Parveen Shakir shot into prominence at the young age of 24 with the publication of her first collection of Urdu poetry appropriately entitled Khushboo (1976). She dedicated the book to the doyen of Urdu poetry, Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, whom she affectionately addressed as ‘Ammu’. The preface carries her poetic credo: “Vajood ko jab muhabbat ka vajdaan mila to shairee ney janam liya” (The ecstasy of love induced the creation of poetry).
For her, poetry is an expression of the feeling of love. She asserts,
(If it is a crime to yearn for life, then in all solemnity I confess to have committed it).
She remarks that when love transcends personal considerations it turns into intuition and when beauty touches the peaks of delicacy it transforms into fragrance. According to her the beauty of feeling lies in its verity and the charm of its expression lies in its credibility. She always held her head high both as a person and a poet and wrote what she sincerely felt.
She loved the earth, which to her appeared beautiful. Her poetry is the expression of her love for earth’s beauty. The recurring images in it are: the glow of the landscape in moonlit nights; the fragrance of the flowers dancing in the breeze; the music of the rain falling on windows and roof tops.
The chief quality of her poetry is its sensuality. Insensitive critics called it superficial and lacking depth and loftiness. She was aware of such criticism and requested her detractors not to deprive her of her dreams. She defends herself in her poem “tanqeed aur takhliq” (Criticism and creativity).
(Your poetry is mere fragrance/ Penetrating the heart,/ Caressing the soul with dewy hands,/ But the mind it will lightly touch and vanish./ You must drape it in colour:/ Some lofty ideal,/ A weird cult,/ A rare doctrine in obscure words:/ At least some depth in thought!/ You are right Sir, but/ my art is still too young./ Let it bask in dreams for now,/ let it not age before time, not wither before it blooms.)
Parveen was killed in a car-truck collision in Islamabad on December 26, 1994, when she was only 42. With the premature end of her poetic career, Urdu poetry suffered an irreparable loss. In addition to Khushboo she published three more books of verse in her life time: Sad-barg (1980), Khud-kalaami (1990) and Inkaar (1990).
Her friend and well-wisher Parveen Qadir Agha helped bring out Kuf-i-Aaina (a collection of Parveen Shakir’s unpublished poems) on the poet’s second death anniversary in 1996.
Besides holding a master’s degree in English Literature and linguistics, Parveen was working for a PhD. She taught literature for nine years before she joined the Pakistan Civil Service. Thus she had a good knowledge of literature — creative as well as critical. This knowledge stood her in good stead when she chose to be a poet. She kept in mind the high standards set by famous poets. About her own creative process she says:
(My art gives form to thought/ To words a new face/ To faces new words I endow/ A new language I create)
Indeed she paints pictures with words and brings vivid images before our eyes. She establishes new relationships between words and feelings. She discards the stock metaphors of Urdu love poetry but coins fresh metaphors. In a way she does create a new language.
Her poetry sounds authentic because it is mostly the expression of felt emotion and personal experience. She has the unique ability of converting hurts into flowers or prolonging what she beautifully calls “zakhmon key phool bananey ka mousam” (Times sprouting blossoms from wounds)
Despite sadness, disappointment and frustrations in her life, she focuses on the bright side of things. She neither loses heart, nor self-confidence nor self-respect.
A poem written on her 22nd birthday is full of sadness which is reflected in its title “Baisveen saleeb” (The twenty-second crucifixion). Each birthday brought her greater sorrow.
She was beset with frustrations at every step and her dreams were shattered.
(Each year, the twenty-fourth dawn of November/ steps into my house/ with a new grief /And I, the helpless slave of fate/ borrow blood from my own dreams/ to adorn the hands of the killer)
Despite all setbacks, she remained steadfast in hope. In a poem appropriately called “Taabeer” (Interpretation of a dream) she writes:
(Victorious in the face of dark nights/ I look the moon in the eye;/ For the first time ever I behold this sight:/ My slumber conquering my dreams)
Parveen’s best poems are about her love for life, love for her beloved and love for her son. She is also at her best writing about natural beauty. She shows courage of her conviction and revolts against all restrictions familial, tribal, social and governmental. She spoke and wrote what she felt without any fear.
She had to pay the price for her rebellious nature. She was divorced and she was disowned by her blood relations and the government confiscated her passport. She showed tremendous moral courage to defy the forces that suppressed her feelings and thoughts.
She raises her voice against tribal suffocation:
(Depriving my voice of its magic/ Why was I chosen to be born among snakes)
She expresses a similar sentiment in a poem suitably called ‘misfit’.
