Mohammad Ishaque, widely known as Atta Shad is the most revsered and cherished modern Balochi poet. He instilled a new spirit in the moribund body of modern Balochi poetry in the post Partition period when the latter was drastically paralysed by the influence of Persian and Urdu poetry.
Atta Shad gave a new orientation to modern Balochi poetry by introducing the free verse in Balochi literature, which also brought in its wake a chain of new themes and mode of expression hitherto untouched by Balochi poets.
Unlike his contemporaries, Shad opted for a rather intricate and somewhat ambiguous language to articulate his fresh poetic ideas. His poetic diction comprises words from all major dialects of Balochi language.
What sets Shad apart from the rest of Balochi poets is his subtle, metaphoric and symbolic approach while versifying socio-political themes. He seemed more concerned about the aesthetic sense of art than anything else
Apart from the popular motifs of love and romance, subjugation and suffering, freedom and liberty, life and its absurdities and existentialism are a few recurrent themes making inroads in Shad’s poetry.
What sets Shad apart from the rest of Balochi poets is his subtle, metaphoric and symbolic approach while versifying socio-political themes. He seemed more concerned about the aesthetic sense of art than anything else.
Sahkandan (On the Threshold of Death) is not only considered a tour de force in modern Balochi poetry but it is one of the most inspiring anthems of resistance ever written in any language across the world.
Shad’s poetry anthologies include Roch Ger (The Solar Eclipse) and Shap Sahaar Andem (Night at the brink of dawn). The translated poems are taken from Roch Ger published by the Balochi Academy, Quetta in 1997.
Utter Helplessness
God, O God!
Where’s that world?
That heaven and the earth?
Where is that day that passes into a dawn-bright night
Those flower-studded stars, the bright moon?
Where are those entranced ecstasies?
The pleasant landscape of pleasing hearts?
The world I’m condemned to be in stands apart to my very existence
The world that is the soul of my innocence,
Like the realm of angels
The world that is shaped the sapient guilt of my crumbling age,
Yet is deprived of the hell’s inferno.
The heaven of my countless sizzling dreams and desires,
Vended not to be at the mart of grief and gloom.
The world that is neither mine nor my abode,
But no route to it is far enough for me,
Yet I forage and search but never reach there.
Where’s that world? Where is it?
That earth and the space?
God, O God!
Here I’m like a wreck in the ruins of time
I in the depth of my future-moulding ocean of dreams,
With blood-stained vortex of memories,
Surrounded by walls of melancholy tides
Who knows where will I wander
Should I drown and die?
Where’s that world?
O God!
The Diamond
Who knows,
How many radiant suns,
Lustrous moons
And flower-studded stars
The vast azure firmament of imagination holds in its fold
The diamonds
That cut the darkness and the bottle of dark nights with their healing edges
The diamonds
That part and make the dark clouds of grief scram away
Are all hoarded by the pitiless merchant of time
But the sack of day and night is not filled to the brim yet
Hoping for a famine
This pitiless merchant of time has become remorseless!
(Death of age of futurity is but not a famine)
Viva the beautiful heartland!
The azure firmament of imagination!
That lies afar from this affluent world
Here in this parched wasteland
If someone roams
He must be tattered-cloth mendicant of dreams and desires
With a begging bowl in hand
He goes after the death-nibbled life and begs for a beam of diamond
Like a child
He yearns and craves
Moans and groans.
The vast azure firmament of imagination!
The diamond!
The utter helplessness of God!
Too Much Yearning
I was all immersed in sleep
A familiar voice called me out
“You are dead”
Jolted out of sleep
I looked around
Everybody was in slumber
I knew I was not dead
But since then I’ve been wondering
Who was he, who called out me?
A friend or a foe?
As I imagined
I felt a hand gently caressing my hair
I turned my gaze around
Nobody there I found
As I imagined his voice
A burst of laughter
Wafted by my ear
“Too much yearning maddens your heart”!
The writer is a lecturer at the Government Atta Shad Degree College and can be reached at [email protected]
Published in Daily Times, July 22nd , 2017.