LAHORE: Shadab Zeest Hashmi, the author of “Ghazal Cosmopolitan” discussed the phenomenon of transcendence of genre of ghazal into other languages, especially English, at a session “Ghazal Cosmopolitan - A collection of lyrical essays, original ghazals and qasidas including ghazal’s influence on the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca.”

The session was moderated by Dr Amra Raza, chairperson of the English Department, Punjab University.

Ms Hashmi started the session after reading ghazals from her book. She said that in ghazal, music and meaning were brought together and the richness of sound was affected by the diversity of the sources. She said English poetry had absorbed influences from different cultures. “It has words from Chinese, Italian, Urdu and other languages that have become part of American English,” she said.

She told the audience that ‘Garam masala’ was now part of the English dictionary. She said famous poet Shahid Ali not only brought in the structure of the ghazal but he also included different expressions of Arab diction like ‘laila majnoon’.

Ms Hashmi recited a ghazal of Sharbat Gula, an Afghan refugee girl who rose to fame due to her picture on the cover page of National Geographic magazine.

Ms Raza said “this English ghazal mushaira reminds her of Urdu ghazal mushaira.” “Urdu mushaira has certain requirements and is it the same case with the one in English,” she asked.

Ms Hashmi commented that the requirements of poetry were different for Urdu and English. “A ghazal covers many themes, for example, in the first couplet it can carry the theme of romance, in second couplet of revolution, divinity in the third and so on,” she said.

BOOK LAUNCH: Columnist, poet and essayist Harris Khalique on Sunday launched his collection of verses “No Fortunes to Tell” at an LLF session.

Bilal Zahoor was moderator of the session and Dr Tariq Rehman discussed the book.

Dr Rehman said human experience is the theme of the book and the way the poet elaborated the pain of common people in the verses is commendable. He also read some of the verses from the book about how a son was telling about his mother who was killed in a suicide blast and how he found dismembered parts of her body.

He said the poet portrayed the grief and pain of the war in the words as it happened.

Answering a question how he could portray the pain of common people while he himself belongs to the elite class, Harris Khalique said it was not necessary that one only feels the pain of his class and not of the others. “If I do not belong to Balochistan, it doesn’t mean I can’t write for the people of the area or can’t support them,” he said.

WAR GARDENS: Freelance photojournalist, writer and filmmaker Lalage Snow, author of War Gardens, says she spent seven years in war-torn Afghanistan to find unusual stories.

“The idea of farming is like protecting your identity and gardening is like breathing. We usually speak about fighters, troops and the local Taliban in conflicts but there is enough room to talk about others areas like gardening in conflicts,” she said during a session at the LLF.

She said even Israel-Gaza war was about the land because it was physically running out. “It is interesting to see the relationship with land and people fight for it from both sides.”

Ms Snow said Gaza was a small city of two million people and its conditions were very bad but the people were very resilient and they are maintaining their identity, gardening and agriculture as defiance.

While answering a query about Afghanistan, she said it was tricky and many of her friends had been killed in the war and added that the people were still dying in the ongoing conflict there.

She talked about her book which showed how people maintained gardens even in the time of the war and conflict and said growing mushroom was one of the ideas of young entrepreneurs in the time of war with Israel.

“Even in terrible circumstances people come up with wonderful resilient stories. I have noticed that these ordinary people just focus on the flowers and forget what’s happening outside during war,” Ms Snow added.

Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2019