India and Pakistan used to dance together; locked in step, even if offbeat. Now, they move in opposite directions, occasionally brushing shoulders, never quite facing each other.
There is no context to this poem; it was a pure exodus of emotions. An expression / defence of romanticism in this capitalist, postmodern, post-ideological world.
This is just a quick note inspired by Indosaurusās excellent suggestion; which Iād like to add to. Iām pinning this post to give it visibility.
First, itās great to see the voluminosity of posting lately. Some days the blog pulses with original thought; other days, the comments surge while posts remain sparse. Both are signs of life and Iām glad for that.
But as Indosaurus rightly observed:
āA lot of the posts over the past 2 weeks are reposts from old publications elsewhere / mass media publicationsā¦ I see no real point in posting to BP if it is going to get submerged off the top page within a few hoursā¦ Would it be possible to pin 100% original unpublished content to the top of the page?ā
I think thatās a very reasonable proposal. Thereās value in resharing good content, but I agree we should prioritize original, unpublished writing, especially content that reflects the spirit of Brown Pundits. So hereās what weāll trial:
* Original, unpublished pieces will be pinned where appropriate. I request Editors / Authors to use their judgement / ānousā to sense what is original and / or value-add.
Please continue to post, read, comment, and share. But also reflect on what sticks, and why. Letās keep the signal high.
I cannot moderate as effectively as before so Iāll relying on the Editors, Nivedita & Furqan, for support. I hadnāt realised I had made Furqan an editor a few days back as I wanted him to add Dead Poetstanis to BP.
As again we arenāt going to get this perfectly right as we grow so apologies if I/we misstep.
The context of this poem is a bit complex. I wanted to experiment with some poetic gymnastics to venture into new terrain, like writing from the perspective of non-living things. So I chose The Communist Manifesto. Such a paradoxical choice, I must say in hindsight.
The copy I still possess.
I first (and sadly, the last time) read it many years ago, sometime in 2019, when I was in my second (and final) year before university (though I never actually went to university, another detour we can explore some other time). I was at Edwardes College then (see the post “Against Platonic Love”for more details).
The idea for the poem surfaced after watching a dogfight ā intellectually speaking ā between the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek and Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson. If you havenāt already, I recommend watching their full debate.
Iād said to myself: Why donāt I do my own Bhartiya-karan, that is, Indianise myself, before someone else thinks of doing it? The first problem was my name. Perhaps you donāt know: my name is Iqbal Chand. It occurred to me that āIqbalā is an Arabic word. What kind of nationalism is it to live in India and have an Arabic name? And so, I changed my name to Kangaal Chand. As it happens, this name is far better suited to my financial condition considering that ākangaalā means āpoorā. And why just me, it suits the rest of my country too.
The second problem that arose was of the dress. There was no trace of Indianness in the pants, coat and tie that I wore. In fact, all three were a reflection of my slave mentality. I was amazed that I had worn them all this while. I decided to wear pajamas instead of pants. But then, a certain Persian person told me that the pajama had come to India from Iran. And so, I began to wear dhoti and kurta. But not a kameez, as the word ākameezā, too, is of Arabic origin and it reeks of the stench and stink of an Arab!
The third problem was of hair! After all, was it not treachery against the country, a blatant form of antinationalism, to keep oneās hair fashioned in the English style? I instructed the barber to keep only one lock of long hair at the back of my head and shave off the rest. He did exactly that. I had seen images from ancient India showing men with long and lush moustaches. Following their example, I began to grow my moustache. When my friends saw the large moustache on my somewhat small face, they assumed that I had put on a fake one, possibly because I was acting in some play. Forget my friends, when I saw myself in this new look, I began to feel that I had been created not by God, but Shankar, the cartoonist. But I did not lose heart. One has to do all manner of things to be Indian.
An excerpt from a story by Kanhaiyalal Kapoor in āWhose Urdu Is It Anyway?: Stories by Non-Muslim Urdu Writersā, edited and translated by Rakhshanda Jalil.
As the posting on BP (and the comments) are pretty fast and furious; my capacity to edit and moderate is getting pretty stretched..
Fatima Ijaz, born in Karachi, studied linguistics in the United States and currently serves as the editor of The Pandemonium Journal. Her debut poetry collection, The Shade of Longing, offers a complex interplay of memory, language, and abstraction, often resisting closure and certainty.
