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Ishrat
Afreen - Voice of her own
By Asif Farrukhi
 Her feet touch the ground. She is back in her city.
It has been 14 years. For her it has mythological antecedents.
"It feels like a ban-bas," says poet Ishrat Afreen
who can barely conceal her delight at returning to Karachi for a
short trip. This is the city where she gained recognition as a poet,
the city she hankered after and turned to in poem after poem, as if
recapturing it image by image. The city she went away from but could
never leave. Contacts are renewed once again. It seems that Ishrat
Afreen is back in her element.
The city's literary circles are quick to recognize the distinct
voice and expression of Ishrat Afreen, now more mature if anything
else. Karachi is a regular watering hole for literary figures of all
sorts descending down from the States, England or Europe and
programmes are maneuvered for them. It is different with Ishrat
Afreen, as if poetry aficionados were actually celebrating her
homecoming. There is a series of functions and gatherings from the
Arts Council to the Press Club, the Irtiqa forum to her alma mater
as she is honored and feted. Literary circles come to realize once
again that the voice of poetry rings true and deep in Ishrat Afreen.
As an upcoming poet in the late '70s, Ishrat Afreen rose like a
meteor across the literary horizon. Her chiseled and elegant verses
barely concealed a fiery passion for the under-privileged and the
downtrodden in our society. This slim, sari-clad girl became a
regular at mushairas as she became a known name. But none of this
was easily achieved.
Ishrat Afreen can today sit back and smile as she recalls her early
days. "I began writing poetry even before the realization (inkishaf)
that I was a poet. I wrote my first verses when I was very
small." She attributes this to the atmosphere in her home.
"It felt as if poetry was in the very air. I didn't have to
think much about it."
It was permeated with the verses of Mir Anees. Her family supported
and encouraged her writing. Some of her poems were published in the Jang
and somebody suggested to her that she should publish in
literary journals. Sultana Mehar, the veteran journalist, introduced
her work to the literary magazine Seep in 1976-77. Those were the
days of intense and almost feverish literary activity in Karachi.
Ishrat pays homage to Munsif Raza who organized the
"Bazm-i-Ilm-o-Danish" in Malir where discussions and
readings were the norm. "My thinking acquired a polish
there," she says as her poetry became known for its fiery
ideological commitment. Sehba Lucknavi published her ghazal in
Afkar: and this caught the literary world's attention.
A sense of place and a feeling of being rooted emerges from her
poetry. Her background of Malir was a formative influence and she
refers back to her "mohalla" in a long poem which vividly
recaptured Karachi as it was only a few years ago. Baba Usman's taazia
and Bohar-wali Amman come to life in her poem. They are all
fellow sufferers, involved in the struggle for existence and living
in ethnic harmony. Her poetry also celebrates working women. The
housewife crushed beneath the chores of running a house is eulogized
in a beautiful poem which ironically refers to "the death of an
unimportant person".
Ishrat credits her mother for this understanding. Born in a
traditional feudal background, she was widowed at an early age and
had to face a tough life. "My mother was about 14 or 15 when I
was born and it was as if a new doll had been given to a child to
talk to. She made me her friend and confidante," she says.
She had inherited this from her own mother's circumstances and
passed down her hatred of the cruel system to her young daughter.
"Basically, there is no story of a single person. There is a
whole chain," Ishrat explains her ideological leanings.
"It had nothing to do with slogans - it came out of my
heart."
The progressive diction and thinking dominated her poetry and this
too at a time when the progressive style was on the wane and a
modernistic stance was the order of the day. "Ideology points
out a way," she responds to my comment.
She was well known by the time Kunj Peelay Pholon Ka, her
collection of poems appeared in 1985. It was an immediate success.
It had a preface by Ali Sardar Jafri, comments by Ada Jafri and
Ismat Chughtai who greeted its publication enthusiastically.
Ali Sardar Jafri's influence soon stretched beyond the preface and
modified her life when she married his nephew Pervaiz Jafri and
moved to India just three days after her book was launched in
Karachi. She can say in retrospect that this caused a disruption in
her career as she could not see her book reaching out to readers,
specially the younger generation.
"In India, there is very serious work being done in the
universities but the mushaira, where poetry is read out and heard,
has become part of entertainment," she says. A few years later
she moved to the States. Although she kept writing, the demands of
her growing family made her move away from literary circles. Today
she states proudly that she has successfully raised her children and
inculcated a love and understanding of Urdu in them.
Many people assumed that she has given up her poetry. She published
sparsely. When her long poem "Jehan Zad" appeared in a
magazine, it became apparent that she has been undergoing a process
of maturity and development and that she was in a new terrain of
experience as well as _expression. Taking her cue from the brilliant
"Hasan Kooza Gar" cycle of poems by N.M. Rashed, the
female protagonist moves out of the shadows to acquire a life and a
voice of her own.
This was a watershed in her writing life. She tells me that she
actually wrote it in 1982. Jamil Naqsh heard it and was moved to
paint the central figure. This painting made the cover of her book
but the poem was not included in it as she felt that something was
still missing. She completed it in 1994 or 1995 when she added and
rewrote it, but hesitated before publishing it. This led to a new
vista opening. She wrote poems touching upon themes ranging from
depression and menopause, black holes in space, displacement and
uprooting, pollution and the genetic code.
She wrote a ghazal with the radeef "gard hi gard"
after she heard about Pakistan's atomic explosion. Her ghazals are
characterized by their unconventional vocabulary and depth of
feeling.
Her recent poetry has already won accolades from Ahmed Nadeem
Qasimi, Fahmida Riaz and Zaheda Hina who have all written about it.
Ikram Barelvi has already published a book length study of her work.
At the moment she is finalizing her second collection of poetry. How
does it feel to be back? I ask her as she sits back at home, dunking
papa in her tea and she says with a smile that this is one of the
things she misses most.
Has she come back to a different city? "So many things looked
different. We are now used to a different personal behavior. If I
had stayed on here I may not have noticed anything. But over the
years, people have become harsher. They are more tense. People have
lost their patience. Nobody seems to smile. They are over-confident
or nervous. They are either anxious or perhaps embarrassed. I have
noticed so many buildings with "mashaallah" inscribed over
the walls. Are they trying to give a justification or are concealing
their fear? I remember that these words were used for a child who
was doing well or performing some good feat. I could never imagine
people saying "mashaallah" over money and wealth. Even the
Taj Mahal does not have these words written on it!"
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