Lamentation for the Lost Culture: A Reading of Agha Shahid

Ali’s Poetry

Mansi Mehra
M. Phil. (English)
Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University
Dwarka -New Delhi
India
Abstract
Agha Shahid Ali is a Kashmiri American poet; he can be referred as the Bard who sings
about the pain, suffering and oppression inflicted on the people of his homeland. There is a
constant sense of loss and lamentation with political undertone of protest pervasive
throughout his poetry. He laments the loss of a paradise which is now submerged in the
“blood dimmed tide”. His poems revolve around both thematic and cultural poles and there
are references of complete and all pervasive sense of loss in his works, this is what the paper
grapples with how he juxtaposes images of golden past with that of bleak images of modern
times, in order to understand the culturally barren times we are living in. Ali through his
poetry tries to fulfill his “double “duty as a Diaspora writer, one of asserting his identity and
other of upholding the culture of his homeland.

Agha Shahid Ali is a Kashmiri American poet; he can be referred as the Bard who
sings about the pain, suffering and oppression inflicted on the people of his homeland. There
is a constant sense of loss and lamentation with political undertone of protest pervasive
throughout his poetry. He laments the loss of a paradise which is now submerged in the
“blood dimmed tide”, especially after the watershed elections of 1990 which lit the separatist
flames and marked the beginning of a new phase of insurgency in the history of Kashmir.
This lead to mass exodus of Kashmiri pandits out of the valley along with them it lead to
destruction of centuries old mixed culture and tradition of the valley. Historically Kashmir
has always been a land of unique cultural blend. Going back to the time of the Aryan
civilization, Kashmir was the highest learning centre of Sanskrit and Persian, it became the
embracing point of Islam which bought with it, the finest traditions of Persian civilization
that of tolerance, brotherhood and sacrifice. Then back in 1947 before partition Kashmir
was a princely state outside the British raj, under the rule of Hindu Dogra dynasty with

www.ijellh.com 119
predominantly Muslim population. This diverse religion, language and cultural intermingling
that took place in Kashmir made it vibrant specimen of unparallel cultural cohesion.
Lamentation of this lost Kashmir is scattered throughout the poetry of Agha Shahid
Ali. He finds the culture, ethos, beauty of his beloved homeland being ripped, there are
movements in his poetry which show his inability to comprehend the face of his homeland,
which has now changed into a place “where shrines which were once revered by masses, are
now being turned into ashes. Curfew and gunfire have replaced the melodious springs and
saffron farms (Zaidi)”.Thus he writes “At certain point I lost track of you”. His verses take
our attention towards “internal colonialism” and seek to explain the subordinate the status of
a state within its own country.
Further as Professor Zaidi says that Ali clearly believed in Homi Bhabha‟s dictate
about the margins that “margin is no longer space marked by deprivation and powerlessness”.
He employed this unique perspective towards the diasporic space he inhabited, instead of
succumbing to the status of a refugee he becomes a cultural ambassador. This is best
exemplified through his experiment with traditional form of ghazals ,where he exploited the
“in between” space and produce hybrid kind of literature by combining Cazzone with the
Ghazal form at the same time he explores new meaning in old themes. His Ghazals can also
be read as effort on his part to change the perspective of orients regarding literature of the
oxidants.
His ghazal „Tonight‟ talks about a kind of psychological and cultural crisis that came
with the loss of moral and cultural identity. His themes are similar to that of T.S. Eliot in the
poem Wasteland, which also talk about cultural deficit in the present times. In Both the
poems in order to reestablish the missing order the poets look up to rich cultural heritage of
the past. Ali like Eliot combines images of pagan rituals and religious text against bleak
images of modern life, where spiritual death breeds cultural death. For instance in his
following couplet God‟s vintage loneliness has turned to vinegar- All the archangels –their
wings frozen –fell tonight.
The very images of god‟s loneliness turning to vinegar and frozen wings of arch angle
establishes the kind of barren times we are living in, where even archangels can‟t fly back to
heaven. In such times people start doubting the very existence of God. This becomes evident
from the last couplet of the Ghazal where he writes: And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell
thee-
God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.
Agha Shahid Ali is constantly struggling to come in terms with the present situation
of his beloved country which has turned into cultural and spiritual wasteland. His situation is

www.ijellh.com 120
somewhat similar to what Rushdie writes in his Imaginary Homeland “The writer who is
out of country and even out of language may experience this loss in an intensified manner.”
that is why his poems are full of heart wrenching pictures of the valley. Where beautiful
meadows are silenced by the bullets lie in unmarked grave. Shahid tries to comprehend the
same loss by following a disjoin structure of history he perceive diverse juncture of time and
place, not as interlinked but as exciting concurrently ,which made realization of loss even
more pungent.
For Agha Shahid Ali poems are not single dimensional journeys to the past but rather a two
way movement connecting two different points of time. In the poem “I dream I am the only
passenger on flight 423 to Srinagar”. Memory becomes an important tool, through which he
evokes history to emphatically bring out how war, political turmoil and bloodshed creates a
culturally barren country. In the poem sitting in the plane Shahid takes a birds view but is
unable to decide whether he is watching the burning of autumn leaves or the famous shrine of
Sheik Noor Ud Din, the burning of the shrine acted as a metaphor for the already decaying
and lost culture. Further he does not even impart the dignity of identifying the "men" who
were responsible for the destruction of a pious place. What was important to him was the loss
of one of the most enduring cultural legacies of both Muslims and pandits. The poet
expresses his sadness through the resolute finality in Noor -ud-Din's voice, "Death has bent
my back” and his spirit appears in “apocalyptic black cloak” as if it is mourning the loss of
invaluable Kashmiri history. In the same vein the poet see the death of Begam Aktar as her
death implied an irreparable loss to an already dying Urdu culture in India. He feared that
with the extinction of Urdu language the very culture of tehzib and love which it preaches
will also disappear and this is something that binds a nation together.
His poetry is like a canvas on which he draws an imaginary painting of his homeland
though bruised and besieged but its mesmerizing landscape and unique culture remains an
alter ego for him. He uses vivid images and leitmotifs in his poetry that have diverse cultural
connotations for instant „paisley‟ which is a droplet shaped motif popular in kashmiri
handicrafts it represents the rhythm of life and he use the paisley to indicate how life has been
disrupted and how kashmiri culture is dying .In the poem The country without a post office he
write:
Each post office is boarded up. Who will deliver
parchment cut in paisleys, my new to prison?
Similarly he uses Saffron, because of its unique qualities as a metaphor for the
identity of Kashmir but ironically the very color of saffron is associated with Hindu religion,
the poet uses such images in order to reinforce the interdependent cultural heritage of

