FACE TO FACE
A poet even in prose
MITA KAPUR
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Sheen Kauf Nizam believes that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
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PASSIONATE ABOUT POETRY: Sheen Kauf Nizam believes in finding the poet within.
POETRY is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them. I can say the same for Sheen Kauf Nizam, an Urdu poet from Jodhpur — no words can capture the "experience" that he is.
A poet and a critic, he exudes a unity of infinity. Those whose lives he has touched for a few moments have only one opinion — "there is no poet like him, no friend like him and no human being like him".
Inspirations
Nothing strange, you may say for a poet to be sensitive. Agreed. But for a Hindu (at the cost of sounding crassly communal), to speak and write in Urdu as if it were the very haemoglobin quotient that flows in his veins, speak of Hindi Literature, T.S. Eliot, post-modern inter-textuality and Afro-American poets in the bass and rhythm that comes from intense study yet effortless ease.
How many literary figures can you think of who draw their life force from myriad cultures, languages and traditions? The poet is a rich man — rich because he has encountered many other selves and transformed into a beautiful whole. A Nastaleeq.
The poet describes himself as a child who wants every toy, all the toffees when it comes to reading. "I read to fulfill myself, I lust for it, I follow it like a river along its course — bahte paani ki dhaara ko bhar lun apni bahon mein."
With Lavz Dar Lavz and Manto : Aitijaaj Ke Afsane, acclaimed books in Poetic Criticism, Nizam has two books awaiting release, Mani Ke Mayar and Sehra Ke Samar.
His inspiration? "You may find me quasi-romantic, but inspiration is a mystery. The creative urge is like a spider weaving its web and dying in that very web — you draw from your own self. You have to face the inner Ghalib, or believe in what Simone de Beauvoire believed that poets are myth singers. I don't know. It is a search. Baat aati hai labh pe dil se, baat dil mein kahan se aati hai?
"Life is poetry. It cannot be summed up in a handful of words. We all see the same sunset, yet, your sun is different, my sunset is different. We take out different meanings from it." Simply conveyed with unfathomable depth. He justifies the epithet, "always be a poet even in prose".
Feel for Urdu
The poet feels there is nothing "difficult" about Urdu. "It's a wrong notion. We speak the same way, we have the same background, the same tradition, 70 per cent of the words, nouns, verbs, the syntax are the same, most Hindi writers say Amir Khusro was the first poet they studied. Urdu zubaan took birth in India; all the best literature is a part of Hindustani culture. Dara Shikoh studied the Vedas.
"It is a false belief that Urdu is a Muslim language. A language does not belong to a religion. It is a culture in its entirety. Even Ghalib believed that his shayari became better with the use of Farsi."
"The Britishers planted these differences. We lose cultural wars without fighting them; we side with the ruler, not the ruled when we lose political wars. We start believing in the culture of victory, our imagination believes that they won because they were culturally sound which is why we lost out to the forks and knives."
Quoting from Hindu Shastras with familiar ease, Nizam felt "we have absorbed our poetics from the Iranis, Milton, Keats, African poets, and we will continue to adopt the others coming in the other ages. Tulsi, Meera, Rahim, Bihari were poets who joined Hindi to the folk element — aap hain aap, aap sab kuch hain, aur hain aur, aur kuch bhi nahin! Is this difficult, is this Urdu or is this Hindi?
Experience the culture
"You have to understand the culture and tradition, in all its hidden similes. The same way that Kalidas wrote in his Kumarasambhava, humein padhlo hamaare unlikhen mein - the `saying without speaking.' It is like this: If you have not tasted them, you will not know how sweet are sugar, jaggery and honey. You have to intensely feel and know our culture, tradition, experience it, live with it in your home, family and environment to fully express it from the heart.You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some with you!"
For Urdu poets giving the impression that they live in another era, the poet conceded humbly. "Yes we have cloistered ourselves. We have not developed our communication infrastructure as well as we should have. But yet the progression of inter-textuality cannot be stopped. Art and sensibility travel outward and from within, journeying at two levels. My mother had never heard of Narcissus, but would chide me when I looked at my reflection in the bath water — `you will go insane'. The layers permeate, through cultures and time, down the ages."
A passionate believer that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood, Sheen Kauf Nizam has left his audiences mesmerised. For him "poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance".
E-mail: mita@kapurs.in
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