Echoes and Exuberances: Baidar Bakht's Recent Translations of ...

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CARLO COPPOLA • 153“Naheed, let my belief suffocate a little bit more. / A storm usuallyemerges from calm winds” (p. 5).A significant image in these early poems, and even some of the laterones such as “Recompense” (p. 32), is laughter, which is presented almostas defiance to the tears that are stereotypically expected of women; this isa laughter not born out of humor, but seems rather to be the onlyalternative to the anguish inherent in the human condition.In subsequent volumes of poetry, Naheed turns her focus away fromthe human condition as a whole and concentrates a good deal of herattention on the condition of women. In the poems of B®n≥m Mus≥fat(Nameless Distance; 1971) and Galy≥, D^∑p, Darv≥z® (Lanes, Sunshine,Doors; 1978) the poet seems to have found her distinctive voice, onewhich becomes trenchant, impatient, admonishing (to both men andwomen), and, to the thinking of some men (including some malemembers of the literary establishment) and some women, shrill andunladylike.Several major themes occur in these works. First, a demand for trueequality for women, especially in the form of choices; that is, womenshould have choices in their lives, many more than they now have. This isbasically a call for change in the power structure of male-femalerelationships, which, in turn, will effect profound change at all levels ofsociety.Second, all people, but especially men, should recognize theachievements of women, whether that achievement is a poem, an officejob, a comfortable middle-class home, or giving birth to a child; acorollary to this is that women celebrate and acknowledge as martyrsearlier women persecuted by men: Anarkali, the dancing girl who waswalled-in alive for her relationship with the prince who would eventuallybecome the Mughal emperor Jahangir; Qurratulain Tahira, the Iranianpoet who was strangled for her unorthodox (read: feminist) views onreligion; and the various tragic heroines of Indian literature: Noori, Sassi,Sohni, and Heer.Third, and very centrally, men ought to grow up emotionally andassume their share of the burden of relationships, whether marriage oreven love affairs; a corollary here is that relationships require attentionand work, that they don’t just happen, and merely because women seembetter equipped emotionally to handle them than men, women are not tobe the sole caretakers of such relationships. Merely to acknowledgewomen’s superiority here does not get men off the hook.And fourth, change is a frightening thing, not only in terms of
154 • THE ANNUAL OF URDU STUDIESsociety, mores, religio-political climates, and relationships, especially withone’s children, but even more intimately, one’s relationship with one’sbody. Aging, an inevitable change, is for a woman particularlyproblematic in a society which allows men to take multiple wives, andaccords older women power only in proportion to the number of sons shehas produced.The poem “The Maid” (pp. 36–37) threads together a number ofthese themes. Here a servant is addressed by another woman (her femaleemployer? another maid? an elder of some kind?) who says that “Servingothers / Is serving stones. / You live to be a sister, wife and mother. / Livefor yourself too.” Seeming to know about such things as “ego” and“existence,” she continues with a traditional metaphor drawn fromnature: “Look at the lotus flower! / How well it asserts its ego andexistence / In surroundings so hostile.” Breaking with tradition, thespeaker questions the authority of a man—even that of a younger brotherover a grown woman’s—and audaciously suggests that flirting with othermen is a woman’s right.Divorce, or the threat of divorce, as much as the denial women mustput themselves through in order to conform to societal norms, especiallywhere children are concerned, are other sources of their continuedaffliction.Addressing the maid, the speaker then turns to her own situation,offering yet another flower image: “My dear friend, / Like the sunflower /I turn my head at the command of the master.The speaker seems to be a woman who, with some regret, has notheeded her own advice; she has not lived for herself either. A victim oftradition, she advocates modernity.Modernity is also advocated in many other poems, notably expressedas women’s sexual interest in men. In “Fear of Dream in a Dream” (p.23), for example, the addressee seems to be a woman with an office jobwho is interested in a man, who could be a male fellow-worker or even aneighbor. The poem’s title and the identification of the speaker areimportant. The addressee is distanced from her sexual interest in the manby having her thoughts about him occur not merely in a dream, but adream within a dream. Dreams with sexual content, Naheed indicates inseveral poems, notably “Hypocrisy” (p. 107), often terrify and confuseyoung girls and even grown married women. The speaker may well be theaddressee herself, her conscience, maybe an elder (female? male?) of somekind. Whoever is speaking, s/he does so in admonishing tones, underscoringthe forbidden nature of the thought.
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