AGHA SHAHID ALI:

Beginning Of The Story By Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal I am not born it is 1948 and the bus turns onto a road without name Thereon his bicyle my father he is younger than I At Okhla where I get off I pass my parents strolling by the Jamuna River -Agha Shahid Ali (1949-2001) I never met the great Kashmiri poet, Agha Shahid Ali, whose fame crossed the seven seas.

And, neither can I claim to be a great poetry lover or critic.

But whatever little I have read of his works, I love the elegant poetic prose quality pregnant with such beautiful thoughts and such piercing sensitivity that is so typical of his poetry.

Whether it is in invoking history to remind the world of the cruelty of wars, in remembering Kashmir (his homeland) with a sense of unending nostalgia, or in raising humankind to lofty heights, Agha Shahid Ali always came across as a rather passionate and sensitive person as well as a lover of humanity.

The wit in his poetry intersecting through pathos always conjured up an image of some one invincible - not just a possessor of both the qualities of the head and the heart but also someone rather jovial and lively.

But I never got the chance to meet him and that indeed may be a life long lament.

But here in Srinagar's Rajbagh area, sitting in his father's house, where Agha Shahid, better known among family and friends as Bhaiyya, spent much of his early childhood, I can sense his presence everywhere.

He comes alive in the conversations, in the collection of books, essays and articles his father Agha Ashraf Ali, an eminent educationist and a legend in his own right, has collected, catalogued and photo-copied for lending or distributing to friends or those interested in knowing about his great poet son.

Agha Ashraf's house is like a museum cum library on Agha Shahid.

Stories tumble out of the walls and the photographs on the tables are like history in visuals.

Two framed photographs in black and white on a writing bureau attract the eye - Jawaharlal Nehru with a child, embracing him, and Nehru with two children, balloons in their hands.

"That's Bhaiyya," says Agha Ashraf and dismisses the whole thing in a matter of fact manner.

"At the age of 10, my poet son wrote to Nehru, who was then prime minister of India, and the latter sent him an invitation letter to visit him along with his family." To Agha sahib, it seems like an ordinary page out of his life.

To anyone else, it would appear as something unusual - a child writing to the prime minister of a big country like India and getting invited.

Of course, one has heard of all kinds of people including children writing to heads of the state and the latter responding through letters.

Certainly, the poet at that young age, may have written something extra-ordinary to receive an invitation as well.

It takes some prodding for the story behind the photographs to be revealed, shrouded in sweet old memories that pour out of the flat black and white images and Agha saheb's mind and begin pervading the room.

"Bhaiyya must have been 9 or at the most ten years old at that time, sometime in 1959, when we went to Delhi on a visit and were staying with the illustrious Prof Mujeeb of Jamia Millia Islamia University," he recalls.

Shahid was born in Delhi in 1949 while Prof Agha Ashraf Ali was serving in the Jamia University.

The proud father adds, "Shahid was impressed by the changes he saw in Delhi on this visit after a long time and wanted to write to Nehru about that." The memories are hazy but Agha saheb humbly reveals, "it was written in broken English.

Shahid wrote something like this: I have read your Letters to a daughter..but didn't understand everything.

..Coming to the capital city after a long time, I am pleased to see the improved condition of roads of New Delhi..." The letter ended with "May you live a thousand years." The letter was sent and the very next day, Shahid received a response from the then prime minister at Prof Mujeeb's house.

"It was an invitation for the entire family to Nehru's official residence and my wife Sufia took him there with the other children," he recalls, adding, "just a brief few minutes meeting in a hall.

My wife remarked that when Nehru entered the room, it was like the grand entry of a King.

They were held in awe by his personality." During this brief meeting, nine years old Shahid had confidently asked Nehru, "What should I bring for you from Kashmir?" Nehru had humourously replied, "I like children.

Tell them to meet me." The encounter was rather brief.

Nonetheless, the meeting became a cherished memory for the family, the moment framed and lying on the writing bureau like a family heirloom.

A letter to Nehru may have been Shahid's earliest signs of interest in writing.

It is not known when Shahid actually began writing serious poetry but he would occasionally write and was growing up as a sensitive person and a thinker.

At the age of 12, in 1961, while Prof Agha Ashraf was teaching in Indiana, United States of America, Shahid wrote a beautiful prose on his father's autograph book.

The proud father produces a photocopy of the neatly handwritten note.

It says: I wish I knew how a man was made.

The reader shall think that I do not know about ADAM and EVE or what the science theory says.

I have read about them but they do not satisfy me.

No one really knows how a man was made.

Muslims, Jews and Christians believe that God created man- Adam, but knowing and believing is very different.

The Vedas which are the holy books of the Hindus say that they don't know how a man was made.

Actually people believe in the beliefs of what they call religion.

The main religion of a person is his work.

He's dependent on his work, he eats with the money he gets.

If he goes to a mosque or any temple, that won't help him as much as his work on which his life depends "Love is another religion of humanity.

Buddha says in one of his sayings:- Hatred does not cease by hatred But only by love This is the eternal rule.

Out of "Love", we begin to get" friendly which is another religion of humanity because it's the road to happiness.

Take time to be friendy, It's the road to happiness.

I the author of this theme am a student, loving art and various other things.

That's my religion and my other religion is "love".

From a son to a father, Shahid Ali.

Ist October-1961 Muncie, Indiana USA.

This small piece may be no piece of literature or poetry but it revealed the richness and clarity of ideas, it also revealed the philosopher, rationalist, humanitarian and a rebel hidden in a young child.

It reflected the early signs of a genius in the making.

Back in Srinagar in the same year, while Shahid was studying in Burnhall School, he wrote a poem on Jesus and showed it to his father, who didn't say whether the poem was good or bad.

