Dr Jurgen Wasim Frembgen, a recipient of Tamgha-i-Imtiaz from the government of Pakistan, is Adjunct Professor emeritus at the Institute of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich having retired as senior curator at the Museum of Ethnology in Munich. He taught Cultural and Social Anthropology as well as Islamic Studies at various German and Austrian universities. He has been writing assiduously on the cultures of the eastern Muslim world with prime focus on Pakistan. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in some northern areas in Pakistan besides Punjab and Sindh. He has also been associated as a visiting professor with Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, NCA Lahore, and Ohio State University, USA. He has authored around 180 English and German language publications on a variety of subjects ranging from Islam, Sufism, and veneration of Muslim saints to social outsiders, and facets of popular culture. He has also curated numerous exhibitions related to cultures of the Muslim world. His book ‘We are Lovers of the Qalandar’ is a subject of this review.
Ejaz Rahim, who has only lately been nominated by the Pakistan Academy of Letters for the coveted Daud Kamal Award for his English verse collection ‘Garden of Secrets Revisited’, has recently published another book of his poems in English titled ‘Dear Brother Basit and other Poems’. A detailed review of this work also forms part of the present exercise.
‘We are lovers of the Qalandar’:
This book is about the popular Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar aka Sayyid Usman Marwandi (1177-AD 1274) of Sehwan Sharif in Sindh. His shrine is one of the ‘most fascinating sanctuaries’ in the Muslim world. At the time of pilgrimage, it is transformed into ‘a vibrant place of ecstatic religiosity marked by intense forms of devotion’. Lal Shahbaz Qalandar is one of the most popular Sufi saints of Pakistan with a large following of devotees including not only Muslims but Hindus, Sikhs and Christians also. People, mostly the underprivileged from all walks of life, come here in quest of solace, shelter, and serenity.
Apart from the foreword, preface, afterword and bibliography, the book contains six chapters titled I) Visual Piety, II) From Popular Devotion to Mass Event, III) Entranced with Love for the Qalandar, IV) A Female Circle of Pilgrims from Lahore, V) Betwixt and Between, and VI) The Performing Body. Piety, pilgrimage, and Performance (of a ritual) is the triangular theme of the book. A spectacular trance dance known as ‘dhamal’ is an essential feature of the ceremonies performed at the shrine. The book thus ‘aims to contribute to a Sufism observed which often seems to be neglected in mainly text-based Sufi studies’. The author took about 12 years to compile this work based on his field-research.
‘Dear Brother Basit and other Poems’:
Ejaz Rahim, a poetic prodigy from Pakistan, has brought out a new volume of his verse comprising seventy-one relatively shorter poems (excepting a 48-page obituary in memory of the poet’s late brother Dr. Basit who was a leading lawyer of Lahore) on a wide range of subjects touching upon life and mortality besides childhood, human values, rule of law, justice, the aura of nature, pandemic, gadgetry et al.
In his prefatory remarks, the author avers: ‘As for themes in this book, I believe these are not much different from my earlier books of verse — ranging from expressions of personal experiences and feelings to cogitations on the goings on of existence.’ He further deliberates: ‘It is not appropriate to comment on one’s own poems, but I take this opportunity to express my views on what constitutes the essence of poetry in the contemporary world. Poetry in my view, provides a aground for interplay between the actual and the imaginative; and between physical, emotional and intellectual forces at work. As the world goes, things are forever colliding and converging, getting raised up or razed down, which provides grist for our poetic watermills.’
Ejaz Rahim’s poetry is a poetry of insightfulness conflated with a visionary perception of life and its sundry attributes. Expatiating on Keats’s concept of Beauty and Truth, Ejaz Rahim in his poem captioned ‘Beauty, Truth and Love’, contends: ‘Beauty and Truth remain/Inchoate and ambivalent/Unless they drink together/At the disarming fountain/Of Love’s revealing wisdom. It is a quasi-philosophic contention focused on the metaphysical triumvirate of Beauty, Truth and Love each organically connected with the quintessence of existence in the Sartrean formulation.
The poet’s cosmic awareness of the psycho-ethical dimensions of human life manifests itself in all its subtlety, in the poem titled ‘Stunning Proposition’. ‘Behind numbers is a game/Beyond numbers/As the father of arithmetic/Lord Pythagoras held by instinct’ …. ‘The relationship of whole and parts/Is more than meets the eye/And means much more than/Adding and subtracting things’.….
Ejaz Rahim’s elder brother Dr. Abdul Basit was an eminent legal practitioner settled in Lahore. In the concluding portion of the book, the poet pays rich filial tributes to him. Besides, it is a comprehensive treatise as it were, on the prevailing geo-political situation not only at home but also around the globe. The poet mentions Dr. Basit’s erudite thesis on ‘Conflict between States and Territories’ as a subject of international controversy. While the monologic speaker in the poem pleaded the standpoint of the West, Dr. Basit corrected him thus: .…. but don’t forget/Big nations led by small-minded elite/Become enemies of both history/As well as civilisation.
In an apt elegiac context, the poet envisions the dawn of a new order of things wherein ‘the spiritual and the secular must/go hand in hand, like lovers on earth/the secular providing feet/for the spiritual to walk/and the spiritual investing wings/upon the secular to fly’. ‘Love and hope’ should serve as a beacon of light for every one enmeshed in the rampant mess.
