The Pakistani Anglophone Literary Context
Syed Afsar Sajid
- Title: ‘the silhouette of voice’
Author: Hafsah Bashir
- Title: ‘Echoes and Imprints: Voices of Early Pakistani Anglophone Authors’
Compiler: Saleha Malik
Hafsah Bashir is a Pakistani diaspora writer based in the U.S. She is purported to have created ‘an audible female diaspora voice with subjective and collective experiences’ in her work. ‘Peace and Politics: a Polemical Reflection’ is her major work in comparative literatures.
‘the silhouette of voice’
In the instant book (‘the silhouette of voice’), she draws ‘a spherical scope of sensibilities in her own specific colors’that are not voiceless. The objective correlative of ‘silhouette of voice’, denotes ‘a fluid viewpoint of how love colors, how desire lives and solitude emotes’. The flap of the book contains a concise but lucid commentary on its contents. It proclaims: ‘The immortal design of life perpetuates in every single act; perceived or practiced. Life is a mere act of breathing and breathing becomes a celebration of little events. This silhouette is neither linear nor plain rather rich in hues and tones of truths we live with.’
The book is pithily sub-divided into four sections each captioned as ‘Me’, ‘You’, ‘Life’ and ‘Love’ that embody a total of some fifty-seven poems. These are artistically designed poems of a genuine lyrical quality emanating from the simplicity and purity of the language, and its romantic fancy with a deft use of asymmetrical conceits and rhythmical alliteration. The winding landscape of silhouettes in this anthology seems to encompass a wide domain of its author’s poeticoutpourings, aiming to create a waking-dreaming aura of an existentialistic fantasy, so to say.Silhouettes have been used for ages as a way to convey emotion, mystery and story-telling. They are deemed to capture the essence of an object or person without the need to display the appurtenant details.
A poet is not one who deals in statements, arguments, teachings or persuasions; he shows or reveals. None the less the matter of thought may be his subject. Argument itself, when it is the best of its kind, may produce a sort of fire, an illumination from which truth emerges as a vision rather than an inept abstraction.The poems in the instant collection relate to a variety of subjects like imbibition, craft, sleep, solitude, monotony, inertia, leisure, desire, silence, gravity, rain, disillusionment, memory, time, ‘to be or not to be’, retreat, parting, mirage, wedlock, parents, and New York. A few pertinent illustrations from the book will facilitate the reader to grasp its textual-cum-stylistic niceties.
While/walking on the thin line of/chaste sins and tainted virtues/vain values and destined designs/carnal cravings and solemn self/shaped my facet/feign and frowned/wrecked and wrinkled/and/came along the craft/to tame to tend (Craft)
Rain and you/are allies/quench the thirst/yet drench in guilt/wipe the dirt/yet blur the vision/soak in vigor/yet on muddy trails/flood with joy/yet on slippery slates/drown in cuddle/yet in soggy bosom/submerge in dream/yet on humid lands/rain and you/twin together (Rain and you)
Years days and moments/pass on/but we keep them/and carry as/crowns badges or burdens/they tire us and/we drown them in tears/and take a break/but save them as we catch a breath/moments are burdens/and/burdens are vital/they don’t let us alone/moments are badges/remind us of winning/moments are tokens/of love and life (Time)
o city of form and fortune/you are rich and reverent/bounty blesses you/opulence oozes in you/chance reins you/reward rules you/but o city of affluence/your ambiance reminds me of/folks back home/the ones at margins/personifications of strife/envisaging nothing but/affliction and agony (New York)
The preceding lines speak loudly for the poet’s concern for life and its infinite constraints like desire and despair, feeling and frustration, affluence and affright, fact and fantasy, crime and conviction et al.
‘Echoes and Imprints: Voices of Early Pakistani Anglophone Authors’
The author of this book Saleha Malik has ‘presented and published her research on Pakistani Anglophone Literature in Pakistan and now (of course through the medium of her instant publication) hopes to reach an international audience.’ The book thus contains interviews of ‘some of the most influential poets, novelists, critics, and prose writers who were either born before Independence or in the (19)50’s’. She acknowledges that the renowned Pakistani Anglophone author M. AtharTahir inspired her to undertake this project.
The list of interviewees contains such illustrious names asM. AtharTahir (talking about his famed senior contemporary, poetTaufiqRafat and himself separately), ZulfikarGhouse (renowned novelist, poet, and essayist), Mrs. Parveen Kamal (on her illustrious husband, poet Daud Kamal), KabirOmar (on his eminent cousin, poet Kaleem Omar), poet and critic AlamgirHashmi, academic and poet WaqasKhawaja, poet Ejaz Rahim, Amina Hassan (on her esteemed father, academic, journalistand humorist Shoaib Bin Hassan), QaisraShahraz (novelist and scriptwriter), Dr. Tariq Rahman (critic,scholar, and literary historiographer), and FawziaAfzal-Khan (scholar and critic).
The interviews tend to project the person and art of the protagonists. They are like mini-biographies spotlighting the work and contribution of these literary luminaries. The exercise is more of a cursory exposition than of adiscreet critical evaluation of the person and art of the afore-mentioned literary figures. The effort is appreciable as ‘the interviews are terse but rich in an in-depth background sketch’ as viewed by noted academic Maryam Razawho further comments that ‘the diction is simple but ladled with alcoves of information that has never surfaced hitherto’. By the bye, some misprints and occasional compositing errors in the book could have been circumvented by a more careful proof-reading of its content.
