Contrary to popular belief that contemporary Urdu poetry no longer explores tantalising possibilities of a tumultuous and troubled love, now it produces a new narrative of sensorial harmony between man and the flora and fauna around him. New poet takes the edge off much-admired romanticism by hearing music wafting produced by the earth from his heart and for him natural phenomena are not physical manifestation or symbolic representation of the divinity. Who is the new poet who does not regurgitate themes of his highly admired predecessors? The answer conjures up the image of a young poet Rashid Anwar Rashid.
His poems wrapped in refreshing vocabulary and artistic density make it clear that nature does not necessarily complement human sensitivity. It subsists itself and sets off a streak of aesthetic symmetry in both creative and physical world. The poet held the cosmos in awe for its astonishing penchant for creating evenness across the globe. Harmonious balances cast a spell on the poet who always looks for proportion in the world around him that remains elusive. Constant privation on this count unnerves him and he reacts sharply. His detestation becomes quite evident in his poems. Rashid Anwar, in his recently released collection of poems that quaintly uses wind, rain, river, rainbow, thunderstorm, tree, sunlight, moonlight, mountains, meadow, desert, dust, stone, seasons, valley of flower and the like as end rhymes, creatively asserts that nature is not mere a poetic motif that can be used for heaping praise on natural phenomenon as usually poets do. His latest collection, “Geet Sunati Hai Hawa” (The wind chants song) enunciates that nature is neither considerate nor hostile; it is essentially a creative process that brings forth a deep sense of proportions. It is the reason that no natural phenomenon ever tries to supplant the other in the physical world but human beings hardly emulate it.
The collection carrying 60 ghazals and 60 laconic poems aptly demonstrates that nature is not as unpredictable as human beings are. Why anyone would want to go beyond the widely accepted notion about relationship between man and nature, if templates go so well? The uncomfortable answer is subversion of the common sense fed logic. Subversion of an accepted postulate is not a Quixotic enterprise as usually people believe. Rashid’s uncanny poetic sensibility draws an analogy between birds and human beings. Evening draws curtain and man, animal and bird return to their abode but if they are separated from the beloved, night becomes a source of unprecedented ordeal. His poem ‘Evening Flight’ reveals that sense of alienation runs deep into birds and this binds birds and men together.
Flora and fauna usually complement each other and sometime one tries to fulfil the commitment of the other so that the balance in the universe remain in tact. If it is broken life will be annihilated. Rashid Anwar is a prolific poet and earlier his two collections got widespread adulation. He is admired for producing a multisensory narrative of love which is no longer a sought-after passion. The poems included in this collection are destined to blaze a new trail in our fragmented world as they held out new possibilities of stitching up a rapport with the nature. He is the first Urdu poet who uses nature as a creative trope in proffering an informed poetic discourse on man and the universe.
