“As grandmother would to her keys

I to my poems”

Dr Nadia Anjum is the head of the Postgraduate English Literature Department at Kinnaird College for Women and a prolific poet. Her new book, Disquietude, is a representative work. The book merges the sacred with the secular, the worldly with the divine, the earthbound and heavy with the spiritual. She distinguishes and articulates many levels of human consciousness. Her words make one feel deeply the experiences which might otherwise seem banal. Her writing captures the mnemonic mementoes; it is a call to consciousness of what has been around us all along.

Contrary to the title of the collection, the reader feels at peace at the end of each poem. This is because she has regulated her angst and chagrin into the fragility of acceptance. Like Maki Qureshi, hers is a new voice.

Anjum’s poems are neither wordy nor verbose. Her message through each of these is the same. In her world, wordiness is a failure. Silence, depth and essence are the quintessence of her body of work. Speaking of quietude and peace, in her poem, When Does Peace Descend, she says:

“I raked the sea at its shores/ To sift the pebbled word/ unrhymed/ purged of its watery self/ it waved a quietude.”

Her poems hold a promise of hopeful days ahead for a disillusioned self. Her message of hope for a disenchanted human lies in reconnecting with the soul through a journey of individuation, silence and repentance but without any claims to grandiosity, spiritual glamour or perfection. There is a sense of this being her path to merging one’s will with divine love.

Her poems are a bildungsroman without a narrative detail. Coming of age is beautiful. While it promises new possibilities and avenues, the flare and the excitement of youthful surprises dies out. She says:

“Why do roads promise a sound/ when sounds sound / no more/ an image/ a vague hope…

When surprise surprises/ no more/ why do roads promise then?” (Promise)

Talking about old age memory lapses, she says: “Papier mached/ memory sails to/ continents dead.”

The Prufrockian Paralysis as taught by TS Eliot plays out beautifully in her writings. In Modality, she says:

“One says, I will fall/ another says, I may/ worded prudent/ whimsical self/ caught between wills/ and maybe’s.”

Her work has strong spiritual lessons as well as warnings about the dangers of a spiritual vacuum.

In Creepers,

1

B: around a tree

A: rooted

B: like faith

2

B: highway sojourn

A: fearing a bandit

B: at arm’s length

A: nearer than that

B: the unguarded soul

The answers to all dilemmas of purpose in life are hidden in a silent yet aggressive soul searching. In this, silence is a prerequisite; it shows that there is depth beneath the surface. Her world hints at the implosion of the thematic and theoretical conflict in a human heart rather than an explosion leading to an irredeemable ruin. Therefore, her human is redeemable.

There are glimpses of Iqbal’s soul searching individualism (known in his words as suragh-i-zindagi) in her work. In Search 1, she says: “From plains to hills/ to airy abodes/ for joy and peace /he searched/ and wherever he went/ enshrined he found/ in his own/ human self.”

Dr Nadia Anjum’s poems are neither wordy nor verbose; and her message through each is the same. Wordiness is a discredit in her world. Silence, depth and essence are the quintessence of her body of work.

Hence the essence of life is encapsulated in a human’s moral constitution. The answers to our existential angst and quest are always found within. Sara Suleri says her mom used to tell her that, “Quest is an honourable place to be.” The search for truth is the loftiest quest that there can be. Further on extending the lessons of soul searching Anjum says: “Weigh your worth/ before the word / the goal before/ the mode/ an earthen ware/ rattles aloud/ when shaken/ unseeded” (In Carefulness).

“Earthen ware rattles” is a direct allusion to a local idiom. It echoes of our local events, fauna and flora, words, sensibilities, moods, temperaments and life in general. In a way, it is safe to say that the Pakistani idiom is the surest way of making a foreign language our own. We are familiar with the observation that an empty vessel is the noisiest. Anjum has beautifully employed in everyday discourse phrases steeped in our culture.

At another place, she comments: “Silence seeks out the worth, while unsought.”

In Pleasure in Weeping, she explores the act of shedding tears: “Arid outstretch/ baited the eye/ stones/ stumped/ thorny prick to/ brackish soul/ watered the/ orchards unseen.”

Her writings read like teachings of a high order. To a world going round and round in twirls of keeping up a social decorum; worldliness going deep so as to fester the roots of an individual, she says in Sage’s Rule 3:

“Meeting worldly people/ with favorable manners/ learned ones through/ knowledge well/ you set your self free/ to meet the sincere/ few left.”

The sincerest of all companions is God. She describes the path to unison with God in Repentance. She says: “Who says it happens once/ when tears hail a/ wet repentance or the/ fisted heart unfists… you benign your wings/ in all gentility to/ repent./ It happens that way.”

In Disquiet, Anjum reiterates the warning that appearances can be deceptive. She takes on a sufi stance about the facades proving futile and essence triumphing eventually. She narrates a saintly man whose appearance deceives the onlookers. But the poem goes beyond mere deception. It works a miracle and its influences transforms the reader.

“Don’t go by my eyes/ shut/ the head that droops/ low/ the breath that counts a/rosary/ the foot that taps a/ note/ on fire on fire/ I may proclaim to/ trick the carnal eye/ to rob thee of thy ecstasy/ to un-wing thy sail/ a stone, a stone/ I may suggest to anger/ the twirling hand/ to undo the Majnu me/ I may say/ a trespasser gone astray.”

In Companionship, she says:

“three followed you to the/ resting ground/ wealth/ heaving mob/ deeds/ one stayed back/ the other two returned.”

This again is a conspicuous emblem of the local vernacular. Who has not heard about the three friends, a’mal, aulad and mal of a man (deeds, progeny and wealth)? This is a direct reference to religio-social discourse.

Anjum frequently employs Quranic figures of speech and figurative analogies. The scriptural references show the writer’s rootedness. It is a grounded voice.

“Mapping logs/ Gabriel winged the/ garlic truth/ the flare of pharaoh/ flamed out by the/ Merciful/ the mosquito pride/ that burnt Nimrod/ to mountain-fire that/ Moses aspired for/ dazzled I stood beside/ the oven that cooked/ blazing red.”

Further on, she talks about work as a means of spiritual redemption after repentance. In Carpenter’s Tale, she says:

“In your work/ your real self/ in your tools/ the search/ praise be to One/ in whose image you work.”

She says in The Gaze:

“A: When you questioned/ B: the bestowed/ A: you accepted not/

B: the Bestower”

Further on, she says: “he asked God one day: my house is spacious/ my horse dutifully obeys/ my character is uprighteous/ my conduct good they say/ will I go to heavens? Neighbour’s dog/ pebbled a paw/ the man had hurt/ one day.”

Anjum’s poetry utilises delicate thought-images that goad the reader on to think for oneself.

The writer is a columnist and the author of A Child of the New Millennium Stories and Essays from Pakistan