Urdu Poetry –Translated and Original
By Syed Afsar Sajid
1. ‘Beginning of Tomorrow’- (Urdu Poetry of Karamat Bukhari)
Translated by: Amina Rizwan
2. ‘Charagh-e arzoo shab bhar jaleiN’ by Riaz Ahmad Parwaz
3. ‘Maghrib may mashriq daikha’ By Riaz Ahmad Parwaz
The first book is a versified translated version of noted poet and ex-bureaucrat Karamat Bukhari’s Urdu poems into English. The remaining two books forming collections of Urdu verse, have been authored and compiled by Riaz Ahmad Parwaz, a veteran poet and journalist from Faisalabad.
‘Beginning of Tomorrow’
Amina Rizwan, the translator of Karamat Bukhari’s Urdu verse into English, is a writer, educator and design artist having obtained her MFA degree from Cranbrook Academy of Arts in Michigan (US). Presently she is associated with the Pakistan Institute of Fashion & Design, Lahore as an Assistant Professor of Jewellery Design and Gemological Sciences, She is also the author of ‘Wearable Verses’ purported to be ‘a critical and reflective manuscript of jewelery and objects from socio-cultural contexts’.
Apart from a prolix introduction to the poetics of Karamat Bukhari by Tariq Wasifi, the book contains a short preface by Karamat Bukhari himself in regards to the form and content of his compositions. He claims that he has introduced multiple forms in his verse, such as ode, sonnet, blank verse, haiku, ‘khamasi’, ‘mustazad’, and stanzas of varying lines like quintains and sestains, with a view to broadening its contextuality, viability, and scope. He does not approve of prose poetry as a genre of verse.
The translator’s prefatory note titled ‘In search of truth and metaphors’ also sheds light on the mechanics and merits of Karamat Bukhari’s poetic art and creation. The title of the book is drawn from an identical title of one of his poems. The advent of ‘tomorrow’ simultaneously implies both hope and its elusiveness. She thinks that Karamat’s poetry highlights separation and solitude as a paradox of human existence aside from the ‘journeys of age and time’ embedded in the gyrating course of one”s diurnal existence.
The translation embodies a sizeable number of 123 poems. The captions are self-speaking, the diction and the quality of versification (free verse), despite some prosodic deviations here and there, are generally fair and the range of figures of speech, such as similes, metaphors and symbols including conceits has been skillfully conceived and executed.
Poems named ‘Beginning of tomorrow’, ‘City of sorrow’, ‘Voice’, ‘If you wish to search’, ‘Quest’, ‘If you wish to sell’, ‘Broken tree’, ‘Wish’, ‘Who remembers’, ‘Solitude’, ‘Night’, and ‘I am the world of poetry’ stand out as the pick of the miscellany.
By the bye, proof reading of the book does not seem to have been carried out prudently. In the entire prose section, and occasionally in the translated poems too, syntactical errors are conspicuous that naturally affect the aesthetics of the product.
‘Charagh-e arzoo shab bhar jaleiN’ — ‘Maghrib may mashriq daikha’
These verse collections by poet Riaz Ahmad Parwaz were published in 2020 and 2022 respectively. The first is an anthology of ghazal whereas the second, a collection of both ghazal and nazm. The poet’s vision seems to embrace time in its timelessness as manifested in the instant duo of his poetic work.
Prof. Riaz Ahmad Qadri, a noted academic and poet-writer, and Mujib-ur-Rahman Sahil of Pak British Society, have contributed forewords to the first book highlighting the salient features of Riaz Ahmad Parwaz’s poetics and style. The former holds that Parwaz is a talented poet with years of experience in the art of versification. His poetry is a reflection of life and its multitudinous expanse of pain and pleasure. His literary style is simple though inimitable. The rhythmic flow and cadence of his lines ‘aspire to the condition of music’.
Mujib-ur-Rahman Sahil has explored the philosophical undertones of Parwaz’s verse in the backdrop of the uncanny existentialistic situation characterizing the present age. The ghazal in this collection is essentially an illustration of what the aforementioned litterateurs have maintained in their respective commentaries.
The second book ‘Maghrib may mashriq daikha’ is a combination of Parwaz’s ghazal and nazm prefaced by a concise but apt critical overview of the work by famed poet, critic, and intellectual Dr. Riaz Majeed. The interesting thing about these compositions is that during his prolonged visits to alien lands, the poet would not miss the opportunity to write poetry. The collection therefore contains a spatial reference to all of these poems, ghazal or nazm. In the course of these journeys, the poet empathetically observed the condition and demeanour of the Pakistani immigrants living in different parts of the world with their moors firmly fastened to the soil of the motherland.
His sojourns in the West which is euphemistically connected to the Down Under also, relate to Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York, Bloomington (US), Sydney, Perth, Melbourne (Australia), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Makkah al Mukarramah (KSA), Cairo (Egypt), Al-Yaarubiyah (Syria), Jalandhar, Delhi (India), Chittagong, Cox’s Bazar (Bangladesh), Al-Karkh-Baghdad (Iraq), Konya (Turkiye), Kashgar (China), Rome, Venice, Ravenna (Italy), Manila (The Philippines), London (UK), Tehran (Iran), Tijuana (Mexico), Paris (France), and Singapore as indicated against each item in the collection.
Common themes of these poems are pain, anxiety, human misery, poverty, deprivation, incongruity between wants and their fulfilment, vacuity of dreams, love versus glamour, the East-West cultural dichotomy, patriotism, anarchy, nostalgia et al. The poems amply reflect the poet’s vast personal experience, his keen observation, and his gift of narration backed by a discreet didactic stance all of which lend a genuine grace and credibility to his style. A few quotes from Parwaz’s work in view would acquaint the reader with his content and style:
Natawanon ko maut lazim hai/AasmanoN say faisla aaya – Aamada-e paikar kiya khud ko khud – Is tarah bedar kiya khud ko khud – Tasawwur waaN nahi pahuncha kisi ka/
Muhabbat may jahaN tak aagaya huN – Ab masheenain qeemti haiN aadmi hain bewaqar/ Ma’eN taraqqi kay zamanay ki ada samjha nahi – Kal tu rahay na pass to yeh
zakhm bhar na jaaeiN/Kal kay liye bhi dard bahut say bacha liye – Shayad kay khareedar milay apnay lahu ka/Hum laaey haiN bazaar may mehnat ka paseena.
