Sunday, October 20, 2002		Interview

Meet the author
“Best literature comes out of turmoil”

SYED Anwar Owais, an engineer with the J&K government, is in his early thirties and has already written three poetry books: The Nothing Wolf, The Princess and the Madman, Kashmir. He is one of those rare Kashmiris who write in English. His writings reflect the stark, honest reality of the day.

Humra Quraishi met him for an exclusive interview. Excerpts:

I certainly do, though I don’t know why you are asking me this question! I have seen troubled times and my mind has had its share of trouble, but I am yet to produce excellent literature. But yes, the best literature comes out of turmoil—social or personal. Doris Lessing wrote The Golden Notebook when she was under great strain. Poets such as Robert Graves were produced by World War I and are in fact called war poets. Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies is a war work. So many other examples can be given.

Not just in recent times, the Valley has never produced significant writers in English. The reason for this is simple: we don’t have a tradition of creative writing in English. And this is what makes Shahid a pioneer. Another reason is the exodus of the Hindus from Kashmir. They were ahead of the Muslims in education and were more likely to produce a significant English writer. Maybe once they come back it will happen. Having said this, I must add that a number of Kashmiris (expatriates, for instance) are writing all sorts of books in English. I have a Hindu friend who has written poetry about the turmoil in Kashmir, but is scared to publish it.

It was Sarojini Naidu who called Gandhi "a poet in action." He believed in bringing about change not by violence but by non-participation in what he regarded as evil. His method, his genius was aimed at bringing out the good in his opponents. Poetry uses images, the magic of words and emotion to convince others of the poet’s sincerity. To quote Robert Graves, "The source of poetry is love."

Well, it would be easy for me to be smug. Yes, it was terrible to see large-scale violence in Kashmir. The madness only convinced me more of how important it was to rid humankind of this disease called war, how terribly tragic and numbing it was when human beings took to slaughtering each other. Gandhi is just so humanly, so sublimely sane.

I certainly don’t think I am a good enough poet to be called a born poet. Shahid certainly was. Yes, if I hadn’t met Shahid, I would most probably not have written poetry. He taught me practically from the scratch, with a lot of patience and for free. However, I am arrogant enough to believe that I have moved on. I follow the poetic principles of Robert Graves and write a poem only when an urge to do so grips me. I virtually never revise a poem. Shahid crafted his poems and would spend months honing a poem. Also, I do not share Shahid’s admiration for T. S. Eliot, if only because of the latter’s anti-Semitism. Graves believed that the source of poetry is love, but in some of Eliot’s poems you can see that hatred can also be a source of poetry. Oh, a whole lot of credit for the fact that I have a bit of a reputation as a poet goes to P. Lal of Calcutta.

There is a reason why I focus so much on these three people as my heroes: none of them was a Muslim. And the reason for this is that I am one. I think it is important and good for one to have idols that are not from one’s religious group, ideological persuasion, ethnic group etc. because then can one see how silly the divisions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ are. Of course I have heroes from Kashmir. Lalleshwari is awe-inspiring, Sheik Noor-ud-din is a beautiful figure, Rasul Mir is a remarkable poet.

Well, I think several of my poems are quite overtly political. When I say that writing is a political activity, I mean that all writers, knowingly or unknowingly affect minds and this is a political activity. Shelley said: "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."

You seem to be bent upon dismissing me as a bourgeois poet! I think a fair number of my poems are directly about Kashmir and the turmoil there, for instance, Kashmir, Downtown Srinagar, There will have been, Raju’s Address, Maybe when the Traffic is Running. Here I am reminded of what a promising young Kashmiri writer, Arshia Unis wrote in her article ‘Why I put on lipstick’. She says that she put on lipstick as a way of empathising with the women of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan who had no such freedom. So living your life to the full — even with all the constraints — is a way of defeating evil. Of course my personal life has been affected by the political situation, but this is another story for another day.

The test of a writer’s integrity comes precisely in politically charged times. Without being foolhardy, a writer should give sanity a voice in such times — that is their duty, isn’t it? Is there a forum for Kashmiri writers? Well, we network loosely and learn from each other. I am especially keen to meet those writers here who write in Kashmiri, because they know more about the Kashmiri culture and I always pick up nuggets of information from them.

Hopefully, I visualise it as a human being. And the human being in me sees it as a bridge between India and Pakistan, the human being in me sees the Hindus who are living in terrible conditions in Jammu back in their homes in Kashmir.

Well, Shahid was a more intense man than I am, so his poetry is bound to be more intense than mine. But I am sorry to hear that you don’t see intensity in my poems, because a poem is nothing if not intense. As for my being a government employee, well, all writers, including you, work within constraints. But my bosses have never tried to censor me in any manner. In the end, I would rather lose my job than compromise my integrity as a writer.