When Indian poet Kusum Ansal entered her ancestral house at Rawalpindi in Pakistan, she was so overwhelmed with emotion that she thought she was staring at a gold framed portrait of her mother, who passed away shortly after her daughter was born.
“Entering the home gave me such a warm feeling. It was as if my mother was waiting for me all these years. The house belonged to my nana . The old lady staying there was a big hearted person and invited me to be a guest for a few days. Partition has not divided humanness. Boundaries, politicians and moral agents have not succeeded in dividing love,” says Kusum, who traversed to Pakistan four times to get a feel of the place, in a choked voice.
And during the visits to the neighbouring country, she got familiar with some of intellectuals there. So much so that she spends evenings in the congenial atmosphere of their homes just like she does at her friend’s residences in India.
Kusum likes to be a part of stimulating conversations uniting the people of the two countries. “I share meals with my close circle of friends. The people of Pakistan are a warm, friendly lot and I have been bowled over by their hospitality. Rawalpindi is just like Meerut or Aligarh; the people in the garrison town wear salwar-kameez and speak a beautiful language. Whenever I am in that country my friends throw lavish meals and go out of the way to please me. My friends include renowned poet Kishwar Naheed,” says Kusum.
Some of these experiences have been shared in a book Pilgrimage to a Mysterious World (A collection of poems, released at India International Centre recently).
Hailing from an Arya Samaji family, Kusum as a child never visited a temple or a place of pilgrimage where rituals were performed. “To satisfy my inquisitiveness, I started pilgrimage to holy places. At Ajmer Sharif, a graceful maulvi escorted me to the dargah. A positive light arose from the yellow candle and filled me with strange vibrations. In Delhi I enjoy going to Gurudwara Bangla Sahibji. It makes my spirituality stronger.”
Heaping words of praise on the author, noted filmmaker Muzaffar Ali, who agreed to become a chief guest at the function even though he was preoccupied with his home production in Lucknow, says Kusum Ansal demonstrated her sensitivity and her dedication to travel to places of spiritualism of the people of different faiths.
“When she visited the Sai Baba temple I could feel that I was standing next to her. Similarly when she travelled to Ajmer I felt I was there along with other devotees who pay obeisance to Hazrat Khwaja Moinuddin Hasan Chishty.”
Dressed in black shirt and black jeans, the noted director-cum-designer was the first to unwrap the book among the dignitaries, including Poetry Society India’s H. K. Kaul and Roli Books’ Pramod Kapoor.
