Dusk and daylight: Karuna Rathor Tina’s poems smile through tears
- 13 Dec 2022
Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer
Karuna Rathor ‘Tina’ is a published poet whose oeuvre spills over into the Urdu language that was birthed in military camps of Muslims, even as she remains faithful to the Hindi language, her mother tongue. She writes in the Devnagari script of Hindi, while sprinkling carefully chosen Urdu words to strengthen her lines.
The result is a fragrant outpouring of poetic blooms – the Hindi is a reminder to the reader what her linguistic identity is, while Urdu takes him to a broader cultural identity. Hindi and Urdu the yin and yang of Tina’s poetics. In her work, Hindi is the soil on which Indian civilisation grows, while the spring of Urdu lies just below, irrigating the soil and making it fertile.
Her poems in her widely acclaimed book ‘Har Baat Mein Tera Zikr’ (Your Remembrance In Every Conversation) are a powerful blend of the two languages. In mathematical terms, it is as if 1 + 1 joined together to make 11 – this is the “strength of the blend.” Her poems are sure to resound in kavi sammelans and mushairas (poets’ gatherings), since they address various types of audiences.
They will especially appreciate her commendable effort to bring two schools of thought together in one bandwidth of repose and activity. The poems (they are 51 in number) are bathed in an abundance of conflicting emotions. There are feelings of fervent love, the intoxication of self-discovery, the pangs of separation from the loved one leading to heartfelt complaints on her condition, and the desolation bereft of the company of the desired one.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge can be echoed: It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! (Kubla Khan). Tina’s oeuvre, among other things, seeks inspiration from Bhakti and Sufi poets. The Bhakti and Sufi movement in India started towards the end of the 12th century and continued till the 18th century. The Bhakti and Sufi Movements of Medieval India played a crucial role in creating a composite culture whose legacy can be seen to this day.
Sufis worked towards Hindu-Muslim unity and cultural synthesis. For example, the hatha-yoga treatise Amritakunda was translated into Arabic and Persian as Hauz-al-Hayat or Cistern of the Water of Life. It is an important book for the study of yogic practices. Amir Khusrau, an Indo-Persian Sufi singer, musician, poet and scholar wrote poetry primarily in Persian, but also in Hindavi or Hindustani, which is the lingua franca of Northern and Central India and Pakistan. The language is sometimes called Hindi–Urdu. Bhakti is a Sanskrit word that means “devotion.” In Hinduism, ‘bhakti’ is a mystical devotion to the Almighty.
One of the Bhakti poet-saints was Mirabai (ca. 1498 – ca. 1557), who sang passionately of her love for Krishna. Another was Kabir (1440–1518), who questioned the hierarchies of the caste system. Meena Alexander puts it this way in an essay on Bhakti poetry: “There is a simplicity, a grace if you will, in the poetry of both Mirabai and Kabir … (it) sings through sorrow into joy. A precarious joy that remains at the edge of the world.” Tina’s poems sway on a similar bridge.
There is a heavy presence of melancholy mixed with hope in her poems. In ‘Generally speaking’ (Yun to), she questions: “It is the river that wanders every moment to meet the sea Why is that no sea ever yearned to meet the river?” But there is hope at the end of all experience. As she puts it in ‘Behisht’ (Heaven): “Agreed that beauty does not last Dreams do not have the opportunity to live and It is also neither the age to see dreams The path of responsibilities is very long It takes much breath to fulfill them. Even then, the little hours I spend with you With them I manage my whole world.”
She matches Percy Bysshe Shelley here: “A heavy weight of hours has chain’d and bow’d One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.” (Ode to the West Wind). But finally, there is the acknowledgement in ‘You are’ (Tum ho) that: “When the sky takes the colour of orange When the sun dips down tiredly You approach like silver moonlight.”
And absolute reconciliation in ‘You are only in me’ (Tu mujh me hi): “Why should I keep searching for you? You are not elsewhere but in me Sometimes in bubbling laughter Sometimes in the wetness of the eyes.” As in John Keats’s ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’, plaints and hope melt into each other: “Into her dream he melted, as the rose Blendeth its odour with the violet,— Solution sweet”. Sufi Master Rumi put it best: “I said: ‘I want to know you, then I’ll die!’ But he said: “One who knows me never dies!” Tina’s poetry lives between fear and hope. As delicate as a touch-me-not plant among thorny cactuses, she holds her own, nevertheless.
She is happy that her waiting is not in vain. She has achieved success through the weapon of love for the beloved. She aspires to the life that Kabir, the great Indian Bhakti poet, indicated. The sage had noted that: “Pothi Padh Padh Jag Mua Pandit Bhaya Na Koi! Dhai Aakhar Prem Ke, Jo Padhe so Pandit Hoye!!” “Reading books everyone died, but none became wise But one who read the word of Love, he became wise.”
