Agha Shahid Ali

Ever since Varun Grover first brought him to my world, Agha Shahid Ali has caught my attention like no-one else has done since Gulzar! May be it is the confluence of the two different worlds that he effortlessly blends through his controlled wordplay. Or the rich heritage that makes him embrace the present openly, rather than conservatively stick to the forms and formats in caution. Or the disarming imbalance of a skillful cook of Kashmiri dishes who doesn't know how to turn off the smoke alarm in a Manhattan house. Or the sheer liveliness that added a touch of melancholy to the poetry that he composed while battling cancer. It has to be all of these and more. This was my first tryst with a poet who wrote ghazals in English, had the guts to attempt translating Faiz in English and accept the shortfalls in his attempt.

Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight
before you agonize him in farewell tonight?
Pale hands that once loved me beside the Shalimar:
Whom else from rapture’s road will you expel tonight?
I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates
A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight.
And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee
God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.

Had I been aware of his life while he was alive, had I been there to witness his demise in 2001, I'd have added this couplet to the ghazal (crime beyond pardon, yet):

Ask those rustling leaves, to lay still in mourning
There was a banyan, a towering tree that fell tonight!