DAS LITERARISCH
ISSN No: 2454 – 4647 (Print Issue) || Vol: 3, Issue 1 || Jan-June 2020
https://shaheenfoundation.102 co.in/
Book Review
                                                                                 Perveiz Ali’s Fractious Minds: Where Fault Lines Turn Lifelines

                                                                                                                       Rukhaya M.K.
                                                                                                                       Poet and Critic

Kashmir has forever been designated as a paradise on earth. Though, the picture-perfect scenario is now fit only to adorn postcards. The chinars bear witness to the injustices, the verdant meadows are blood-stained and the meandering rivers have been forever changing courses as stability seems a distant possibility in this paradise lost “turned into a land of gravestones.” It is in such a scenario, that a rising star from Kashmir, Perveiz Ali puts to paper his travails, that though individual, at times resonates with the collective consciousness of Kashmir. As Roger Brubaker asserts, diasporas have resulted from the migration of borders over people, and not from that of people over borders. These borders have cut across the consciousness of the children of Kashmir as evinced in the title of this anthology Fractious Minds.
Perveiz resorts to poetry for it is poetry for him that thaws his “piercing pain.” He flutters hard against the bars of his cage, to express himself, despite the unhealed scars on his wings as he puts it in “Dream in the Prison.” He exhibits a rare individualistic voice, one that expresses the dismay of having to live in perpetual liminality, and kowtow to the intruding forces in the region. In “Who am I,” he chalks out his persona, as he asserts that the stringent forces may arrest the life around, though they cannot halt the flow of independent thought. Lines from “Dream in the Prison”:
A bird am I in the sensuous prison of the world,
Fluttering hard against the bars of my cage
Despite the unhealed scars on my wings,
Indelibly marked by my struggle in the perilous past.
Stand to rise with no fear of falling hard
The repetitious falling dampens not my attempts
He is aware of the repercussions of thought running over the virtual barricades as he states in “Where do I Stand”: Abuse me with the epithet of 'Poet' /For putting the rotten words right!” He describes his primary purpose as a poet to express that something is rotten in the (former) state of Jammu and Kashmir. He is like a child longing for the mother as he cannot realize his vision, as he states in “Worldly Vision” as he is deterred from life with the ‘scabs of unhealed wounds.’ In “The She, Besides Me,” he moves from the concept of mother to the motherland, from umbilical ties as he longs to secure ties with the motherland. The ties with the motherland are thus rendered analogical, though invisible, and stand as inseparable.
The years fly by so fast… time awaits no man.
Soon my time here will be done.
She shall cradle me in her warm environs,
Protect my carcass from the jackals,
My Motherland!

This reverence for the mother and motherland translates into his reverence not only for statehood, but also for women as he speaks of his life-partner with a love coupled with dignity in poems like “Unseen Bridge,” “An Unflinching Vow” and “Beloved…Sleep Sound.” The only inheritances from the past generations as he brilliantly puts it in “Aspirations Inherited” are aspirations that like balloons filled with hope are destined to burst at some point. Freedom seems to be beyond the horizon as he states in “Metamorphosis”: “What sun is to the blind/ Freedom is to me.”
Divorced children are always caught between two worlds, perpetually destined to remain in the third space, as they are subject to unending hearings and never asked what they want. Similar is the plight of Kashmir caught between two parent countries, as a referendum or plebiscite is indefinitely deferred. In “Vote for truth,” as he speaks of vote banks and party politics, at the end of the poem he mentions that the vote that actually matters is forever put off.‘Words of global peace ring hollow’ as more than reaching a resolution, it aims at pacifying two nuclear powers. And rather, the parents or the protectors turn subjugators. As Perveiz puts it in “Spring Denied”:
Chocolates and sweets are tendered to us,
But in their centre lies a poisonous blend
As protector states are ridiculed on one side as subjugators, the armed forces branded as the ultimate protectors of the nation ironically end up defiling the women folk. .Perveiz devotes a poem “Justice Denied” to the Kunan Poshpora incident in which in an evocative expression towards the end, he asks: “When will the linen be washed clean?” In another poem “Eve Emancipation,” he underlines the irony as innumerable innocents are branded as terrorists:
"Terrorist" a word bandied daily in occupied land.
Terrorists label innocents as terrorists, what a shame.
Perveiz’s poetry has shone with the passing of time. He describes himself as a poet as he stands as a wordsmith “With a chisel in my hand /To carve out the blank canvas,” The canvas is a metaphor that recurs in Perveiz’s poetry in poems like “Worldly Vision,” “Where do I Stand,” and “My Dream.” He reiterates his ultimate dream in “My Dream”:
Oh blank pages! Let's join merry making hands,
To sign an accord of our wishes,
Living harmonious even in isolation,
Where I can see my life's dream
Painting a canvas free of occupational theme.
“Should I forget” is a poem one can never forget as it brings tears to the eyes and condenses the trials and tribulations of the Kashmiri people redolently in a nutshell. This poem is testimony to Perviez’s poetic abilities as it tugs at our heart’s strings, and a testimony to the genre of poetry itself that can evoke feelings that no other genre can:
Among the swaying yellow mustard flowers,
How many encounters and fake encounters happen each day,
To take the yellowness and paint it red and grey?

You say, why object to independence and Republic day?
Should I answer or let my scars back and front make your day?
Oh no, let’s count the recorded rapes and leave the unnoticed unsaid.
Leave the assaults, count the unnamed graveyards on our landscape
Perveiz’s voice is the voice of Kashmir, as he himself states:” Poetry is the dialect that identifies you,/ Gives you a voice that makes you relevant too.” For him, poetry is his means to redemption as that which “heals gaping wounds and deep pain.” As he puts it in his “Verses of Life,” it is his gift to generations to come as he says “read my works each day and fantasize.” For, freedom still is beyond the horizon. He seeks liberation and reclamation in poetry with Fractious Minds in a stance where these fault lines have turned their lifelines