Agha Shahid Ali and the nostalgia of Kashmir

There is not an iota of doubt that the name of Agha Shahid Ali is hardly unknown to all. His poems are very heartening; which bestows a kind of intoxicated fragrance of the soil. The concerned poet is from Kashmir and it is embracing truth that the beauty landscape of Kashmir has a power to melt the hearts of the bystanders. The poems of Agha Shahid Ali basically describe his profound love to the region of Kashmir. Agha Shahid Ali eulogizes the authentic beauty of Kashmir in his poems. Agha Shahid Ali basically wants to showcase his identity as a ‘Kashmiri’ in most of his poems. It is true that the notion of identity bestows a kind of symmetrical uniformity with the people of a particular land. Even though Agha Shahid Ali writes poems from foreign land, his poems profoundly allocate his sense of love to his ancestors’ of Kashmir as well. Above all, home for the poet is always tied with nostalgia. The notion of Nostalgia for his homeland is a kind of characteristic feature in his poems. The beauty of Kashmir is tremendously seen in Postcard from Kashmir. The poem not only expresses the tranquility of Kashmir but a kind of love for his native land always haunts his back of the head that is beautifully revealed in the poem. Physically, he is at some other place but mentally or emotionally he is at his “home” which is too close to his heart. This clearly recognizes his excessive love towards his country as well as his birth place too. In Snowmen, the poet describes his ancestors’ arrival in snow country, i.e, Kashmir and how his identity of snow man will merge with the passage of time due to his residing in another land.
No, they won’t let me out of winte
and I’ve promised myself,
even if I’m the last snowman,
that I’ll ride into spring
on their melting shoulders.
It is Chrystal clear that the poems of Agha Shahid Ali are nostalgic and emotional. His hidden desire to live in his own land makes his poems more heart-rending and affecting. His poem entitled Of Light illustrates the beauty of Kashmir and it also superimposes his strong hidden desire to stay in Kashmir. The speaker in the poem is very disappointed and resembles himself with a river; which sweeps away everything from his life. The river bestows him only pathos from which the speaker can’t escape. The poet juxtaposes the example of river with his career and he can’t deny his career and his native place too. Both Career and Kashmir are indispensable adjunct in his life. But, Agha Shahid Ali feels very regretful when he cites his forceful circumstances to choose his career despite of his native place.
Poems of Agha Shahid Ali are nostalgic and emotional.
“A cheekbone, / A curved piece of brow, / A pale eyelid…”
And the dark eye I make out with all within of light.
Stranger, when the river leans toward the emptiness,
abandon, for my darkness, the thick and thin of light.
His love for Kashmir is beautifully portrayed in Postcard from Kashmir in which the poem shows the poet’s remembrance of his home with a photograph of some Kashmiri landscape. In A Pastoral , the poet lights his untainted love for Kashmir and its people. Wherever he gets a chance he always wishes for peace to prevail in Kashmir. The poet galvanizes the city’s sad state wherein the kashmiris always face atrocities. It perspicuously depicts the poet’s deep grief towards the people of Kashmir and the poet also imbues Kashmiris to keep the tradition of their ancestors.
Is history deaf there, across the oceans?”
Quick, the bird will say. And we’ll try
will say) that to which we belong, not like this—
to get news of our death after the world’s.
In conclusion, the poems of Agha Shahid Ali are lyrical and evokes a kind of melodic vitality and emotion .As Stephen Burt observes, in his poetry Ali “aligns Kashmir with other war-torn places” , “yet even more insistently”, it “places Kashmir within a global literary network, extending east, west, north, and south in space, beyond the Hindu and Muslim parts of the globe, as well as backwards in time”.
(The author is freelancer based in Assam. Views are exclusively his own)
choudhuryabhijit1996@ gmail.com