Book Review by Basudhara Roy
Title: Fasting Hymns
Author: Afsar Mohammad (translated to Telugu by P Srinivas Goud as Upavaasa Padyaalu)
Publisher: Bodhi Foundation
In the best of poems, the barrier between word and prayer crumbles, and in the greatest of them, it is dissolved into a timeless song of being. To name a collection of poems Fasting Hymns would be one thing but to summon and craft poems out of the very act of fasting is to elevate both poetry and prayer to a level of transcendence that only be accomplished by a world vision of the human soul. A collection of thirty poems, Fasting Hymns is Afsar Mohammad’s second book of poetry and invites comparisons in its honest sublimity with Rumi, and in its political engagement with the sinewy Bhakti poetry of the Indian subcontinent.
The ritual of fasting is of great significance in many traditions of thought. Valorised as an act of cleansing, of virtuous self-abnegation, of rest, sacrifice, healing and strength, voluntary and compulsive fasting constitute an important element of practice in several religions of the world. In contrast to the acquisition of physical energy through the act of eating, the act of fasting is believed to produce spiritual energy while also making for the rejuvenation and sustainability of the resources of production, including the earth and the body. Just as home reminds us of homelessness, fasting reminds us of food, of nourishment, of the body, and of the ways in which the body is negated, abused, denied, violated, punished and decimated by most discourses of power.
Most importantly, fasting recalls its close kin—hunger, for while fasting is a voluntary act of deferring consumption, hunger is an enforced act of deprivation and a stern reminder of the rampant food-wars and strategic starvation that a large part of the world’s population is led to regularly undergo for political and economic reasons. Fasting Hymns contextualizes the act of fasting within the month-long holy fast of of Ramadan and in underlining the centrality of this fast to Islamic ethics and philosophy.
There is a tranquillity to the book’s appearance–a visual script that overlaps reality, hope, and dream as its thirty poems commemorate the thirty days of fasting in the Islamic calendar. A linear travel of the consciousness meets us here, heightening in poem after poem as it widens to embrace larger spaces of geography and spirit. With each advancing day of the roza or fast, the poems travel deeper, unearthing spirit from body, soaring from ‘I’ to ‘us’, granting and seeking the essential solidarity of existence:
The sunken moon like
an empty stomach
Praying for a piece of bread. (Poem 1)
This collection, as the reader will note, is as much a journey into the world of the self as it is into the self of the world. Each untitled poem here ranges between three lines to twelve and becomes a hymn not just by virtue of its length or in being written by a fasting body but in being written by a searching soul. As one travels through them, there is a gradual building up of compassionate force, a slow summoning of the resources of the self:
Fazar: I begin my self-talk
Iftar: Not sure where
my self-talk ends.
If you can map my face,
Time and space fail. (Poem 9)
One is struck by this intense vigilance on the soul, this consistent observation of its workings, and this thorough and starkly honest ransacking of its contents to discover what it holds. Religion and humanity confront one another with determination in these hymns, the poet content to let the greater force win:
Amma would say,
“You earn ten nekis for
Offering water to a Rozgar.”
What would Amma say
if she knew an entire country was
cut off from water and food
during Ramadan? (Poem 17)
It is interesting to note that the Islamic holy month, in this book, is spelt in all its three major variants: Ramadan, Ramzan and Ramjan, pointing to the plural linguistic heritages of the Muslim community. However, what is assigned supreme value in these poems is not the ritualistic observation of fast but the profound spiritual experience that the month demands of its observers. The sharp interrogation of religion in the interests of humanity concludes, in this collection, with a complete subservience of the former to the latter. Between the first hymn and the last, the book covers a dense journey—physical, political, civilisational and human. There is no indignation in these poems, no overt moralising and no despair whatsoever. The book does not grieve an unliveable world or express helpless anger over its injustices. If anything, each of these thirty poems is a testimony to the spirit of human courage and endurance, its pace and measure acquired from a deep spiritual anchoring in the principles of humanity beyond religion:
I thought I know all my suras by heart.
now, each verse is a stranger and,
asks a hundred questions. (Poem 5)
If Afsar’s first collection of poems Evening with a Sufi sought to view the world through the Sufi gaze of oneness, these poems in Fasting Hymns seek to experience that oneness in the flesh and in the spirit through bonds of connection and empathy that the act of fasting fosters in the human body and soul. In Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, Judith Butler talks about the “public dimension” of the body: “Constituted as a social phenomenon in the public sphere, my body is and is not mine. Given over from the start to the world of others, it bears their imprint, is formed within the crucible of social life; only later, and with some uncertainty, do I lay claim to my body as my own, if, in fact, I ever do.”
For Butler, the fact of physical vulnerability makes the body a shared public space, connected and accessible to others. This fact of vulnerability is also the focal point of Fasting Hymns that transforms blood into bread and vice-versa. Afsar reminds us how we pay for everything with the currency of the body—with hunger, disease, guilt, grief and how it is the body that ties us to each other in unalienable ways so that each one of us is equally vulnerable to the violence of hunger:
Yes,
When I speak about the bread of Ramzan
I also speak about the
Blood of Muharram
Bread and blood are never
Separate in my world. (Poem 10)
Fasting Hymns is a distilled collection. There is nothing extraneous here in terms of either thought or language. The simplicity of diction in these poems makes for their steady luminosity–a subdued but patient burning that consistently lights up the fallible. While Evening with a Sufi was a translation from Afsar Mohhamad’s original poems in Telugu into English, this bilingual collection, born in English, has been expertly translated into Telugu by P. Srinivas Goud as Upavaasa Padyaalu, the very translation of ‘roza’ into ‘upavaasa’ bridging the aesthetic and ideological disparities between languages, cultures, and religions:
More than a hundred dishes
Compete in a political iftar.
I walk into a muhalla.
I see an empty plate
and a hungry face everywhere. (Poem 15)
While fasting, in general, might mean only the forgoing of food, the fasting during Ramadan is also a potent historical reminder of the scarcity of water and of thirst. While this collection offers rich food for thought, there is a grace to the poems that reminds one of water flowing from a tilted pitcher. A majesty of vision marks this collection along with a deep sense of personal responsibility to be accountable for the world and to account it, making this book both an intense soul-searching as well as an unsparing statement on things found.
At the day’s end Fasting Hymns brings both the calm of twilight and the restlessness of days to come–a restlessness that can be overcome only by the courage to struggle ceaselessly against undermining forces and, if necessary, alone.
Click here to read some verses from Fasting Hymns
Basudhara Roy teaches English at Karim City College affiliated to Kolhan University, Chaibasa. Author of three collections of poems, her latest work has been featured in EPW, The Pine Cone Review, Live Wire, Lucy Writers Platform, Setu and The Aleph Review among others.
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