Abhisarika or the woman who travels alone to her lover at night

Kamayani Sharma

I’m happy to guest curate a poem by the poet Kamayani Sharma today. As a somewhat idealistic poet and rasik, I feel particularly happy about sharing the work of another who thinks as seriously about form, and who, like me, is devoted to the idea of a community of practice for poets- a safe space for editorial, pedagogic and creative refinement. This is an idea I always return to, and, in many ways, it is the connecting thread that I have with the poets who have contributed to this archive, and many who follow it. Kamayani’s commentary outlines a personal journey, and also the context that allowed her to look at a traditional form of poetry with a perspective that breaks away from conventional themes, without fully abandoning its core swaroop:

I've always been interested in Urdu poetry but that somewhat shallow interest deepened in 2016 after some personal setbacks sent me diving into 19th c emo-giri. Like generations of lovelorn youth before me, I identified strongly with the shayar-bros of yore. 

After spending time on Rekhta et al, I decided to learn Urdu properly in 2018, during the six months I was freelancing in between jobs (the Delhi govt. sponsors free courses through the Urdu Academy). It really opened up my relationship to not only the literary traditions of the language but also my own relationship to Hindustani as a native speaker and someone who had grown up in a culturally Uttar Pradeshi household, where most of my immediate ancestors spoke and/or read it. Naturally, living in Delhi further nurtured this relationship, as it allowed me to attend mushairas as part of my lessons. 

All of this is to give a backdrop to the ghazal Abhisarika. It took a while to compose obviously, especially since metre works differently in English than Urdu and the radif-qafiyah requirement doesn't lend itself to the rhythms of English easily. Naturally, Agha Shahid Ali and his associates were the main references but of course, our/ my contexts are very different. Also there is a kind of masculine (sometimes -ist) melancholia that I wanted to counter. For that, I turned to late medieval/ early modern iterations of a classical typology of women in visual art (usually my first points of reference bc of my background in visual studies), finding their poetic cognates such as Gita Govinda relevant. Though the types themselves have of course been determined and historically articulated via the male gaze, the rendition of these seemingly stock scenes by painters like Nainsukh imbue the women figures with a palpable subjectivity. And that's what I want my ghazals to explore.

This poem has been been accepted for publication in a forthcoming anthology '14 International Younger Poets' (Art & Letters Magazine, Cambridge MA, June 2021).

You can follow Kamayani on Twitter @SharmaKamayani