Reading a book by a veteran folklorist like Ghulam Nabi Aatash is to feast on the partially lost images and symbols of Kashmir. Especially, from the rural Kashmir. Stunning changes are occurring that both amuse, bemuse and very often befuddle the onlookers. The last two decades have created a digital quake that has reshaped patterns in ways that disorient the comprehending capability. The shapes, colors and smells of fields, orchards and forests, not to mention the streams, songs and social gatherings have been redesigned by forces beyond the control of human beings. For people like the author of this new collection of poems, keen witness to an earlier era of slow life and slower news cycles, with time to reflect on the stars and running brooks, the changes are magical and deeply unsettling, calling forth reliance on the nostalgic memories of the past, and zooming out to the reflection on the realms of mortality and the yearning for a youth that has slipped past. Each poem is a testament to a lost innocence.

Ghulam Nabi Aatash has published numerous books in different genres in Kashmiri, with a special lens on the folk heritage of Kashmir. Now in his declining years, with a total loss of eyesight, confined to his room, he has published a new slim collection of poems titled ‘tamah Baharan huend’. It is made of folk-songs, hikayat, translation of some poems of Mohammad Iqbal and a sprinkling of naats, beginning of course with the hamdiya poems. With his continuous engagement with the world of the folk, lived as he has life amid the lay and the ordinary, almost away from the glitz and ritz, bouquets and banners, of the limelight, it’s unlikely he will settle down with this as his last book. People come and go to his house inquiring about his health. He’s a store house of tales and stories that keep flowing out of him in spite of the debilitating health concerns. He picks layers upon layers of tales connected to the local places. He knows the legendary Waaga Bhat like he is talking about a living neighbor. The voice is growing dim, and low murmurs of giving up everything, including perhaps the world of letters. However, the memories are alive and he is letting them go out into the world. Memories are the last abstract anchor to hold on to when even the final material straws go away.

Tamah Baharan huend is a lament, a mourning about a past that has left the author, leaving behind frail memories, and is at once a desire for reclaiming the desire for youth through memories fragile as life. It is personal as well as public. He weaves the personal loss with the loss of the collective. Often the collective resonates in the personal and the latter echoes in the collective.

Yaawna aatash oasus sholaan, bolaan volaan khoob

Vaensi ta vaqtan hanga tchaetchrovuis, ba ti oasus nuinda boan

Hayomuit vaethir zan poat haruid neerith

Buidith ma chuis heikaan feerith ta thuurith

Kallas peth koah hewaan oasuis na khotchaan

Bruinzah pehra yita loaka chaara feerith

As mentioned, there are translations of other poets as well. One of them is from Imam Gazali’s Kimyaayi Sa’adat, a hikayat, wherein three men are trapped in a cave. One by one, with no instrument available to help them out and death creeping closer, they invoke their past good deeds to seek help from the God. Their past narrations are interesting, and as they narrate, the blocked cave opens gradually until it is fully open. The plainness of style masquerades an ethical, conscientious core. And to read these poems with a sense of empathy, curiosity and contentment, a reader has to place himself on the vantage point of this ethical core to fathom the viewpoint of the author. The thing is that, to quote Harper Lee, “You don’t really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” The person and his gentle position grow increasingly visible as we turn the pages towards the end of the book.

The poems are social documents inviting attention for preservation and transmission. This collection takes the readers on a cultural tour. Phryoav is an old festival in south Kashmir associated with the shrine of Sheikh Zain ud Din wali. The new generation may only know the torchlight festival but phryoav is a wider term encompassing actions beyond the torchlight festival. The poem contrasts the joy of phryoav with the pain of another family. While others may have hard time understanding phryoav, the author speaks of it as if the event spanning about a week is panning out in front of him.

Combined with this collection of poems is his earlier poetic collection, zool amaaran huend. The latter was originally published in 1978. The cost of the book at that time was Rs. 5/- and had won Cultural Akademy Award. The poet has not veered much from his native moorings from his earlier publications. Scratch a bit the latest, and you find veins of the former. There is a palpable thread of yearning for conservation of the inherited, though a touch indiscernible, heritage weaving its way from his earlier compositions to the latest.

Dr. Javaid Iqbal Bhat, Associate Professor, South Campus KU.

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