Agha Ashraf went to the market and bought him a leather bound notebook and said, "why don't you put your poems in this?" Shahid filled up the pages and when he had done so, his father gave him another leather bound notebook and wrote on it: Another notebook for the same game.

Spontaneous self-expression must now grow into studied attempts at conciseness and discipline.

The encouragement from the family certainly contributed in honing his skills and talent.

But much of the depth of ideas and intellect also seem to have stemmed from the family atmosphere itself.

The academic atmosphere of a house where both his parents were well known teachers was coupled with the progressive and liberal thought, as well as love for art, culture and humanity.

In a home where intellect flowed freely and where Ghalib, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Begum Akhtar and Indian classical music were part of daily diet for the soul, Shahid, like his other three siblings was already exposed to vast knowledge and multi-cultural influences.

As Shahid's elder sister, Henna Ahmed, an Associate Professor of English at Truman State University writes: "Different cultural experiences intersected, overlapped and came together in Shahid's poetry.

His verse drew on an eclectism that derived from various sources, but a major part of it originated from our mother.

Instrumental in opening up a world that exposed Shahid to Hindu mythology and Indian classical dance and music, particularly the Bharat Natyam and sitar, our mother was a repository of these elements, sparking in Shahid's artistic mind.

...In his upbringing all these various religious and cultural events were not projected as separate and alien, but as a rich, collective cultural and personal experience that gave Shahid his sense of who he was." It was in this healthy ambience that Shahid grew up, right here within these four walls, oozing with memories about the poet, his family and great moments of a lesser known history.

You look around held in awe and thoughts go to the sad, painful death of Agha Shahid Ali in 2001, only few years after his beloved mother Sufia Nomani, passed away due to a terminal illness, leaving a badly shaken and shattered poet.

Shahid emerged from the grief after a long span of time and wrote one of his greatest master-pieces 'Lennox Hill' on his mother's demise.

It is strange how grief and beauty go hand in hand.

His father Agha Ashraf Ali, sitting there and chatting to me, filled with both pride and a void is a living testimony.

The moment invades my own mind with Agha Shahid Ali's words (written on the death of Begum Akhtar): Your death in every paper, Boxed in the black and white Of photographs, obituaries, The sky war, blue, ordinary, No hint of calamity, no room for sobs, even between the lines The words echo for a long time as we sit at the table for tea and toast, Agha saheb in his imitable style narrating his endless humorous anecdotes.

Excerpts from Agha Shahid Ali's Poems 'Nothing will remain, everything's finished', I see his voice again: 'This is a shrine of words.

You'll find your letters to me.

And mine to you.

Come soon and tear open these vanished envelopes...' This is an archive.

I've found the remains of his voice, that map of longings with no limit.

I will die, in autumn, in Kashmir, and the shadowed routine of each vein will almost be news, the blood censored, for the Saffron Sun and the Times of Rain...

Yes, I remember it, the day I''ll die, I broadcast the crimson so long ago of that sky, its spread air, its rushing dyes, and a piece of earth bleeding apart from the shore, as we went on the day I''ll die, post the guards, and he, keeper of the world's last saffron, rowed me on an island the size of a grave On two yards he rowed me into the sunset, past all pain.

On everyone's lips was news of my death but only that beloved couplet, broken, on his: "If there is a paradise on earth It is this, it is this, it is this.' I want to live forever.

What else can I say? It rains as I write this.

Mad heart, he brave -Agha Shahid Ali, The Country Without A Post Office Mother, They asked me, So how's the writing"? I answered My mother is my poem.

What did they expect? For no verse sufficed except the promise, fading of Kashmir and the cries that reached you from the cliffs of Kashmir (across fifteen centuries) in the hospital Kashmir, she's dying! How her breathing drowns out the universe as she sleeps in Amherst Agha Shahid Ali, Lennox Hill) The Wit and Wisdom of Agha Shahid Ali  " How much can one read? I hate knowledge!"  "I don't want to indulge in the tyranny of human contact."  "After class, let us go for pizza and a walloping kiss at Joe's (Pizeeria in Northampton)"  "Please help your poor little Indian out.

Please come to my reading." On the lives of modern poets:  " This is the sort of myth making that we all do, especially when we're trying to get someone into bed." On Coleridge's "Kublai Khan"  "Do you remember that movie Xanadu with Olivia Newton-John in a discotheque? It's such an awful movie, I can't tell you."  "...

if Berryman had written the 'Cantos,' you would go crazy.

Oh, this is wonderful gossip for a cocktail party!"  "..

Wallace Stevens...

I was just about to say, 'What's his face.' What a totally utter dismissal of someone!" Upon hearing a student begin reading poem aloud too quickly: "Slowly, slowly, slowly---you must be like Hamlet.

Pronounce it trippingly on the tongue."  "I know people are looking at that damned clock.

Let's smash it right now!" "That's what I'am here for ...

a little correction now and then, a little 'white out" On T.S Eliot:  "That the only way to read these poems..

with a dictionary nearby, with a little gloss, and with a little scotch on the table." Offering an example to illustrate a point: Shahid: "There's that French actor, Jeanne Moreau." Student: "Yeah, but that's is a woman, right?" Shahid: " You bet!" On dinner at his place at 8 PM  "I'm going to civilise you with the old world charms.

All good thing happen in the dark." "When someone accuses you of something, just accept it, and the argument is over.

" Oh, I accuse you of this, '' Yes, you're right.' And it all disappears.

That is the wisdom of the East."  "Lucky we are poets-we can be forgiven all our trespasses." -Compiled by H.Fong, in memory of a most beautiful poet, a most beautiful soul.