عجائب خانہ

[vc_row full_width=”” par­al­lax=”” parallax_image=“”][vc_column width=“1/1”][vc_column_text css_animation=“”][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row full_width=”” par­al­lax=”” parallax_image=“”][vc_column width=“1/1” css=”.vc_custom_1474708755592{background-position: cen­ter !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;background-size: cov­er !important;}”][vc_column_text css_animation=“”]Dr. Sar­wat Zahra inspires me at sev­er­al lev­els: she is a ded­i­cat­ed, com­mit­ted and expe­ri­enced Emer­gency  Room physi­cian at a very busy hos­pi­tal, and she stands between life and death try­ing to help very sick patients lit­er­al­ly every day and night; she is a moth­er of two very beau­ti­ful and intel­li­gent chil­dren who have great per­son­al­i­ties to reflect Dr. Sar­wat’ s avail­abil­i­ty and nur­tur­ing moth­er­ing; she is an accom­plished poet­ess with two great poet­ry books to her cred­it, as she is equal­ly known in India and Pak­istan and abroad, not only in UAE but also in entire Mid­dle East, Europe and now even in North Amer­i­ca. I am total­ly puz­zled to see how she bal­ances all these three pil­lars of her life- work, home and lit­er­a­ture.  In my opin­ion, she is an ulti­mate role mod­el for a mod­ern woman who is accom­plished at so many dif­fer­ent lev­els and still strives for the best. Her style of poet­ry impress­es me the most as she does not com­pro­mise her thoughts or ideas in the con­forms of styles and forms. I find her most true and hon­est at her writ­ing table. She is will­ing to write the bit­ter truth about life no mat­ter how hard it sounds to the soci­ety and how dis­turb­ing it is for the sta­tus quo. She chal­lenges every injus­tice in our soci­ety and demands equal right for her­self as a human being with­out any con­ces­sion for her gen­der. Her poet­ry sounds like a resis­tance ask­ing for a change and does not sound like a polit­i­cal slo­gan ask­ing just for atten­tion. I am con­vinced that her poet­ry should reach out to oth­ers who can­not read or write Urdu. India is a prime exam­ple of a mul­ti­lin­gual world we live in. Once trans­lat­ed or trans-cre­at­ed into Eng­lish we cross the lan­guage bar­ri­er not only in the East but also reach out to our fel­low human beings in the West. Lan­guage should not be a rea­son to restrict any idea, it should just be a tool for us to com­mu­ni­cate.

(I am a psy­chi­a­trist, liv­ing, teach­ing and prac­tic­ing psy­chi­a­try in Vir­ginia, USA, for the last 22 years. I enjoy Indi­an clas­si­cal music and read­ing and writ­ing poet­ry. Hav­ing book (Becom­ing a psy­chother­a­pist)   Recent­ly, with friends, I have start­ed a web-based group, called ‘Lit­er­ary Forum of North Amer­i­ca’ which has almost 280 mem­bers from nine dif­fer­ent coun­tries. The focus of the forum is to pro­mote lit­er­a­ture in Urdu as well as Eng­lish, includ­ing trans­la­tions

Dr Rizwan ali .Translator)[vc_row][vc_column width=“1/1”][vc_column_text][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row full_width=”” par­al­lax=”” parallax_image=“”][vc_column width=“1/2”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1475947571619{background-color: #bcbcbc !impor­tant;}”]

Muse­um

Right before my eyes, my life

has become a muse­um.

With­out my know­ing,

my uncon­scious has amassed

secret trea­sures, antique bless­ings.

Here, on shelves,

mum­mi­fied words and pre­served moments,

stacked and lac­quered, stand pro­tect­ed

even from the heat of my body!

My bro­ken ban­gles

sound from cab­i­nets

like musi­cal instru­ments.

Look at this shelf—

see the bro­ken body of my child­hood doll, asleep.

Some­where the mir­ror of my dress­ing table—

fad­ed, cracked—still reflects hell­ish times.

Did I leave my eye in the kohl pot?

It still stares back!

My life, crushed

under rust­ed jew­el­ry,

fright­ened by the clink of my anklets, wails.

A bro­ken comb

holds tan­gled hairs

while off in a cor­ner

a pitch­er leaks

the scent of my thirst.

The stuck dial of a great clock

trem­bles on a painful moment;

from swamps of emo­tion

a stench wafts up.

Hoards of tourists arrive to ogle

my house of won­ders.

One derides this gasp­ing corpse,

turns away, indif­fer­ent,

while anoth­er, a schol­ar,

will research these things

but only to prove his genius.

None — alas! — dis­cov­ers the thread

tan­gled in dust.

I stand aside and won­der,

wait­ing at the end of that thread

to be found.

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