology of Punjabi diasporic writing produced by the anti-colonial movement of the Ghadar Party in 1914. Finally, separation from the homeland was fundamentally reinterpreted in Punjabi poetry after the violent Partition of 1947, when thousands were forced to flee their cities and villages across Punjab.

While it lacks the sharp political critique of the Ghadari poetry, Tirmazi’s Adh puts its own distinct stamp on the poetics of loss and separation in Punjab. In ‘Wazirabad’, an old woman becomes his mouthpiece for voicing the demise of a pre-colonial Punjabi past in which “farq dilaan vich koi nahi si/Ik tabbar de jee sann saray” [Our hearts were the same/We were all of the same kin]. Yet when Partition violence arrives, this harmony breaks down completely: “Guru kothay de laagay laashaan illaan kuttay khaanday rahay” [Dogs and eagles ate the corpses piled next to the Guru Kotha].

It is interesting to note how the memory of Partition and the experience of the diaspora connect in Tirmazi’s work. The Punjab that populates his reminisces in London is the undivided, pre-Partition Punjab, conjured through imagery from the rural landscape and the subtle use of symbols from the classical tradition. While Adh creates a pre-colonial utopic Punjab for us, it is also shot through with irony. The poet’s lament is a song of nostalgia, a vivid memory of things that are no more.

The reviewer teaches Punjabi poetry at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

Adh
(POETRY)
By Mazhar Tirmazi
Sang-e-Meel Publications, Pakistan
ISBN: 978-9693528824
237pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, January 22nd, 2017