Every once in a while, you meet someone new, and it instantly feels like you have known them always. Such friendships are easy. They don’t demand constant keeping in touch or hours on the phone or such other maintenance work. You instantly sense a connection, and understand that especially these days, in these end times, such relationships are meant to be held just a little closer, tighter, and cherished wholeheartedly.
Such was my meeting with the brilliant
@namalsiddiqui in Bali. I had seen an old video of her reading Faiz, a much beloved poet, but hadn’t realised it was her when emailing back and forth, for admin stuff before travelling to Ubud. Imagine my surprise then, to meet her in person, and see that it was her!
She was meant to read another Faiz poem to me, but we couldn’t make a common time. And then, yesterday, I woke up to this video, and naturally teared up, very happy tears morning, morning! To think that anyone would make this kind of effort!
Amrita Pritam asks in a famous clip taken from an old interview, ‘Iss pyaar ka mein kya karun?’
A mere thank you would never suffice, dearest Namal. But for now, that is what I offer. xx
#Repost
@namalsiddiqui with
@use.repost
・・・
One cannot emulate the refined and evocative syntax of Faiz’s poems in English. ‘Mauzu e Sukhan’ like other poems is just that. Faiz, as he was imprisoned and exiled many times, often writes in contrast between a beloved’s beauty and socio-economic and political affairs of the nation and world. Here we find him opting for his beloved as his preferred topic of poetry and whose world he’d like to exist in but the contrast he creates about the state of the youth, of cities, of humans who can be so promising yet somehow always end up in suffering is a mockery really - does he want to remain oblivious to these facts? Perhaps not. That is the irony. And the irony continues to be relevant today.
Since I couldn’t read this to you in Ubud, ye nazm
@deepabhasthi sahiba, aap ke naam.
Translation by Mahmood Jamal.