In the preface, she articulates a powerful and poignant idea that serves as a compass for the bookās aesthetic and emotional journey:
āThe contemplation of the past involves an evocative presence of a surreal presentā¦In doing so, you are in a heightened state of present-past ā a double consciousness that is more than the sum equal of its partsā
This is, in many ways, a deeplyĀ Hegelian thought. One is reminded of the famous assertion in The Phenomenology of Spirit that:
āThat the True is actual only as system, or thatĀ Substance is essentially Subject, is expressed in the representation of the Absolute as Spirit-the most sublime Notion and the one which belongs to the modern age and its religion. ā
In essence: the memories, she is talking about, are sort of in itself objects (fixed) and also subjects (variableādependent on the person recollecting).
Reading this book feels like discovering a cache of love letters written in a fever of emotion, letters meant for someone dearly beloved. But just before mailing them, the writer realizes how insufficient they are. So she burns them all, and what emerges from the ashes are these poems: not just expressions of feeling, but indictments of language itself. A complaint, perhaps, that language lacks the fidelity to truly capture the depths of human experience.
By acknowledging the futility of language, she leans into abstraction. She chooses uncertainty over certainty and, the infinite over the finite, and invites the reader to participate in meaning-making. The gaps in her verse are not absencesāthey are openings. The reader is asked to bring their own memories, their own hauntings, to fill in the silences.
In the poem āEcho of a word, x memory,ā the structure is minimal yet haunting. A single wordāā(stray)āāis repeated eight times on one line, and this continues for thirteen lines. The effect is disorienting, hypnotic. Memory here is not narrative, it is reverberation, a stutter echoing in an unreachable corridor of time.
Celestial imagery recurs throughout the collection (stars, suns, moons) often to widen the emotional and metaphysical frame. She reaches for the planetary to express the personal, as in lines like:
āThe face of the sun is smeared with the curseā
āI saw the shadow moon hunt down oblivionā
āLanguage emerges out of this exchange between fiery sun and eternal skyā
āThe moon becomes a cosmic mirror on such…ā
Another recurring anthropomorphic presence is that of bones and the black crow, symbols that oscillate between the sacred and the ominous.
āthere wasnāt an ounce of regret in my bones / I knew I had practiced the art ā and thus ā the sacrifice.ā
āThen there is the stubborn case of the black crowā¦ā
In the poem āTear-Drop,ā regret and remorse seep through the lines:
āIt does not matter, because I can touch / The midnight with my azure-blues / Perhaps the blame is on the harpsichord / Perhaps itās on one of us / The black consciousness has entered / and there is no un-doing it.ā
Her languageāor rather, her suspicion of languageāremains central. The āshadeā she refers to is not just the shadow of longing but also a hue: the specific color of yearning that permeates the book. Itās a longing that refuses to be pinned down, named, or resolved.
In the penultimate poem, the titular piece, she writes,
āDo you think we become in the end / characters of our own stories? Do we finally / own them enough to discard them, have the infinite power / to reform our mind of its strange habitat?ā
This is a moment of quiet brilliance. One could read this as a critique of ideologyāfirst acknowledging the narrative scaffolding of the self (āIā) and then, in almost Lacanian fashion, gesturing toward the Real (one of Lacanās three registers). To ādiscardā the story is to momentarily crumble the illusion of coherence.
Jacques Lacan (French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist)
Shade of Longing is not a book that yields itself easily. It is not meant to be understood in one sitting. It is a space to dwell in, misread, reread, and reinhabit. Like ghosts or witches watching from the periphery, these poems linger long after the final page is turned. Their magic lies not in answers, but in the haunting questions they leave behind.
Everyone, please take note of the following rules:
Authors may not void or edit the work\comments of other authors.
Maintain courtesy and respect in all interactions.
Nivedita has been made Editor. I believe itās important to have a strong female editorial voice on the weblog. She has full discretion to void posts or comments she finds inappropriate; she has no need to appeal to me first. If you feel a decision was unfair, youāre welcome to raise it with me privately.
If anyone violates these rules, please contact me immediately. Iāll address the issue on a three-strike basis.
Lastly, a gentle reminder: please donāt post or comment in anger. It rarely leads anywhere constructive. I am present, I am paying attention, and I do my best to be fair. Itās late and I have an early start, but Iām a little concerned about the tone of the threads tonight; letās keep this space thoughtful, not reactive.
