Poetry is what we turn to when all else has ceased making sense. Poems speak to us in ways that they miraculously end up listening to what we wish to express but cannot find the language to do so. Amidst a web of emotions to cope with, anxiety and helplessness triggered at the faintest hint of an imminent disaster, the incomprehensibility of daily events – in the neighbourhood or across the border – turning darker every passing day, the vulnerability stemming from the knowledge of the self’s limitations, the gradual indifference to the growing injustice, violence, and despair around us as normative realities, poetry reveals itself as a calming force. It might not promise solutions or an immediate and instant recovery from all pain and tragedy, but it surely joins us as an able companion in the shared space of silence, reflection, and introspection.
Zehra Nigah’s nazms and ghazals are those able companions that ferry us through the unforgiving days of confusion and conundrums to a haven of emotional security. Nigah’s verses lie awake by our side on sleepless nights as we toss and turn between compulsions from the past and duties of the present.
Poet of few poems
The Introduction to The Story of Eve: Selected Poems by translator Rakhshanda Jalil is an ode in itself. An ode not just to the woman whose poems she has translated from the original Urdu, but it stands as testimony to all that Zehra Nigah came to represent through her six-decade career as a fierce, fearless, feisty literary voice. In the 1950s and 60s, Jalil informs her readers, when women poets were perhaps an anomaly, Nigah not only entered a space dominated by men, she stayed and has been ruling as a distinctive force to reckon with ever since her first mushaira in Delhi in 1953. Such was her stage presence on what can be called her debut as a shayara (poet) in public, that the audience did not wish to hear other legends such as Jigar Muradabadi, who were also in attendance. From a nervous and rather demure beginning, Nigah would soon go on to grow in stature and eventually enthral the audiences through her impactful and insightful recitations at several poetic gatherings.
Fortunately, her family was her pillar of strength that tirelessly motivated her to keep the creative spark alive. As a poet of repute, her confidence grew as more and more people began listening to her with admiration while recognising her poetic sentiment, craft, skill, tone, and tenor. Some of the noteworthy aspects of Nigah’s poems that Jalil draws our attention to are her unique style of recitation and lyricism, the “simplicity of her poetic idiom”, use of syntax, syllable, and “older poetic diction”, and her complete disdain for excess – which she terms to be “fluff” – and absolute allegiance to brevity and quality. Even though Nigah, a much-revered figure known as a “living classic”, has published “only four slim collections” in her career, writes Jalil, the impact that these “slender” collections have had over time and across generations is beyond imagination.
Nigah writes with a flair and technique that might seem conversational, colloquial, and straightforward, but when you pause and reflect on these so-called simple lines, stanzas, and verses, the realization of their profundity, depth, and meaning is inexplicable. For instance, her poem, “Main Bach Gayi Ma, Main Bach Gayi” (‘I was Saved, Mother, I was Saved’), written from the perspective of an unborn girl child, who expresses her fortune of having escaped female foeticide, is not limited to the criminal act of murdering a girl child or honour killing. It exposes the patriarchal norms and rigid gender roles that dictate the place and worth of a person, especially women, in society. She writes:
“Mira qad jo thoda sa badhta
Mire baap ka qad chhota padta
Miri chunari sar se dhalak jaati
Mire bhai ki pagdi gir jaati”“Had I gained a little height, my father would have
— Translation by Rakhshanda Jalil.
lost a few inches,
Had my veil slipped from my head, my brother’s turban
would have fallen.”
No labels, please
In 2013, as part of a special lecture series hosted by Aga Khan University, Karachi, Zehra Aapa, as she is fondly known, said, “Nature does not discriminate between a male and a female when it awards competence and abilities.” For Nigah, poetry is a tool to “communicate love that should not be compartmentalised into gender roles and differences.” In her poems, therefore, Nigah refrains from consciously pushing for a feminist agenda, rather it happens organically. The “feminine” sensibility toward the socio-political issues of her time does not necessarily prioritise one ism over the other.
The thematic diversity she deals with is remarkable, and the range of subjects is enormous. From denouncing General Zia’s oppressive rule, articulating disbelief at the fate of child soldiers in war, and pleading for divine intervention in the wake of destruction, atrocities, and sexual crimes, Nigah’s poetry creates a lasting impression on the reader’s mind through the use of subtle expressions, everyday images of domesticity, and simple but surely not simplistic phrases. There is an absence of deliberate complexity in communication.
Resisting jargon and verbosity, Nigah describes the most complicated situations with a hint of measured innocence and godliness. Herein lies her magic. The supposed scenic tranquillity or playfulness that often shines through her verses coaxes the reader to dig deeper to expose the horrific truths of human survival and the human condition. For example, in the poem, “Empty Bottle”, the poet asks a little girl the reason for preserving an empty bottle of perfume. The girl laughs and says,
“‘Zehra Aapa
A huge jinn
Was captive in this bottle
Till a few days ago.’‘Now he’s a prisoner of palaces.
Look at the poor fellow’s fate
His palace too is made of glass!’”
Through this carefully selected collection of 75 poems in translation of which 65 are nazms and 11 are ghazals, Rakhshanda Jalil has beautifully and intelligently lived up to Zehra Nigah’s personal philosophy of “saying more with less”. The care and caution with which Jalil has showcased and made accessible to the English-speaking world the literary genius of a master poet – an epitome of empathy – is genuinely praiseworthy. Hopefully, Nigah’s indefatigable spirit will inspire the present and forthcoming generations of women and men to become poets, writers, readers, and artists while inculcating the same sense of honesty, clarity, perceptiveness, and simplicity that Zehra Aapa stood for and continues to stand by till today. You read her and you feel heard and understood.
The Story of Eve: Selected Poems, Zehra Nigah, translated from the Urdu by Rakhshanda Jalil, Speaking Tiger Books.
