Will Gujarat Mourn Adil Mansuri?

The news of AdilMansuri’s passing (November 6, 2008) filled me with a sadness that ran deeper than just a loss of a good poet,artist and a family friend. That very afternoon, not knowing that he hadtransitioned into a more peaceful realm, a student in my Modern Urdu LiteratureClass had done her presentation on AdilMansuri. In what afterwards seemed an almost surrealistic fashion, the class hadappreciated his calligraphicdesigns heightened through the overhead projector on a wide screen and readsome of his poetry in the original and in translation.. I learnt of his deathlater that day, but the feeling of remembrance lingered on to an extent that Iwas forced to analyze my emotions regarding the loss and felt compelled to writeabout. it.

I eventually realized that it was tied to Adil sahib’s being from Gujarat,a place that was once a vibrant society, the home for people of all faiths andcultural inclinations; not the stifled, torn, violent place it has become today.Gujarat through the port city of Surat was the hub of trade in the Indian Oceanand the gateway to a land of tolerance and prosperity. Vali Gujarati, (alsoknown as Vali Dakhani, d. 1708) the first great classical Urdu poet wrote a masnavi(long narrative poem) on Surat’s delightful ambience and cultural diversity inthose times. Vali is effusive in his praise for the city. His description of itsdemography includes beautiful men and women, Hindus, Muslims, Parsis evenEuropeans. Here are some random excerpts from Vali’s forty four sher masnavi.

Hai mashur uska har ja naam Surat 
ke jaavey uske dekhe se kadurat

kinaare uske hai darya-e Tapti 
ke duniya dekhne ko jiske japti

Vahan sakin hain itne ahle mazhab 
ke ginne mein na aawe unke mazhab

Agarche voh hai sab ibn-e adam 
vale binish mein ranga rang aalam

Bhari hai sirat-o surat se Surat 
har ek surat hai vahan anmol murat

(Divan-e Vali,, p. 140-44)

[Everyone knows it by the name Surat
being there rids one of all misgivings

The river Tapti flows by its side
it is the envy of the world

People of different religions live there
so many religions it is hard to count

Although they are all sons of Adam
they appear to be of all colours andstripes

Fine in both character and appearance
each face is like a priceless icon]

The language we know today by the name of Urdu, flowered into a literarylanguage not in Delhi at first but in faraway Gujarat. Gujarat is the home ofthe earliest Hindi/Gujri/Urdu poets. The earliest poetry was mystico-philosophical.Sheikh Bahauddin Bajan (1388-1506) was the first substantial poet in thelanguage that he called "Hindi and Gujri". He was a Gujarati sufi andlover of music, hence the name "Bajan". In each of his short Hindipoems he has specified the particular raga in which the poem is to besung:. Gujarat has given us a stream of distinguished literati in the manylanguages that reflect its integrative culture. It gave us Gandhi who wrote anew grammar of Indian politics, leading a nationwide movement against notjust colonialism but tyranny, inequality, especially of the social kind, andnon-violence. Godhra, the village from where Gandhi launched his campaign in1917 against these injustices ironically became the site of the manic sectarianviolence of 2002, showing us how different Gujarat is now from its past history.In the climate of terror that was unleashed, Vali’s grave in Ahmedabad wasdesecrated and vandalized. A sad testimony to how far we have strayed from theSurat where the river Tapti used to flow and the poet prayed for the safety ofthe hundreds of Hindu pilgrims on bathing days.

Adil Mansuri (1936-2008) was among the dozen or sopoets who emerged in the 1960s as the ‘new names’ in Urdu poetry. Born asFarid Muhammad in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, he adopted Adil Mansuri as his pen name.Mansuri has been called the most courageous amongst the poets of the modernistmovement because his poems exhibit ‘a fighting spirit’ or boldness. He hadthe resolve to confront challenges with resilience and an infinite stayingpower. His was the distinction of being Urdu’s only surrealistic poet.. As asurrealist he mapped image upon image and then embedded them within the largercanvas creating a meaning from what may seem illogical and disconnected. Hiscanvas was wide; he engaged with religion, politics, transnational existence,city life and much more, drawing metaphors from Islamic history to presentpolitics. An observer of urban life, Mansuri has written poems not just oncities but on specific locales in those cities such as streets, hotels,neighborhoods.

After moving to New Jersey, Mansuri’s writing became more bilingual. Morerecently, Mansuri had begun editing and producing an electronic journal inGujarati, Ghazal Gurjari.He also began writing plays and developing his hobby of calligraphy into amore serious engagement with the art form. He has designed covers/dustjackets for many of his friends' publications. He drew tughras usingcomputer graphics to generate artistic fonts and geometrics, reviving this dyingart form.

In the poem written on his father’s death he avoids sentimentality. He doesnot allow himself to be submerged in pain but uses it to contemplate on themeaning on human existence.

On the Death of My Father

He had not slept for forty nights.
Loading dreams on camels
he kept going; moving along into the wastelands
of the night
he kept burning on the pyres of moonlight.

On the table
dentures resting in a glass kept smiling.

From a realm behind the dark glasses,
the cataract floret strove to raise its
head.

Darkness began smiling in his eye.

The soul’s hand was riddled by the tip
of a needle.

The lamps of desires were stilled in his
body.

Fluid shadows of green water, moment
by moment,
began descending into his body.

Under the shade of ten stars embedded
in the roof of the house,
images relinquished contours;
images withered.

Valid ke Intiqal Par

I Await You

In veins devoid of blood
under the blanket of flesh
On ladders fashioned from bones
On pathways of breath
I await you.

Main Tumhara Muntazir Hun

Mansuri wrote four deeply unsettling poems on the horrific genocide in Bosniawhich illustrate the surrealistic mode of his style. Written in response toBosnia, the poems may very well speak to the equally ghastly events in his owncity of Ahmedabad in 2002.

Bosnia (iii)

All the walls, riddled with holes.
Each house, a ruin
Putting back the head fallen on the ground
on the neck, I muse:
"All reflection is now futile."
Pushing my hand through the yawning
gap in the rib cage,
I fumble around.
Who throbbed in here?
The hand finds its way across my back.
With the hand lying in the dust below,
I balance the head
which is in the process of rolling down
my neck—
All the walls, riddled with holes.
Each house, a ruin.

Bosnia (iv)

In the emptiness
Hands raised in prayer
Chopped from the shoulders
Heads bowed to the ground
Severed from the neck
Beyond, through pierced chests
A city, burning
Smoke billowing through the holes
Spreading into every eye
Every dream.

I would like to close this tribute with one of his poems that brings amessage of hope: His Poetry Collection is titled Hashr ki Subah DarakhshanHo (May the Morning of Resurrection be Luminous). I fervently hope itwill be so.

Now

The journey of black sun is over.
Now, dreams shall descend to the earth
from the eye of the heavens.
Now, windows of space shall be
opened;
the earth shall be cleansed with moon rays.

Mehr Afshan Farooqi, Assistant Professor at University of Virginia, is theeditor of TheOxford India Anthology of Modern Urdu Literature