Lalit Gupta
Urdu has been beyond doubt acknowledged as a language with natural flair to express the plethora of subtlest human experience and thoughts, feelings, in an inimitably emotional and artistic manner.
Poets, especially the creative ones, while enjoying the play of semiotics and semantics, form and meaning and relentlessly transcending the known and predictable reveal the hitherto unexplored and new realms of sensibilities and expressions that expand the human experience and memory.
In the times when apprehensions are being raised about the future of Urdu in general and J&K in particular, the appearance of a young poet on the literary horizon augurs well for the bright future of the language.
Sheikh Khalid Karrar is one such young poet who has won accolades for his creative thought and its poetic expression. Son of Sheikh Qamer Din, he was born at Surankote, Poonch in 1976. Christened as Khalid Mehmood, he was playing with words right from his childhood. It was during college days that he took the pen name of Sheikh Khalid Karrar.
Today known as one of the promising Urdu poets of the State, Khalid Karrar pens nazams and ghazals with equal felicity and list of his publications include one anthology of short stories and three collections of Urdu poetry.
He started his career as a short story writer and published collection of short stories ‘Akhri Din Se Pehle (1999), which was warmly welcomed in the literary circles. Later, he came out with his three collections of verse ‘Aangan Aangan Patjhar’ (2000), ‘Swa Neze Pe Sooraj’ (2007) and ‘Worood’ 2010.
An English translation of Karrar’s selected Urdu poems by equally young and talented writer Abid Ahmed, the editor of J&K Cultural Academy’s bimonthly literary journal ‘Sheeraja’ in English, has also appeared under the title ‘Crescendo’.
According to Abid Ahmed, Khalid Karrar, the writer of such couplets —‘phir wohi dharka mere pindaar se bandhaa hua hai, mere asbaat ko inkaar se bandha hua hai / mere hathoon mein keelein gaarh rakkhi hain, mere hi jism ko dewaar se bandha hua hai / ya rasta dairoan mein qaid hai meri khatar, ya mere hi jism ko parkar se bandha hai / haveli mein mere ajdad rehtein hain magar ab, ana ke saanp ko dastar mein bandha hua hai—‘exhibits a unique diction, idiom and sensibility that he hauls from the smithy of his acutely personal experiences. He approaches life at his own terms. He does not let it dictate. That is why one sees hope and resolve in the face of challenges in his poetry’.
Another feature of his poetry is that he mediates between tradition and modernity. He belongs to the generation that ‘connects between the accomplished and the neophyte’.
The powerful metaphors in his expressions are loaded with infinite interpretation of meanings. Some of the metaphors he uses are water, desert, barrenness, void, blood, names of communities like Israelites, Kashmiri, butterflies, wilderness etc.
His unconventional treatment of certain conventional themes is also mark of his distinction. Love, loss, pain nostalgia, infidelity are the themes wherein he bores through their superficial meaning and arrive at a point where the readers sees their contemporary meanings. The English translation of his Urdu poems has also successfully retained the uniqueness of treatment of everyday themes like water can be seen in following lines: ‘once I stop, moss will swamp the lake, restless my life is, I may not an ocean, being water, I make my way’ or ‘I seek apology I could give you, neither the past nor the future, both are hanging in void’.
Awarded as ‘Himalayan Man of Letter 2010’, from Dabstan e Hamala & Himalayan Group of Colleges, Rajouri, Khalid Karrar, is presently a resident of city of temples, and makes his living as Graphic Designer. His is also the editor of the online Urdu journal, ‘ Urdualive’.
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