I See Kashmir From New Delhi at Midnight

I See Kashmir From New Delhi at Midnight

Agha Shahid Ali

The Poet

Agha Shahid Ali was born in 1949: just one year or more after Independence, and also after partition. His birth was in Delhi, but he was raised up in Kashmir. Life in Kashmir was difficult in those days. The problems of partition, with India and Pakistan holding claim to the territories there, made the place a constant field of fights and tensions. The poet moved over to the USA in 1976. This poem forms part of a collection “The Country without a Post Office”. which came out in 1997.

Agha Shahid Ali is a representative of diaspora. He has childhood memories of Kashmir. He spent his youthhood partly in Delhi, where he had his college education. Then he moved over to the United States of America, where he became a teacher and emerged as a noted poet.

In most of his poems, Kashmir and its problems form the theme.

The Poem

“I See Kashmir From New Delhi at Midnight”, by Agha Shahid Ali, is a diasporic poem, where the poet himself can be the narrator. He places himself in New Delhi, and his mind goes back to the experiences of Kashmir, where he grew up.

The poem is divided into four sections.

In Section 1, we understand the narrator’s strong desire to get news from Kashmir. There is a barrier of distance: Delhi is more than 500 kilometers away from Kashmir. Geographical barriers prevent the vision: the mountains are there in between. More than that there is the barrier of power and politics: news from Kashmir is censored, and there is curfew that prevents movement within Kashmir. But the narrator breaks these barriers in his mind, and gets visions of Kashmir. He sees the military or police chasing young people, taking them into custody, and subjecting them to cruel torture.  

In the Section 2, the narrator meets the “shadow” – the person who had been arrested. He recognizes the person as his old friend Rizwan with whom he had spent his days in Kashmir. This meeting gives a message to the narrator, which says that he should not forget Kashmir.

In section 3, through the words of Rizwan, the poet takes us through the sufferings of the people of Kashmir. Many have died and their families have no idea of them. There are organized attacks by the forces upon people. Kashmir, the abode of snow, is burning. People flee from their homes, taking away the images of gods from temples, which indicates that they have no hope of a return. 

In Section 4, the narrator’s words here sound like a meditation than a conversation. He makes a promise that Rizwan’s father will not be told of his death. He has only prayers that the atrocities will end. But, he realises his hopelessness of being in Delhi: the mountains are still granite: he cannot see through them. His only vision is of the people coming down the snowy mountains, with gods asleep like children in their arms.

“I See Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight” is a personal, powerful poem. Agha Shahid Ali himself has confessed his passion for Kashmir, which is reflected in most of his lines.

Notes and Explanations

The Kashmir Situation: Following the Indo-Pak partition in 1947, both India and Pakistan claimed the entirety of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. Even before that, there were situations of internal conflict. Article 370 was drafted in the Indian constitution granting special autonomous status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. This, along with Article 35A, defined that the residents of Jammu and Kashmir live under a separate set of laws related to citizenship, ownership of private property and fundamental rights and many other matters, which gives them a level of autonomy as compared to the other Indian states. In 2019, the Government of India issued a constitutional order which made all the provisions of the Indian constitution applicable to Jammu and Kashmir

Section 1:

The narrator is now in Delhi, away from the mountainous Kashmir. He wishes to know what happens in Kashmir. But for this, he needs to use the power of imagination. And thus in his mind he sees someone being chased down by the forces, and taken in for interrogation. The people thus taken in have no identity, and the outside world often doesn’t know what happens to them.

One must wear jeweled ice in dry plains/ to will the distant mountains to glass: For a clearer vision, people wear spectacles. But here, to see what is happening in Kashmir, we need to overcome the barriers. In Delhi (“dry plains”) our minds should bring out beautiful images of Kashmir (“jeweled ice”) and strongly desire (“will”) that the mountains are transparent glass.

A shadow chased by searchlights/ nothing: people have lost their identity and are hunted down by the forces.

slip unseen: a person taken in for interrogation can just disappear; his family may not hear anything more of him.

Section 2:

The shadow, which had ‘slipped in’, now ‘slips out’. He requests the narrator to give him some consolation. The narrator who is in Delhi finds himself, standing in the moonlight in the empty streets of Srinagar. But there is no assurance he can give the person. His mind recalls a conversation that took place long time back while in Kashmir: the other person had told the narrator about the falling of leaves. Usually they fall one by one, but in autumn, they fall in clusters.

Now suddenly the narrator recognizes that the person is his friend Rizwan, whose dress is all torn. Rizwan touches the narrator, who feels the snow in his hands and words. The words of Rizwan are powerful: “Each night put Kashmir in your dreams”.

beckons: call by gesture. Indicates that the person cannot speak. It points to the censoring of news in Kashmir. (Section 1: from where no news can come.)

sheen: shine

phiren: loose uppergarment

Section 3:

The narrator feels that Rizwan is telling him not to report his death to his family. (These words of the poem bring to us the reality that the incidents are not actually happening, but take place in the mind of the narrator. How else can a person speak out ‘I have died’? Then, we are taken to examples of incidents in Kashmir: the firing at a funeral procession, the burning of houses at midnight, and the Kashmiri pundits forced to leave their homes, taking the statues of their gods with them.

“Don’t tell my father I have died”: These words point to a fact that thousands of youngsters in Kashmir have just disappeared, and their families have no idea about their fate.

hundreds of pairs of shoes the mourners/ left behind, as they ran from the funeral: refers to an incident of 1990, when there was gun firing at the funeral procession of Maulavi Mohammad Farooq Shah.

men removing statues from temples…clutching the gods: Refers to the exodus of the Kashmeri pundits in the 1990s.

Section 4:

The last section of the poem is like a meditation, and a promise the narrator makes to Rizwan. He himself is not sure what has happened to his friend. As a gesture of prayer and hope, he has tied a knot with green thread at the Shah Hamdan. He wants to untie that when Kashmir becomes peaceful. But he realises that he is far away in Delhi. The barriers exist. All he can see is the sight of people – the Pundits – coming down the Himalayas, clutching their gods in their arms.

Shah Hamdan: A house of prayer in Srinagar.

Questions

Answer in a sentence or two:

What are the places of Kashmir mentioned in the poem?

What does Rizwan want the narrator to remember?

Answer in a paragraph:

How does Section 3 bring out the problems of Kashmir?

What does the reference to ‘statues’ mean in the poem? How does it impact the conclusion?

Write short essays on the following:

What all incidents of Kashmir are highlighted in the poem?

Bring out the portrait of Rizwan as understood from the poem.

Give a detailed answer to the question:

Prepare an appreciation of the poem as an example of diasporic identity.