TSC Interviews | Hasan Mujtaba

Hasan Mujtaba is a Pakistani poet and journalist living in America in exile, as his work on the persecution of Hindus in Sindh earned him the wrath of his country's government. His poetry collection Koel Sheher Ki Katha has been recently released, with a foreword by journalist and novelist Mohammad Hanif. He spoke to The Sunflower Collective's Abhimanyu Singh at length about his work, his experience of exile, his love for Allen Ginsberg's poetry, and the murder of Sabeen Mahmud, his friend, among other things. Here are the edited excepts :

                                                                Source : wire.in

AS: Could you tell us the exact circumstances in which you decided to go into exile in the US? It appears that you were there to receive a prestigious award following which you decided to stay back?

HM: State and non-state actors were after my blood because of my journalistic work. I was an anti-military establishment journalist, poet and writer, and was also a nonconformist Sindhi, and openly bisexual in today’s Islamic Republic of Pakistan which I call as Intelligence Republic of Ghaibistan (the land of the disappeared). The last assignment I was doing as a journalist in Pakistan was on the state of Hindus in Sindh in the backdrop of India-Pakistan relations. So, in the words of the poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz,"Every road that goes from here leads to the slaughter house." To escape death threats owing to my published work, I wanted to flee the country and take refuge anywhere in the world that respected human rights and freedom of expression. Invitation from the US to receive my Excellence in International Journalism Award from the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University came out of blue. I took it as a life jacket. America proved to be a promised land for my safety and freedom.

AS: Exile seems to play an important role in your poetic worldview. Could you elaborate on what it is that exile does to a poet? Have you come to terms with it, as the poem in the video seems to suggest?

HM: I did not come to America as an economic refugee but as a political exile. Pull and push factors between my country which I left behind and the new country where I arrived would really play buzkushi with me. It ripped me off every day and pieced me together in my dreams every night. That is why most of the poetry I wrote here revolves around exile. I think any poet and writer who has to say something which puts him into real hot waters must have a country of exile. But this is the beauty of America that it gives you a great opportunity for assimilation. Unlike your country, here you don’t have to look above your shoulder. Or you lend your ear to your doorbell.It is the rootlessness: walking between your country of origin and what Rushdie calls the imagined homeland; your country of origin evaporates into a metaphor.

AS: Do you intend to ever return? What is it that you miss the most about Pakistan? Do you think the murder of Sabeen Mahmud marked a new low?

HM: Well, I return every second or third night in my dreams in my sleep. I have made America my home but Sindh exists somewhere else. I want to return one day like Gabriel Garcia Marquez returns in his ‘Clandestine in Chile’. Or, only after my death, in the form of my ashes to be scattered onto Sindhu, the river Indus. So far, I don’t intend to return. I will return when the country really starts to respect human rights and stops killing Sabeen Mehmuds. Her killing was a political but state sponsored assassination which of course has sent the country into its lowest. Everyone close to her knows well Sabeen was killed because she hosted a seminar on Baluchistan. Talking on Baluchistan differently than the official line of the State means inviting death for yourself.Of course, I miss my friends, my parents who are ageing, people and places I visited. I wish I could revisit them again. And the people I fell in and made love with.

AS : The poem in the video pays an ode to Allen Ginsberg. Tell us about your relationship with his work and why do you think he remains relevant?

