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| April 24, 2003 | Thursday | Safar 21, 1424 |
Poetry reading evokes lively debate
ISLAMABAD, April 23: Muse attracted a number of accomplished and budding poets and writers at the poetry reading session by the Literature section of the Asian Study Group at the TVO Auditorium here late Monday evening.
Harris Khalique, English (and Urdu) poet and writer attracted a lively participation by the audience. For an observer of the contemporary realities of Pakistan, some of the poems read by him represented, as critic Dr Tariq Rehman would say, “one of the most sensitive and powerful creative responses”. He sang of a historical perspective that may be forgotten in the luxury of freedom, but cannot be made to vanish: They made Pakistan on the train stations. Separate water taps For Hindus and Muslims. And they were labelled, Hindu pani, Muslim pani. Then comes the lament: But we fail to choose a water tap And drink tears - Hindu tears, Muslim tears Punjabi tears, Bengali tears Mohajir tears, Sindhi tears -
He talks of the dichotomy of the “internationalist”. Wherever I go I think of Karachi I dream of Lahore I know no more.
Harris Khalique talks of ...Gog and Magog licking up the walls of sanity, of people and their struggle... painting, as it were, shades of an indefinable ugliness all around:
He asked me To put on my stinking clothes At once Like the world. He talks of the ...blonde grass of autumn in Islamabad; he writes of his writer and film-producer father Khalique Ibrahim Khalique, of his ...passionate love, tempestuous anger hypertension, utter dislike for whoever is in the government.
He celebrates the Refugee, thinking: He comes from a country Where men had deeper roots than trees.
Harris Khalique has worked for development and human rights organizations and is currently working for SPO (Strengthening Participatory Organization). He holds a masters in development studies from the London School of Economics and a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from NED University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi. Writing both in Urdu and English, he has published two collections in English: If wishes were horses and divan. He has two collections in Urdu to his credit Aaj Jab Hui Barish and Saray Kam Zuroori They.
Rahila Durrani, an English teacher who kind of presided over the function, summed up Khalique thus: “Harris Khalique has written compellingly, passionately, thoughtfully, critically, ironically on the universal issues of Man and his world. His poetic self speaks with the eloquence of sincerity.”
Poetess Nadia Niaz, described by the Asian Study Group’s moderator Amera Hamid, as born to Foreign Office parents in Colombo in June 1979, has already published a collection of poems Dream the Goddess. She had been to schools in Geneva, New Delhi and continued her education in Islamabad, New York and Washington DC. Her poems may “reflect the idealism of youth”, as Rahila Durrani said, but in meaningful lines like I know what is dead and what is blood one may find the powerful poetic echoes that may lie ahead. A poem from the collection: There is lyric and dance and sound and breath and between them nothing is was or will be.
Nadia Niaz writes plays also (Faces, her first play was enacted at Kinnaird College, from where she did her Masters in English literature). She has also co-written, directed and acted in Emile Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames and a short play Les Esclaves. She has also been writing short stories.
Poets and writers and activists of all hues, young and old, had gathered there. There was Urdu poetess and activist Kishwar Naheed, who wanted to know if the poet has written on the tragedy of Iraq. There were Mushir Anwar, Saad Sharif, Tahira Abdullah and young Usman, and a number of enthusiastic, old and young ladies and gentlemen interested in questions that ranged from the tragedy of the invasion of Iraq, and its reflection in poetry to the eternal, complex questions of how actually poetry comes about.
Ameera Hamid of ASG Group dedicated the evening to Allma Iqbal, whose death anniversary fell on that day (April 21), and lawyer Basharat Qadir came out with the English translation of Naqa-i-Sayyaar-i-Mann by Iqbal. Two young girls Amina Jatoi and Rukshani Weerasooriya from Colombo also read their poems.—Mufti Jamiluddin Ahmad.
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