Khalid Iqbal Yasir’s poetic assets
By Syed Afsar Sajid
Titles: (1) ‘Mizaj’ — (2) ‘Nafeeri’ — (3) ‘Aarsi’
Khalid Iqbal Yasir is a reputed litterateur, a scholar of history, Pakistan studies, and Iqbaliyaat, with a PhD degree earned by him in the last mentioned discipline. He is a veteran poet, a prolific writer, a discreet critic, an adept translator, and a keen researcher in the allied domains of history and literature, with more than twenty-five publications to his credit; he has also served in the higher echelons of a host of literary, cultural, and scientific organizations in the public sector.
‘Mizaj’
The book was published way back in 2012. It is a collection of Yasir’s ghazal. Famed artist and intellectual Aslam Kamal and eminent poet Shahzad Ahmad wrote its flaps in addition to a sparkling foreword by popular poet Aslam Kolsari. Unfortunately all of the three scribes are no more. Aslam Kamal considers Yasir’s poetry as highly imaginative, wondrous, ecstatic, and illuminative.
Shahzad Ahmad is of the view that Yasir is led to compose poetry under some inexplicable intuitive impulse with no pretence to sound didactic. Aslam Kolsari thinks that alongside prosodic variations in rhyme, Yasir’s verse is also rich in thematic varieties. He further notes that Yasir excels in using odd and outlandish words in his verse with an unusual artistic penchant.
Yasir is temperamentally (in terms of his mood and attitude or what he names it in the vernacular as ‘mizaj’) anti-convention, a non-status quoist so to say. His verse (ghazal here) is a testament to his poetic beliefs and practices; his socio-political consciousness finds a glimmering expression in the bulk of his poetic construct.
Lutanay kay liye baqi nahi raha kuch bhi/Dikhanay ko sar-e-maidaan aabru hi rahi
Subh say undroon uthnay wala dhu’aN,/Sham kay waqt bairoon bhi aa’ey ga
‘Nafeeri’
‘Nafeeri’ is a musical instrument of the flute family which symbolizes a lament, supplication, or a cry for help or succour. Khalid Iqbal Yasir, the kind of innovator he is, uses the word as an objective correlative in lieu of his concern for certain values that he would love his poetical outpourings to imbibe, and also disseminate, with a view to engrafting them on his readers. Integrity, altruism, objectivity, an all pervasive internal chaos arising from the prevailing societal disequilibrium, nihilism as a prelude to an erosive cultural disorientation, uncertainty, and pessimism are some seminal constituents of Yasir’s poetics.
The book comprises a miscellany of verse such as ‘na’at’, ‘hamd’, ghazal, and nazm, the genre of ghazal being the poet’s favourite medium of expression here. Noted educationist and literatus (pl. literati) Dr. Farhat Jabeen Virk has rendered an indepth analytical appraisal of Yasir’s person and art in her foreword to the publication. The socio-political undertones of his (Yasir’s) poetry serve to enlighten the reader on certain unpalatable truths relating to his diurnal existence in the wider context of a modernistic socio-cultural paradigm embracing sociology, politics, and technology.
Yasir enlists his poetic manifesto on the back cover of the book. Resistance, self-defence, and reaction are ingrained in human nature. Seeds of resistance are embedded in humanism whereas self-defence is also a kind of resistance which is born of the forced acceptance of tyranny, perpetuation of oppression, high-handedness, denial and trampling of human rights, injustice, favouritism, and disregard of talent and merit. All this is the warp and woof of his poetry. He thinks that the poet basically addresses the reader, not the critic. True poetry is an aesthetic blend of life and art.
Kuch nahi jaantay Yasir pas-e-deewar hai kya/Hum samajhtay to yahi haiN k sabhi jaantay haiN
Kuch samajh Yasir nahi aa’i magar/Guftani naguftani may kuch to hai
‘Aarsi’
It is Yasir’s latest poetic publication. Ms. Najeebah Arif, Chairperson, Pakistan Academy of Letters has rightfully lauded Yasir’s poetics in her flap added to the book. She views ‘Aarsi’ as collection of his ‘experiential’ poetry that focuses on feminism and figures out feministic sense and sensibility in general. He delineates the picture of a Pakistani woman in her conventional role yet not unaware of her importance in the larger perspective of the indigenous socio-cultural constraints that make a cognisable impact on the universal role of woman in general and the native social fabric in particular.
In the preface to the book, the poet spotlights the significance of its quaint albeit pertinent title. ‘Aarsi Mas’haf’ is an Islamic marital custom wherein bride and bridegroom view each other’s reflection in a mirror with the holy Qur’an in the centre, firmly binding the wedding couple together for a happy and safe future course of life. The expression (‘Aarsi Mashaf’) thus signifies the role and distinctivity of woman, the distaff side of the gender divide, in the Pakistani social hierarchy. Woman empowerment is a loud but efficacious implication of this phenomenon.
Ghazals forming part of this collection, as assumed by the poet in his introductory, tend to bring out the organic, psychiatric, cultural, and contextual delicacies as well as intricacies of male ‘relativity’ vis-a-vis feminism which nowadays looks like an oft-repeated social cliché. Literature as Yasir holds, is asexual, that is that it is indivisible and hence cannot be bifurcated into male and female compartments. The book is therefore a wonderful exposition of this cerebral conceptualisation.
Bhali acchi rawaN thi apnay rastay/Woh peechay daikh kar patthar hui thi
Koi uski wakalat ko uttha nahi/Apni sangeeN saza rokti rah gai
Tabdeel usay karnay ki khwahish ko chupa kar/Woh us say nahi apni tabiyyat say lari hai.
