E.M. FORSTER, while writing to Sir Ross Masood, described his novel, A Passage to India, as “a little bridge of sympathy” between two cultures and peoples.

Here, before me, is a newly-constructed little bridge of sympathy between cultures. The builders are three poets belonging to three different countries, each carrying the stamp of a different culture.

Of the three poets, Debjani Chatterjee, Simon Fletcher and Basir Sultan Kazmi, one is an Englishman while the other two are from India and Pakistan. Their selected poems under the title, A Little Bridge, go to make such a bridge. Debjani Chatterjee speaks of this bridge-making trio in these words:


Our three towns meet in tangled roses
Crimson white in a northern triangle.
We three shall greet again in shire and time
when meeting in multilingual rhyme.
Not witches, nor stooges, we poets three
are a little of each. Occidental
musketeers, we kings of Orient are,
friends who cross moorland boundaries and more.


Of these three musketeers, Debjani Chatterji was born in India and has also lived in Japan, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Egypt and Morocco before coming to Britain in 1972. Simon Fletcher was born in the Wyre Forest, Worcestershire. He has worked in journalism and teaching. Basir Sultan Kazmi was born in Pakistan in 1955. He is the elder son of Nasir Kazmi. In his early years, he studied and then taught English at the Government College, Lahore, and then proceeded to England where he completed his M.Ed in 1991 and a PGCE in English in 1995.

These three talented poets, coming from different corners of the world and possessed of diverse cultural backgrounds, met in Manchester. With their common involvement in poetry, soon developed a relationship so as to form a group, which they like to call the Mini Mushaira Writers Group. Coming from distant lands, each carries a treasure of memories with him. So when they get together, they not only exchange ideas but they also have an exchange of memories. And memories, even when they are diverse and are of different varieties, have something mysterious in common. One poem by Fletcher depicts beautifully the way they get together and feel and talk:


We talk of the mutual concerns,
while the conversation prances
gazelle-like around the room and
Faraza cooks and Wajiha watches Raiders of the Lost Ark
beyond our chat in the next room
your father, the great, late talker
wanders through back streets of Lahore
in your mind with his candid friends
in the early hours of morning;
your grandfather, military trim
holds his pose in crisp sepia.


Then, the poet begins talking about himself and is lost in a reverie, which brings back his father and grandfather alive:


I tell you of working the fields
with my father, the grass cutting,
fruit picking, slog of ploughing while
my grandfather has tea with a
certain politician; all this comes
back through the lanes of memory.
Raiders of our ‘lost ark’, we reach
out across years and languages
to build bridges of sympathy.
The past is a foreign country,
indeed; and what we did there: what is
telling to what we both do now.


This is the way they talk, and this is the way they have constructed a little bridge of sympathy between cultures and peoples. It is because of this bridge that Debjani Chatterjee, in spite of the fact that she did not know Urdu, was able to translate Basir Kazmi’s ghazals with remarkable success. Well-versed in Hindi, she managed to have these ghazals transliterated into the Dev Nagri script, which served as a bridge for her to reach the text.

But what is more amazing is the way she gains an understanding of the tradition of the ghazal, and succeeds in translating what appears to most translators, untranslatable. The ghazal is the kind of form which poses for translators problems which appear to them insurmountable. But let us have a glimpse of her translations and we will know with what ease she has overcome the hurdles in the way:


What was once a trivial fancy
is now my major occupation.
How well your memory retains
the one small mistake I have made.
Grief is a banyan tree, thick with leaves
while joys are tiny tender flowers.
Since the tears in my eyes have dried
dust flies about in my courtyard.
Better you change yourself Basir
for the world won’t change its values.


The little bridge of sympathy the poetic trio has built is significant due to the fact that it has been built when there is so much talk of a clash between civilizations and when hatred, violence and terrorism dominate the scene.

Such an attempt in any part of the world may be seen as an olive branch in the beak of the dove. It means that in face of worldwide violence and terrorism, here and there are good people trying in their own small way to save the world. They are engaged in building bridges. One such bridge has emerged in Manchester, thanks to the get-together of three poets from three different cultures.