The context of this poem is an interview of the legendary Urdu poet Ahmad Faraz (1931ā2008) with Naeem Bukhari. Faraz is regarded as one of the true heirs of Urdu’s laminal poetic tradition and celebrated for his bold, progressive stances and romantic verses that deeply resonated with the masses.
Though I personally rank him second to Faiz Ahmed Faiz (his contemporary), due to the universality, conceptual depth, and themes Faiz cultivated in his poetry, what I love about Faraz is his radical romanticism and mastery of language. Especially since he hailed from Kohat, a non-Urdu-speaking city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, this is particularly remarkable.
Two literary giants of NWFP/KP: Ahmad Faraz (right) lights a cigarette for Ameer Hamza Shinwari.
Another interesting connection between Faraz and myself is that we both attended the same institution, the prestigious Edwardes College. For those who donāt know, Edwardes College was established in 1900 and has produced generations of intellectuals and cultural figures, including Prithviraj Kapoor, the pioneering Indian film and theatre actor/director/producer; Dr. Khan Sahib (Dr. Abdul Jabbar Khan), the first Chief Minister of West Pakistan (The famous Khan Market in New Delhi is named in his honour.)
Edwardes College Peshawar
Coming back to the interview:
NB: Temperamentally aap ek romantic aadmi hain?
(Translated: Are you, temperamentally, a romantic person?)
AF: Haan, bilkul hoon. Main ek bharpoor ishq ka qail hoon. Ek mukammal insaan ke ishq ka. Main Aflatooni ishq (jo frustration ka ishq hota hai) ka haami nahi hoon. Us mein aap apne wujood ka aadha hissa zaya kar dete hain. Is liye aap mukammal mohabbat de hi nahi sakte kisi ko, jab tak apna poora wujood uske hawale na kar dein. Toh main ek mukammal insaan ki tarah, mukammal ishq chahta hoon. Jiske liye rona ho, jiske liye hansna ho, jisko aap yaad karein. Jo aapke wujood mein poori tarah sama gaya ho.
(Translated: Yes, absolutely. I believe in passionate, complete love ā love for a whole person. I’m not a supporter of Platonic love, the kind that’s rooted in frustration. In that kind of love, you end up wasting half of your existence. Thatās why you canāt give someone complete love unless you offer your entire being to them. So I desire complete love, as a complete person. Love for whom you cry, laugh, miss deeply ā someone who becomes entirely embedded in your existence.)
And that is how I gestated this poem. Please enjoy!
I can touch and lurch in the scent of the gated city
And prostrate upon it.
What maiden houris of the afterlife,
With a lightning appearance,
Pristine countenance,
And godly silhouette,
Could hold to the eyes of this crooked earthling
The wax of your ear,
The rusted steel nose pin,
Greyish, catastrophic hairs,
And the acned cheeks of yours?
Ah, the sensation of the earthly viscera,
The dysmorphia of every kind and sortā
It is incomparable to the untouchable,
and the non-sensorous holiest of holies.
Icarus [2] vaporized in this
Frenzy of the soarā
And so too the frustrated ones,
Whose beloved is exalted,
And merely and pathetically exalted
[1] taskīƱ ko ham na ro.eƱ jo zauq-e-nazar mile
hÅ«rÄn-e-įø³huld meƱ tirÄ« sÅ«rat magar mile We would not weep for solace, if we had the gift of sightā If, among the houris of paradise, we found your likeness. (“`Ghalib)
[2] Icarus, a figure from Greek mythology, attempted to escape Crete using wax-and-feather wings made by his father, Daedalus. Ignoring warnings, he flew too close to the sun, causing the wax to melt and sealing his tragic fall.
I wrote this poem on May 14, 2025, after watching a deeply moving video of Robin Williams (1951ā2014) hugging Koko (1971ā2018). Somehow, the moment stirred something in me, and I was compelled to write.
Koko was a Western Lowland Gorilla, a critically endangered subspecies. Every year, thousands of these gentle beings are killed due to habitat loss and the illegal bushmeat trade in parts of Africa.
Robin met Koko in 2001, shortly after she had lost her closest gorilla friend, Michael. She hadnāt smiled since his passing. But on this day, with Robin, she laughed freely and fully. And so did he.
