AS I received Suhail Ahmad Khan’s new collection of verse, Rah ki Nishanian, I felt as if I had been taken unawares. This feeling is not new with me. His previous collection, too, had come as a surprise. There is a reason for it. Preoccupied with his scholarly pursuits, Suhail Ahmad hardly betrays his involvement with verse. In fact, he is known as a critic who teaches Urdu. This reputation, plus his scholarly overseriousness doesn’t perhaps allow him to feel at ease with the poet in him. He is secretive about his poetry the way a cultural married man is secretive about his love affair. The cat comes out of the bag only when after years he feels compelled under his poetic urge to bring out his collection of verse.
This is, however, an exceptional situation. In our literary tradition, critics in general have been seen to develop a fondness for verse. They are very keen to be recognized as poets but fail in the attempt as in most cases they write bad verse.
But Suhail Ahmad Khan is a genuine poet. The only handicap with his poetry is that he attaches primary importance to his scholarly involvements. The poet in him has been overshadowed by the critic and the scholar that he prefers to be.
And let me explain my position as a reader of his verse. I am a reader of poetry with a limited taste. My aesthetic limitations don’t permit me to appreciate all manner of poetry. Most of the modernistic verse eludes my understanding. Suhail’s verse is modern without being modernistic, and is relevant to our times without trying to be contemporary. Instead, it brings with it some vague streaks of primitiveness.
In fact, Suhail writes escapist poetry. The word ‘escapism’ was very popular with the progressive critics during the progressive movement. With them it was a derogatory term employed for an outright dismissal of writers unacceptable to them. Here I am using it with all seriousness in a positive way. Suhail’s is an escapist world. We stay only for a few moments in the world as it stands today and observe momentarily the ravages of war, and violence. Soon we escape into a haven where the earth and heaven appear unpolluted and things exist untainted by modern technology and are unsullied by urban life. Stars twinkling brightly high in the sky, clouds roaming innocently, rivers flowing blissfully and the oceans swelling noisily with sea-birds hovering over their high waves. The age of modern science and technology has not yet encroached upon it and the modern man is not to be found here. Only the sailors of olden times will be seen here navigating the high seas and the travellers wandering in distant lands will be found pining for their homes. The poet seems to like journeying. And hence his love for travellers, sailors, and migratory birds.
It is the portrait of a world not yet industrialized. Man has not yet developed a craze for the conquest of Nature. And Nature, too, seems not in a mood to overawe and frighten man. They appear to have mutual respect for each other and are co-existing peacefully and have developed a line of communication with each other. The phenomenon of Nature brings here in its wake not fear and awe, but just a sense of wonder. And this sense of wonder is deepened by a sense of passing time.
Nature has not been portrayed here on a large canvas. Here we have no drama of the man-nature relationship on a grand scale. Only fleeting moments have been captured in lines as few as possible. Each such attempt goes to make a short poem. So we have here a kind of album of living pictures finely drawn from a world where man and Nature appear to be living in perfect harmony.
The poet’s journey to Japan seems to have added a new dimension to his depiction of nature. Life in Japan offers him some varieties of the phenomena he had been observing in his own land.
These poems are in the first place expressions of the level of feeling with no burden of scholarly ideas carrying with them. I was just saying that the poet in Suhail Ahmad Khan has been overshadowed by the scholar and the critic that he prefers to be. But in spite of this, the poet here appears guarding his integrity jealously allowing no intrusion from the critic and the scholar. It may be noted here that the writer of these poems, though a scholar involved in philosophical thoughts and ideas, doesn’t appear to be drawing inspiration from those of our poets who are known for their philosophical approach to life. To be more precise, Suhail appears in these poems to be drawing more inspiration from Nasir Kazmi and Muneer Niazi than from Ghalib and Iqbal.
So what we find here is sheer poetry, a series of short poems, which may be understood as a sensitive soul’s response to the manifold moods of Nature exquisitely expressed. These tiny poems when put together form a large picture pointing to a wider world of meaning.
AS I received Suhail Ahmad Khan’s new collection of verse, Rah ki Nishanian, I felt as if I had been taken unawares. This feeling is not new with me. His previous collection, too, had come as a surprise. There is a reason for it. Preoccupied with his scholarly pursuits, Suhail Ahmad hardly betrays his involvement with verse. In fact, he is known as a critic who teaches Urdu. This reputation, plus his scholarly overseriousness doesn’t perhaps allow him to feel at ease with the poet in him. He is secretive about his poetry the way a cultural married man is secretive about his love affair. The cat comes out of the bag only when after years he feels compelled under his poetic urge to bring out his collection of verse.