HM: I was in my late teens when I was captivated by a single line of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl that I read as a passing reference in a book that I had bought from a used book cart in my city Hyderabad in Sindh. The line was: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked….”I was so amazed by the writings about Allen Ginsberg and the Beat generation that I went to the local library of the erstwhile American Center and got his collection of poetry Howl. Later, I was fascinated by his Indian Journals and other works. It made me think he was to India like Ravi Shankar was to America. He was, I thought, up to building bridges between eastern philosophy with western civilization, especially American sub-culture and literature. I developed an image of America in mind that was in Allen Ginsberg’s poetry. When I came to America, he was still alive. My friend Ifti Nasim (who died in July 2011,alas, men of his ilk take centuries to be born in Pakistani and Muslim societies; He was a poet, and a gay rights activist in main stream LGBT movement in America) came to America in mid 1970s and had a chance meeting with Allen Ginsberg. I had then read him in American libraries and heard about him a lot through Ifti. This was Allen Ginsberg who did not only change the culture and every day slang of America but even influenced my generation in the East or subcontinent of South Asia. I stayed around Columbia University. I would hang out with my other exiled friends like Zafaryab Ahmed and another in a famous bar called West End near Columbia University, and in the Greenwich Village where Allen Ginsberg and his comrades used to hang out. And with my American sociologist friend Amy Donavan in the Greenwich Village. There were other personalities like Edward Said I saw in Columbia and Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali in Brooklyn. Yet, it was a different America. Different Greenwich Village. The world was different in pre-September 2001 period, till terrorists attacked America. To me, America meant poetry of Allen Ginsberg and New York. It is from the stairs of the New York Public Library, right on the Fifth Avenue, that I saw the Hare Rama Hare Krishna parade. And I saw a man towards the end of the line in the parade looking like Allen Ginsberg. I did relate that all to the giant American poet and his spiritual connection to India, and to myself in America and back to Sindh to the streets of Schwan and all. It unfolded to me like the opening of floodgates of Deja vu sort of feelings, and thoughts . It really swept me away from across the Atlantic to Sindh, from Hudson to Sindhu and the sub-continent. I return with the poem dedicated to Allen Ginsberg.

AS: Could you tell us a little about your new collection? Who are the poets other than Ginsberg that inspire you? What role does Sindh play in your poetry?

HM: “Koel Shahar Ki Katha” ( A tale of cuckoo’s city) is a collection of Urdu and some Punjabi poetry (as I write poetry in my native language Sindhi , Urdu, Punjabi and little in English as well) consisting of poems I wrote during my years of exile in New York. It has been published by Saanjh Publishers, Lahore with a foreword by my friend and novelist Mohammed Hanif. Though I have made America my home, Sindh is the center of gravity of my poetry. It includes a poem about my exilic experience in New York City though. My book begins with an ode to Allen Ginsberg and ends on a poem against Mumbai attacks titled “Zia-ul-Haq talking from his grave”. May be you will find it a little different from the traditional and modern Urdu poetry. There are some cuss words. There are curses against generals and dictators. There is a poem against killing of children in the mosque of Rawalpindi in the name of God. There is a poem on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto; Benazir Bhutto of my poetry is different than the Benazir I would love to criticize in my journalistic writings. Of course, there are love poems based on the theme of love for both man and woman, including my own favorite poem written on missing a beloved, ‘That boy with the name of Yosuif’. I have made my own kind of Sindh in America: Sindh in exile. There is a poem in Punjabi on sale of the house of Amrita Pritam that was I have heard razed to ground, with a plaza to be built over its site. And there is a ‘song of missing persons’, about the people who were made to disappear at the hands of military in Pakistan: the Baluchs and the Sindhis. There was a poem against Taliban which my publisher refrained to include in the collection. Besides Allen Ginsberg, I am deeply influenced by the great Sufi and Sindhi poet Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, and, doyen of Sindhi poetry Shaikh Ayaz( Shaikh Ayaz would have been a Nobel Prize Laureate if he had found a translator befitting his poetry), Imdad Hussaini, Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, all classical masters Mir Taqi Mir, Ghalib to modern day Urdu poet Gulzar, Afzal Ahmed Syed, Fehmida Riaz, German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, American poets Silvia Plath, Charles Bukowski, Maya Angelou, and Punjabi poets great Sufi Bulleh Shah and today’s Najam Hussain Sayed, Kabir and Rumi and my own beloved friend and Sindhi poet Hasan Dars who died young; new promising voice Amar Sindhu is in the list of poets I have madly fallen in love with all my life.         

