A poet, fiction writer, critic and a translator AR Dad is known as the proponent of modern views in Balochi literature.
He has the credit to introduce Balochi literature to a wave of modern theories like, structuralism, post-structuralism surrealism, and existentialism and off course the controversial post modernism. He has also excessively translated the works of TS Elliot, Charles Baudelaire, Ezra Pound, Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes to say a few here. In both fiction and poetry he articulates himself with such ease that either faculty seems like his forte. Vagueness and abstruseness are the hallmark of his craft. The world he constructs in his poetry appears to be surreal, mysterious and tinged with fantasy. At times it appears like an offshoot of the French surreal poetry of the nineteenth century. Through his surreal thoughts and imaginations he has undoubtedly opened new vistas in modern Balochi literature, especially in the post Atta Shad period.+
Dad’s thought and his works have openned new vistas in modern Balochi
literature in the post-Atta Shad period
So far he has to his credit two collections of poetry. They are Tahàrage Wahda (At the Time of Dusk) and Jungalé Idá Bútté? (I Wish Here Were A Jungle). Translated poems are taken from his first collection Tahárage Wahda published by the Balochistan Academy, Turbat in 2010.
Let There Be a Night or a Day Forever
Crouched in a shade, mute and silent
I’m unconcerned with the daybreak
Unaware with the moonrise
I don’t know if there falls a night
For me all seasons look the same
Whether it’s day or night
Dark or moonlight
Unconcerned I’m with all these absurdities of life
O, God!
Now give a new shape to this universe
Either let there be a night forever
Or a day with no end
Countless roads and trails and the only life!
The goblet of time is about to spill over its wine
In my thoughts and reflections
A day breaks
A night falls
And rises a moon
O God!
Let me come out of this spell
Either let there be a night forever
Or a day with no end!
The Ocean of Sky
In the ocean of the sky
Reflects the azure mirror of water
Ignorant like children
We look up in the sky
As if it’s a kite
Broken away from its string
God, a dwarf and haggard man
Cannot see my eyes
I’ll come
Riding the horse of my dreams
And you will never imagine
How I pluck the flowers of kisses
My heart is black
Like a wooden plank
But
It still looks beautiful
In the hands of a child!
Do You Remember?
Do you remember?
How we uprooted the thirst
And dropped it stealthily,
Like a child
Born out of wedlock
At a door next to ours.
In our dreams
All night long
How wildly
Sky chased us
Like a famished horse
Every morning
We held the world
Under our arms
And took the road
Down to school
Don’t you remember?
The writer is a lecturer at the Government Atta Shad Degree College and can be reached at [email protected]
Published in Daily Times, August 22nd 2017.