A Glimpse of ‘Postcard from Kashmir’ — By Taizeem Bilal
“Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr
The poem ‘Postcard from Kashmir’ is taken from ‘The Half-inch Himalayas’, a stellar collection of the early works by Agha Shahid Ali.
The poem glaringly expresses Shahid’s nostalgia, and possession of his heart by Kashmir, his homeland, the region in South Asia torn by bloodshed and territorial claims by China, India and Pakistan.
Kashmir shrinks into my mailbox,
my home a neat four by six inches.I always loved neatness. Now I hold
the half-inch Himalayas in my hand.This is home. And this the closest
I’ll ever be to home. When I return,
the colors won’t be so brilliant,
the Jhelum’s waters so clean,
so ultramarine. My love
so overexposed.And my memory will be a little
out of focus, in it
a giant negative, black
and white, still undeveloped.— Postcard From Kashmir
Kashmir shrinks into my mailbox,
my home a neat four by six inches.
To Shahid the actual, splendorous Kashmir reduces to a piece of paper, a flimsy postcard.
Postcards, normally are sent from a place where a person spends his/her day off. But, interestingly, this time the poet receives a post card from home, which has become real small, it fits in the dimensions of a regular postcard.
I always loved neatness. Now I hold
the half-inch Himalayas in my hand.
The nostalgic poet says that he had always loved neatness. But here the ‘neatness’ does not refer merely to the timid colors of the postcard, but the peace and harmony that filled the air of poet’s homeland before the conflict and socio-political turmoil took over. He loved the vivacious and harmonious Kashmir.
Turning his attention to the mere ‘half-inch’ Himalayas, which is the major mountain range of the world, Shahid carefully chooses his words to express contrast here, to express the distance between him and his home.
This is home. And this the closest
I’ll ever be to home. When I return,
the colors won’t be so brilliant,
the Jhelum’s waters so clean,
so ultramarine. My love
so overexposed.
The expression in these lines becomes more serious and desperate. Yearning for home, Shahid realizes the chances of him returning home are thin.
‘And this the closest I’ll ever be to home.’– nostalgic, he knows, the essence of home is all he has.
Anticipating his return, Shahid imagines what his country would look like:
torn by war Kashmir would no longer display colors of joy and peace. The bloodshed would have rendered the waters of Jhelum impure.
Shahid’s love is ‘so overexposed’. The rhetoric weight on separating ‘my love’ from ‘so overexposed’ invokes the poet’s deep love for his country.
And my memory will be a little
out of focus, in it
a giant negative, black
and white, still undeveloped.
In Shahid’s memory, he reminisces Kashmir as ‘a giant negative’ unlike the postcard, where it’s diminished and stark coloured. He now recollects Kashmir in ‘black and white’ for everything that has rendered it is messy and bleak.
If one pays attention, the poem has 14 lines which is typical of a Shakespearean sonnet, a traditional format for love expression. The poem, therefore, aims at portraying the poet’s patriotic love for Kashmir, which he’s proud to call his homeland.
Written By : Taizeem Bilal
The author can be reached on her Instagram by clicking here.