AS : The Amhed episode involving the clock shows America might be dealing with rampant Islamophobia. Does it colour your everyday existence?

HM: This is an unfortunate incident but Ahmed is lucky he wasn’t a Sindhi, a Hindu, and living in Sindh under Pakistan. I know a Hindu engineer who tried to invent an electronic gadget was harassed and hounded by the military spies. Another brilliant engineer Ashok Kumar is still missing on charges of a wireless found from his office since 1973. A Hindu journalist who was mistakenly included in a group of reporters visiting the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant came under intense investigation. However, as a Latin American proverb goes,“exile is a cow which sometimes gives poisonous milk.” So sometimes here in America, unfortunately, everybody does experience attitudes, treatment, or even discrimination by everyone else on basis of his or her color of skin, religion, national origins, faith, sect, culture, nationality, race , sex or sexual orientation on everyday basis on every level in a very crude or unseemly way, although that’s not what America is all about. It’s unlawful and unconstitutional in America . As far as Islamophobia is concerned, there is a thin line between it and the Islamo-fascism the world is facing these days. But I am optimistic the world will be a livable place for everyone again.

Poems | Easterine Kire

 

'Red Flowers' (Acrylic and ink on handmade paper) - Sabina Yasmin Rahman

1. Trumpet in tunnel


Sound
not light

magnified
brutally
like when man
first created music
out of raw sounds like that

primitive
backward sounds
those hewn out innards
of earth
spewing forth
broken chords
choking
like a man's rasping sound
trying
to get out
through unsmooth passages
a hacking
a racking
throat
oesophagus.

2. Månestråle
(Moonbeam)

Rounded flakes of moon
falling thickly
and landing like snow in the valley
ringed moon

I know you think of the moon's light as constant
but tonight it is a sprite
skipping into the city streets
and every dark alley
skipping

Have you heard this moon song before, my love?
this unguarded melody of silver gray
I see the moon's beams in your hair
listen to my heart leap
leaping

And your eyes, ah dear love
there's such a light there
dare I try to recapture it in song
and word
and picture
by light of this moon?
move with me
move towards
movements
that
flicker.

3. Forgotten

There he lies
lift him up
with care
he is my love
my forgotten love
my beloved
he has lain so long
at the bottom of the sea
be gentle with him
my forgotten love.

Will you please play
a soft song to draw him up by

There is seaweed in his hair
and sea water in his clothes
that drips back into the sea

Play a song like a boat retreating
so he will know he is remembered by me

That curve of cheek I loved
that line of neck I admired
I would say that easily
if I were a lover like any other
and point it out to you

But no
it is not like that

Have you ever known what it is
to love by hearing and not by touch
to have sound in your ears
as some have blood in their veins
heart stirrings
at the stringing of a chord
the euphony

So loved him I,
like an epiphany in my soul
sea drawn, seaward bound
while the sea-mist was rising
thinner than sound

And now
I know
I must return him to the sea

Play on while the sea receives him
more wife than I
more lover than I ever will be
my love
my forgotten love.





4. Diamonds

I don't like diamonds
Øystein
something hard about diamonds
something cold

razored stalactites.

                I think of the men
                who ripped out the stone
                from cold
                dark earth entrails
                their hands grimy
                with unnecessary soil.

I think of the men
who grind the stone
the harshness
of that sound
rock against stone
sharp
shrill
shriek
shattering the quiet
in taut lines

                I never liked it
                when my daughter dropped
                the crystal bowl
                so it sharded
                into a million diamonds
                glittering
                in corners of the room
                awaiting their turn
                to be swept up

Crystal diamonds
that cut my finger
when I thought
I had picked up
the last
gleaming
never liked
diamonds
no
never.

