(Un)expectedly, in all the conversation of (and about) the film, blog mistri thinks the poetry in the film is being silenced. The film–in at least six places–uses poetry to break through its narrative, trying to comprehend unfreedom’s everyday face, holding a dusty old mirror onto the distorted faces of power. A mirror painstakingly made–
I smeared the glass with blood to make mirrors/My image – a stranger…
This refusal to hear the poetic, allowing the rhetorical discourse of power politics to re-establish its dominance over the viewing experience, is tragic.
One could even say that the horror and banality of unfreedom in Kashmir is not in the body count, or the secret war of fear, but in not allowing the ambiguous attempts to hold onto ’significance’ to seep into the streets of our body. But then, only when you can control and forcibly clarify meaning for all, can you enslave… And thus at some level, attempts to construct a ‘grand narrative’ of right and wrong in Kashmir, which many seem to be doing on the blog and elsewhere, without letting the poets embarass this design, goes on to stuff Kashmir back into the coffins.
I just received images of the screening in Srinagar’s Tagore Hall and was happy to see Zarif Ahmed ‘Zarif’, one of the poet disrupters of the ‘narrative whodunit’ of the film, standing in front of the films poster. So I am re-posting one of his poems … and this time before sifting voyeuristically through all the juicy abuses we have attracted, let Zarif hand you a map of a city of love…
(trivia) : When the poem was posted earlier, it attracted just one comment >>
Rohit on Mar 2nd, 2007 at 11:47 am
Voilence breeds voilence. You sowed it and now reap it.)
WHAT FRENZY IS THIS?
Daem phuit chi gaemits myaen nazar
yoot matsar kyah?
mei rov labith lol shahar
yoot matsar kyah?
My gaze has been silenced
What frenzy is this?
I lost the city of love I’d found,
What frenzy is this?
Poozai karaan aes gaemits vaens me tsayen
aeyov ti mei ma vuch na sahar
yoot matsar kyah?
I worshipped shadows all my life
Did I alone miss the arrival of the dawn
What frenzy is this?
Mei khoon mailith sheesha patyan aaene baneyvim
aeseena panin paana khabar
yoot matsar kyah?
I smeared the glass with blood to make mirrors
My image – a stranger
What frenzy is this?
Mei togh na parun kya chu leekhit posh deewaran
kael gaem tavay laen ashar
yoot matsar kyah?
I couldn’t read the writing on floral walls
my lines of fate turned mute
What frenzy is this?
Sukrath me ahsaan karith gav ne, galath cha?
tyem myan hisukh chav na zahar
yoot matsar kyah?
Socrates did me no favour in leaving
I shouldn’t be saying this, but he didn’t drink my share of poison
What frenzy is this?
Mei rov labith lol shahar
yoot matsar kyah?
daem phuit chi gaemits myaen nazar
yoot matsar kyah?
I’ve lost the city of love I’d found,
What frenzy is this
My gaze has been silenced
What frenzy is this?
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