www.ijellh.com 121
Kashmir. At the same time Ali tries to indicate the destruction of the fragile petals, amidst
bloodshed and violence. The poet feel these leitmotifs are nothing but narrative of the lost
paradise and identity.
The poets‟ strong bond to his motherland despite his expatriation may be interpreted
in light of Edward Said perception which regard exile as “an unhealed rift between self and
the native place. Its essential sadness can never be surmounted” that is why most of his work
is located in his homeland and in remembering it, he laments the loss of a golden past when
Kashmir was regarded as a paradise. In the poem “Last Saffron” he quotes Jahangir‟s couple
regarding beauty of Kashmir “if there is paradise on Earth it is this, it is this, it is this.” but in
the present times comparison of Kashmir to the garden of Eden seems ironical and hollow
particularly in the light of interreligious violence that has reduced it to nothing more than ash
laden land used to assert ones supremacy and authority. This is the loss he tries to come in
terms with.
There is a gradual transition in his poems from grief to condemnation and this
becomes evident in one of his most political poem “The country without a post office” which
is written in the backdrop of the ongoing conflict, in the very begging he states that he is
talking about the city where “minarets have been entombed “and “when the muezzin died city
was robbed of every call”. These line project the feeling of rapture and fragmentation in a
culturally barren country and also show conversion of the once termed “the blessed land” into
state of exile. The poet raises his voice of protest against political repression, as well as
ignorance on the part of the government but the main focus is on the plight of innocent
people dying in the valley. Here his concern seem similar to other Kashmiri writers like
Basharat Peer and Mirza Waheed who write about undocumented events of atrocities that
the people face other than writing about what is projected through the leaders. The lines of
the second coming by Yeats fit perfectly well in context of Kashmir.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The poet condemns the perpetrator of this anarchy who under the garb of “peace”
have uprooted the entire valley. He writes in the poem Farwell “They make a desolation and
call it peace.” Further the concept of “othering” by Edward said can also be employed to
understand the situation in the poem Farwell in particular and Kashmir at large .Where the
kashmiri pandits under the spell of political leaders started viewing the muslims as other
,their enemy and forced the entire nation to share similar view. The poet feels sorry that they
did not value their rich intermingled cultural heritage before reaching such a conclusion. He

www.ijellh.com 122
tries to bridge in this gap through his poems. Though his poems are political yet they are not
propagandist in nature.
Despite all the communal and cross border tension Agha Shahid Ali hopes that
through his work he might be able to fill in the cultural vacuum that is created in his beloved
homeland. That is why his poems are stuffed with images that reaffirm the composite culture
of India, line like: “In the lake the arms of temple and mosque are locked in each other‟s
reflection.” The phrase "locked reflections," is a medium to express the love and closeness
that the two religious communities once shared. At the same time these lines can also be read
as a plea on the part of poet who is lamenting the disintegration of Harmony that once existed
between the two cultures. Lines from the poem Water beautifully describe this integrated
culture:
At the temple and the mosque the rose petals
lay all night perfuming the stunned water.
In a way it can be read as the signpost, a request on part of the poet for reconciliation
between people of the temple and people at the mosque who share similar aesthetics. The
poet suggests an alternate fate for Kashmir and other countries one that is based on empathy
and openness. Where humanity is the biggest religion and he feels this is the only mean to
save the world and Kashmir in particular from greatest catastrophe of all times and some
point he envisions a n alternate history for Kashmir and he writes:
if only you could have been mine,
what would not have been possible in the world?.
I would conclude by saying that Agha Shahid Ali through his work try to uphold the
banner of rich cultural heritage of his homeland so that he can bring change in the psyche of
his own people and force the inheritors to value their rich legacy. Chinua Achebe theorizes
similar concerns in his essay Colonialist criticism that upholding one‟s own culture leis in the
collective effort of the natives and this is what Agha Shahid Ali pleads for.

www.ijellh.com 123
Works Cited:
Primary Text
Shahid,Ali,Agha. “The Country Without a Post Office.”, Nortan (new York) , 2001.Print.
Secondary Text
Chattaraj, Jhilam. “Remembering Kashmir: Analyzing The Diasporic Imagination of Agha
Shahid Ali and Subhankar.” IJELR Vol.2.Issue.1. 2015. Web
Zaidi,Nishant. “Makers of Indian Literature Agha Shahid Ali”. Sahitya Akademi,
New Delhi, 2014.Print.

www.ijellh.com 124