Prose | Nabina Das

Memory of a Bloodshed

Fragmented (acrylic on canvas) - Reshma Thomas

He was so bloodied that we had to use clumps of cotton to wash him. We needed more, but had to tear old saris. Mother makes me sit next to her and listen. Not sure I want to hear all this. The day was fine apparently, a little warm. A breeze blew from the east. A cousin of mine was visiting. Much laughter and chit chat in the house. My cousin and my father had gone up to the sunny terrace after a hearty lunch. They ate big Katla pieces. A big bone had pricked his thumb and mother rushed for a little cotton swab. Premonition? Never scrub a blood wound. Always press the damp swab, she says. He never went to the terrace in the afternoon. Only in the mornings to see birds from Bay of Bengal. A stroke is nothing unheard of, particularly for a septuagenarian with a history of hypertension. But when he fell, a ramrod toddy palm, apparently it was a devastating sight to my cousin. That bird is here right from the morning, he’d told her before blacking out. I breathe noisily and say I understand that blood oozing from the nose and ears must be wiped with huge clumps of wet cotton, slightly dampened in Dettol. Listen, always remember to get several sanitary napkins to soak the blood well. They bandage well too. Keep those packets handy, especially the long thick ones. Mother thumps the bed cover making mild craters on the sheet. Then she suddenly sees me stare hard and smiles. Too bad I didn’t have them then. It’s been a long long time you know.

Prose | Tarapada Roy translated by Bhaswati Ghosh

Parama Park Street
(An Excerpt From Jalanjali)

Behind the back (acrylic on canvas) - Reshma Thomas

Dada Thakur or the famous Sarat Chandra Chakravarty of Jangipur had once written a song based on the faults of Calcutta...The list ran long. Goldighi wasn’t round, the water of Laldighi wasn’t red, and no brides were available in Bou Bazaar. Had he been alive today, Dada Thakur, in his characteristic jest, would have added another entry to that list of flaws. That would be “No parking” in today’s Park Street, a place where the police doesn’t allow cars to stop. Two signs face each other -- Park Street and “No Parking.”

Americans call the centre of a city the downtown. In that sense, Calcutta’s downtown is in the south, beginning from Park Street and ending at BBD Bagh.

My personal connection with Park Street goes back to a long time. In 1951 -- another lifetime -- I had come to Calcutta to study after clearing my matriculation examination. I had put up at my aunt’s, in the government accommodation my uncle had in Esplanade. That’s where I spent a good six years, until 1957.

I enrolled in Central Calcutta College, located on Wellesley Street; the names of both the street and college have since been changed to Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road and Maulana Azad College, respectively.

Park Street was close enough to my place of stay and Sealdah. Even after I left Esplanade, I stayed for more than a year in Gokhale Road, which, too, was close to Park Street.

Later in my mid-youth in the 1980s, I lived close to Park Street again.

I was in Little Russell Street -- an alley -- though quite wide -- of Park Street. Russell Street begins on the opposite side of Park Hotel, and Little Russell Street is its sub-branch. The names of both these streets have since changed. I think Little Russell Street has become Nandalal Basu Sarani.

The name change happened a while ago, while I was still there. But I never wrote Nandalal Basu Sarani; for me, it has always been Little Russell Street.

This name-changing business is loathsome -- a result of a lack of historical appreciation; an uneducated, cheap political ploy to change the names of roads and institutions. In Calcutta, almost all British street names have been changed, except, who knows why, that of Park Street. That name could have easily been changed to Pradeep Kundalia Street or Kanoria-Bajoria Sarani -- it wouldn’t be too hilarious. After all, Russell Street has now become Anondolal Poddar Sarani.

I do have a proposal for the practice of name change. So far, the issue of minorities has been more or less addressed (for instance, changing Wellesley into Rafi Ahmed Kidwai). However, no attention has been paid to scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Now, we also have OBCs, then there’s the matter of one-third reservation for women. In the distant future, legislation might come through for that. If that happens, I propose changing the name of Park Street to Kananbala Sarani.

