Remembering eminent Poet Fazil Kashmiri

Fazil Kashmiri (August 1916-July 2004) stands out as a dominant figure of his times.  His multi faceted personality finds an apt reflection in his poems which are perceptive and finely crafted and being out the aesthetic in the Kashmiri language. The circumstances of his life and the unique temperament led through all the movements and influence of his age. Though centered in himself, in search of his artistic personality, he became a part of all he saw and left.
He grew up in unsympathetic atmosphere and in physical surroundings which proved quite repulsive for him. He began to see life as a tissue of contraries----joy and pain, energy and reason, creation and destruction .He had the analytical power, the shaping eye of an artist, and the power of expression of a poet.
His works are full of his impressions of what he observed, and sometimes the relationship between the record and his poems is evident, and helpful in understanding them. The lyrical poems “Kral-Koor” and “Pahale-Koor” which he wrote in his youth and early manhood are among the most precious assets in poetry.
 The poems have the luxurious of colour and music, natural to one who lived more in sensation than in thought also the enchanted atmosphere and scenery and the sudden reaches of vision. The brief but pithy preface tells us of the poet’s aspirations, and the poem itself is a testament of beauty that bears constant reading and grows in grace and strength with every renewal of knowledge.
 One of his youth poems stands out: “Kral-Koor” (Potter’s Lass) and describes    Fazil’s passion:
“Two wisps of clouds at the edge of your brow,
Like two arch’d –altars standing abreast,
Hold countless hearts in adoring thrall.
Sweet potters lass, O! To weave garlands of blossoms for you!
“It was Fazil’s aim as a poet to seek beauty in meadows, woodland, and to interpret this beauty in spiritual terms”. If we explore the inner life of nature as Fazil conceives it, we find that one of its characteristics is a joy.   His poem, “The Lotus (Pamposh) speaks of the “Cheerful lotus “as alert and gay. “O, Prince of the waters, the dandy of the Dal Lake, boulsful of pearls are awaiting you, depicts the jocund lotus that out do the sparking wavers in glee.
Like other poets and writers , with a religious determination to find design , order and harmony everywhere in the universe , and to ignore everything that seems to contradicts this providential interpretation , it was inevitable that Fazil should find that nature is ‘kind’ and ‘Kindly’, that it is ‘Fostering nature’, ‘holy nature’, and that it teaches a ‘lesson deep of love’. In Fazil the conviction of the universal presence of love in mankind is equally characteristic of his writing when in says in Vyeth and Ganga (the Jhelum and the Ganga),
The Muslanman bends his head
And Hindu bells do chime
There at her Ghats abulates the faithful
To prepare himself for Nimaz.
There the pundit has a ritual has a ritual bath before he worships his God.
Together they follow their convergent faiths
Together they await their lord.
Being a very careful artist, he revised and remodeled his poems and took the utmost pain in polishing them. He uses the choicest and must appropriate diction. A beautiful phrase delighted him with a sense of intoxication. The extraordinary appeal of Fazil’s poetry depends not only in his rich sensuousness, the passionate exaltation of his feelings but also in his gift of phrase. The beauty of his phrases, the subtleties of rhythm in the combination of words and their evocative power compel the imagination of the reader to the mood which the reader and in some cases, this effect is achieved by the use of simplest words.
There are many jeweled phrases in his poems as his poem Van-tser (little bird of the woods) is a beautiful example of lyrical poetry which is the expression of passionate feelings. When he says
 “Even in moments your commune with your heart your moorings you don’t forget,
Among the feathers of the common kind, your song rings so chaste,
Those who know the dross from pure applauded you for your taste”.
Fazil here shows consummate skill in a choice of words and in making original and highly expressive phrases.
In later life he became increasingly detached from the outer world. He persisted in living, thinking and acting with simple sincerity, so that he gains reputation for his eccentricity. A man of buoyant temper and unflagging energy, he puts his unwavering optimism into everything he wrote, and his incredible high spirits were undoubtedly a factor in his success.
Humanitarian was indeed the key note of his work, and his enormous popularity carried his influence far and wide. His obscurity is sometimes terrible and in this respect he is known as Nazir Akbar Abadi of Kashmir. The comparison lies in the fact that we face difficulty in reading him.
This was counted sometimes in his success, because it became a point of vanity to be stable enough to have enough mental agility to follow his poetry. We think of him as a great poet, an elite scholar, social reformer, a devout Muslim, tenacious educationist carrying his own way. Before the close of his life in 2004 one could feel assured that he had become one of the great poetical influences of the time.
In the words of Dina Nath Nadim “I have felt the essence of a true human being in Fazil’s poetry. He is a patriot, and I am his fan since the college days when he started the Kashmiri section of Pratap magazine in 1936”.
One must not be misled by enthusiastic assertions that Fazil is valuable as the “teacher”. He is unique, too, when he puts man in a natural setting and makes him part of it, rather than the observer of it, as in his unsurpassable poem “Yaksaan” (Unlabelled Man).
The legendary scholar Dr.M.S.Want portrays him in these words: “Fazil’s forte is the simplicity of his poetry. His preoccupations being the idea of the brotherhood of man---- Fazil’s poems sing admirably well, reminding of what “PATTER” said about alt art tending to music”.
Fazil’s last days were absolutely tranquil. He lay for some weeks in state of passive weakness. A cold caught on a Sunday afternoon on pleurisy and he passed away.

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