Written by: Mahnoor Fatima
Posted on: January 01, 2020 | 
| 中文
Parveen Shakir
Driving through Parveen Shakir Road in Islamabad, one is taken aback by the harmony of the quiet road and the beautiful trees that surround it. The changing leaves of the trees are befitting the delicate yet vivid words written by the road’s namesake. Many young people today are not aware of Parveen Shakir, or the monumental contribution she made within Urdu Literature. It is important to revisit her work, especially during current times, in which women are attempting to question, and to some extent, redefine femininity.
Parveen Shakir as a Young Woman
Parveen Shakir was born in November 1952 to a middle-class family in Karachi. After a nine-year teaching career, she joined the Customs Department in the Civil Service, and became the second secretary of the Federal Board of Revenue. However, she already entered the world of literature, and written articles in both Urdu and English. Among her most famous books of poetry, are Khushboo (Fragrance) in 1976, Sard-Bag (Marigold) in 1980, and Khud Kalaami (Talking to Myself) in 1990. Khushboo received the Adamjee Literary Award in 1976, and Shakir received the government’s Pride of Performance award in 1990.
Her personal life, however, was deeply tragic. The conservative and patriarchal values her family held prevented them from accepting her as a serious poet, who participated at mushairas (poetry recitations) and discussed her work with other writers. Her unhappy marriage to Dr. Naseer Ali, with whom she had one son, ended in a bitter divorce. Shakir’s life came to an abrupt end in 1994 after a fatal car crash. A friend and fellow contemporary Fatema Hassan had said, Shakir was a victim of conservative and traditional norms.
Parveen with Jaun Elia
Shakir’s poetry was in the ghazal and free form (nazm). Literary Scholar C.M. Naim explained that while the nazm allows readers insight into the writer’s mind through their elaboration, the ghazal requires conciseness of language. Shakir excelled at both. There already existed a canon of female writers in Urdu such as Zahra Nigah, Fahmida Riaz, Kishwar Naheed, who wrote about female experiences in the Sub-Continent. But more so, she presented unique techniques that allowed the modern female voice space in the traditional male-dominated Urdu Language.
The Cover of Khushboo (Fragrance)
In Khushboo, she wrote the poems as a girl, not a woman, imbued with innocence, playfulness, and charisma. The title of the book says, “When the breeze kissed the flower, the fragrance was born”. A possible interpretation could be that Shakir’s indelible charms as the flower can only blossom with the help of the breeze of the other. For Shakir, and other female poets of the time, love is mutual agreement that must be upheld. Instead of creating an idea of a lover, love for the female poet is reciprocal, as opposed to how love made them feel.
Parveen Shakir (Right) with Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi (Center)
As she grew as a writer, one can see her progressions of thought, from a young girl thinking about her lover, to a grown woman well aware of the problems that come with working in a bureaucratic milieu. While that may have changed some of her imagery, from nature to more society-related metaphors, it did not affect the clarity with which she writes her romantic poetry. In To a Victorian Man, she laments how her lover is too preoccupied with rigid customs to express his love for her. She writes,
Instead of keeping me tucked away
In some safe corner of your heart-
Instead of struggling with Victorian
Manners,
In the days of Elizabeth II-
Instead of combing world literature
to create one-word conversations
instead of a vigil below my window
at every Spring’s first dawn-
just step forward…
one day, out of nowhere,
and gathering me inside your arms
turn a perfect circle on your heels.
One can also see the influences of her English Literature degree in her poems. In “We Are All Dr. Faustus”, she describes how modern society would go to extreme lengths to chase their desires, and cannot always stand the consequences of their actions. She says,
“In a way, we are all
Dr. Faustus.
One from his craze
And another helpless for blackmail
Barters away his soul.”
Her work was not just about the female experience, but also about the unique way women perceived societal issues. It was consciously modern as well as distinctly feminine. She was deeply embedded in Pakistan’s emerging urban landscape, and no doubt her words gave life to the feelings of other women growing up in that era, who were caught between tradition and modernity. Young women today can learn from the way her poetry spread her fragrance of uncompromising femininity.
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