In today’s Park Street, amid the concrete jungle of high rises, my christening might appear absurd. But even until recently, there were quite a few gardens (kanan as in forest) in the Park Street area. Even in the beginning of the 1980s when we moved to Little Russell Street, neighbourhoods had quite a few two- and three-story houses surrounded by gardens spread across a bigha or two bighas of land. In the absence of any caretakers to tend to them, wild grass and creeping weeds ruled the gardens. Still, flowers would bloom through those vines to rise up to windows. With the first spell of rain, the scent of kamini flowers would envelop the entire neighbourhood. At the end of winter, blossoms would appear on mango trees, bringing a bunch of koyel and other birds. Spring fest would begin.

But for Park Street, the surrounding areas don’t have much traffic or crowd after sundown. By 10 p.m., the roads become deserted.

First, an AC market came up in Theatre Road and Camac Street had a multistoried building. Now AC markets and skyscrapers abound Park Street.

Interestingly, there’s no theatre or stage in Park Street, which is otherwise the entertainment district of Calcutta. There’s only one movie theatre, that too not on main Park Street, but on the tram line of Park Circus.

All of Park Street’s fame is because of its up-class and dazzling hotels and bars. Old fixtures like Olympia, Blue Fox, Mocambo, and Sky Room.

In our first rush of youth, we used to have our adda in Olympia whenever our pockets allowed. Plates full of sausages and omelettes alongside drinks whetted our appetite. The addas in Olympia were of a high standard. Stiff-nosed intellectuals visited the place. I have seen Samar Sen, Niranjan Majumdar, Amalendu Dasgupta and Hamdi Be there.

Sunil and I have been to Olympia quite a few times. Amitava Mukherjee, a refined and well-educated big-shot of the coal mines, used to welcome us with open arms. Long before the fictional world of Satyajit Ray’s Feluda, Amitava Mukherjee’s pet name was Felu -- we called him Feluda.

On one occasion, Shakti created a ruckus in Olympia. Later, the bar’s authorities issued a notice prohibiting Shakti’s entry.

The ground floor of Olympia used to be, and probably still is, closed to women, although Niranjan Majumdar’s wife would sometimes appear late at night to take her husband home.

The upper floor had provisions for family dining. I have memories of many an enjoyable evening there, spent in the company of my wife, son and friends.

After returning from abroad, my good friend, the humourist Himanish Goswami, settled down in the suburbs of north Calcutta. I myself was in the south at the time. After visiting the city’s southern part, he remarked, “South is open.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Himanish said, “The south is more open, and thus its women don’t wrap themselves with too many clothes -- they are more open, too.”

In this context, it bears mentioning that at that time, sleeveless blouses and tucking the sari below the navel had just come into fashion.

Some twenty years after Himanish made that observation, I came across a girl in Park Street one evening, wearing, what can only be called inappropriately scanty clothing. She had just stepped into her youth.

I knew the girl well and her parents, even better. When we were close enough to each other, I said to her with parental authority, “What kind of clothes are you wearing? What would your mother say if she learned about it?”

The girl was mortified. Bending her head, she said, “Uncle, I have a small request. Please don’t tell Ma. This is actually her dress; she isn’t home so I stole it. She would be furious if she came to know about it.”

In Calcutta, such conversations are only possible in Park Street.

Poem| Nitoo Das

Dementia


For a decade, all he did was plan
an escape.

“I’m going home. My mother
waits for me.
It’s late; she’ll worry.”

That was my father
over and over again. His story rife
with spies and alibis. A little boy
looking for ways

to flee from strangers
jailors
his wife
whom he called his bride
but could never recognise

her body, bent
and tired while he
he was a boy,
raw, brown, playing late
into the evening
as his mother waited.

And, then, on a June night
he lay down rooting
for daylight
and ritual. The snarl
of sedation and defeat
forgotten as usual.
Young, lithe again

he ran to a mother
who waited for him
with laughter. A full-
blown cover of sanity,
incense and water. His clothes
not soiled, his nostrils
blocked to lies, his skin

no longer just a stretch
of creased matter over bone smelling
of darkness and dettol.