Describing her awkward situation she says:
(May it be Sappho, Mira or Parveen/ To none yields the moonlit land of dreams)
She expresses her anguish in “habas bohat hai”
(Suffocation)
(The garden gate is locked/ Fragrance enchained/ Where is the saviour?/ Words are meaningless/ Friends devastated/ Blind justice reigns the land/ To have eyes is an ugly crime/ Punishable by the ruling lord/ What suffocation!)
In another poem “Bauhat dil chahta hai” (The heart much desires) she warns the oppressors:
(Has it been resolved to chain our minds to palace walls,/ Is our chaste dream to be the victim?/ But to snatch and silence the pen is a trying task.)
When she was conveyed the order that she could not leave the country because she had written the ‘wrong’ kind of poems, in the poem entitled “Challenge” she declared:
(Even if the ruler suspects my loyalty/ I have no fear)
She ridicules her boss in “Eik afsar-i-aalau ka mashvaraa”, (An advice from higher ranks) who defines an ideal officer as one who has no face, no tongue, no eyes, no ears and no head and advises her to abandon poetry because a poet’s place in society is like that of an appendix, in the human body — absolutely useless but occasionally harmful!
In a poem with the title “Nadamat” (Remorse) she regrets that she has not touched social concerns like poverty and hunger in her poems, so she wrote poems such as “Steel milz ka eik khasoosi mazdoor”, (For a worker of Steel Mills) “Eik UDC ki diary”, (A UDC’s Diary) and “Basheerey ki gharwali” (Wife of Basheera). As Parveen had no ‘personal involvement in such issues, these poems remain unimpressive and lifeless. Fortunately such poems are few; mostly she confines herself to felt experience.
Parveen has written both ghazals and nazams (rhymed and in free verse). In ghazals she talks mostly of love but she does not confine herself to the traditional figures of speech of the ghazals. Her similes and metaphors are original and her diction is cliche-free. She uses simple language to express delicate and profound thought. She sticks to her own principle of good writing.
(Thoughts as bright as the moon,/ Expression a mirror, to reveal each word to the eyes)
These couplets show the transparency of the simple words, which bring out, vividly the thought behind them:
(Loss of a home does hurt/ None wants to sleep on one’s own debris/ He holds me in his arms/ Wrapped in the fragrance of a stranger/ My heart, don’t wash your wounds in this downpour/ These tears)
In nazms, she expresses her feelings more freely since there is no constraint of meter or rhyme.
Primarily love is the subject of ghazals but the element of protest comes out prominently in many nazms; she protests against the fate of women in a male-dominated society, the frustrations which an individual suffers under a dictatorial regime and the medieval moralistic code that stifles sensitive self-respecting persons living in modern times.
Being a student and sometime teacher of English literature, Parveen was influenced and inspired by the poetry of English romantic poets such as Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats. She has many things in common with them, but the poet she was really akin to was Keats, to whom there are many allusions in her work. Like Wordsworth she was fond of Nature but she did not spiritualize nature like him. She was a rebel like Shelley but she lacked Shelley’s opportunities to express her revolt. Like Keats she was a poet of sorrow and sadness. Her poetry is as sensuous as his. She shows Keatsean felicity of phrase, lyrical intensity and the sense of beauty. Keats wrote:
“a little noiseless noise among the leaves
born of the very sigh that silences heaves.”
Parveen achieves similar perfection of expression in lines such as:
(Such deathly silence must not reign/ To hear the heaving heart so clear)
Like the Romantics, Parveen died young and like them her poetry will live long. Parveen Shakir is a poet of love and protest par excellence. She, indeed, is the pride of modern Urdu poetry.
English translation of verses by Yasmeen Hameed
Parveen Shakir was born on 24th November, 1952 in Karachi, Pakistan. She was highly educated with two masters degrees, one in English literature and one in linguistics. She also held a Ph.D and another masters degree in Bank Administration.
She was a teacher for nine years before she joined the Civil Service and worked in the Customs department. In 1986 she was appointed the second secretary, CBR in Islamabad.
A number of books of her poetry have been published. In chronological order, they are Khushboo (1976), Sad-barg (1980), Khud-kalaami (1990), Inkaar (1990) and Maah-e-Tamaam (1994). Her first book, Khushboo, won the Adamjee award. Later she was awarded the Pride of Performance award, which is the highest award given by the Pakistan government.
On 26th December, 1994, on her way to work, her car collided with a truck and the world of modern Urdu poetry lost one of its brightest stars.
Parveen Shakir initially wrote under the pen-name of ‘Beena’. She considered Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi her ‘ustad’ and used to called him ‘Ammujaan’. She was married to Dr. Nasir Ahmed but got divorced from him sometime before her untimely demise in 1994. They had one son – Murad Ali.
