Neighbourhood watch: In conversation with Kishwar Naheed

Over 30 years later, it continues to be recited in not just Pakistan but the subcontinent. “It has become an anthem for women, it’s still chanted in colleges and universities across the country. It’s relevant everywhere because women are exploited everywhere,” says Naheed, in Delhi for the release of her new volume of poems, Mutthi Bhar Yade’n.

Naheed, along with fellow writers Fahmida Riaz, Zehra Nighah and the late Parveen Shakir, formed a formidable quartet, whose works took on patriarchal and religious dogmas, giving voice to concerns and anxieties of women. While Naheed’s poem Anti-clockwise spoke out against domestic violence, Grass Like Me which likens a woman to grass and a man’s desire to mow both, was a celebration of resistance. “But neither the earth’s nor woman’s desire to manifest life dies/Take my advice: the idea of making a footpath was a good one,” she wrote. “The crux of Anti-clockwise is that you can break her limbs, head, but you can’t stop her from thinking. That’s the biggest danger to my mind,” she says.

Feminist poet, children’s book writer, civil servant, radio broadcaster — 75-year-old Naheed has worn many hats. With over 10 volumes of poems to her credit, Naheed, who won the Sitara-e-Imtiaz, Pakistan’s highest award, for her contribution to literature, has tweaked many a tradition — both at work and home. She was one of the first Pakistani poets to write in blank verse in Urdu. “I didn’t consciously decide that I should write this in blank verse or that this should be a ghazal. I choose whatever form suits that particular thought,” she says. Naheed may choose varying forms but she has never led her focus stray. “I have no problem being called a feminist poet. But yes, I think male poets in Pakistan have never really assessed and critiqued the works of women poets in a meaningful way. I write about what I see,” she says.

As a seven-year-old growing up in Bulandshahar in UP, Naheed was witness to the violence that broke out after Partition, and which often targeted women. “I saw so much as a child. The violence, the bloodshed,” she says.

Her father who ran a transport business in UP, migrated to Pakistan two years later. There, with no house and a meagre earning, the family struggled to meet ends. Naheed, meanwhile, had her own battles to fight. “Initially, I studied at home. Books were my constant companions. I was hooked to poetry quite young. My mother believed a girl should only study till high school. I had to fight to go to college. After that my elder sister, too, went to college,” says Naheed. In college where she studied economics, Naheed got a taste of freedom but she was careful not to jeopardise it. “I would go to other colleges to debate. I would take off my burqa and stuff it in my bag and wear it again before returning home,” she says. The quest of education is still not easy for many in Pakistan, in some cases it’s downright dangerous.

“Woh jo bachiyon se dar gaye,” written after the attack on Malala Yousafzai and on hundreds of schools for girls in Swat, captures her anger and angst. “I have travelled in Swat and seen the challenges girls face in their attempt to study. I would see these girls outside their broken down schools, wiping each brick of their school with such care because they felt such pride and love for their school,” she says. Naheed, who was in the civil services, served as director general of Pakistan’s National Arts Council. “During Zia-ul-Haq’s tenure when there was ban on dance, painting and music. He came down on the arts, and because of that I was left with nothing to do for many years. I travelled extensively through the country, mainly in villages. All cities are usually cosmopolitan but it’s in the villages that you see actual life,” she says.

Naheed now runs her own NGO, Hawwa, that specialises in embroidered clothes made by women in rural Pakistan. “There is still so much to be done and all we (India and Pakistan) are interested in, is fighting. You can’t change your neighbours. Aap ne lad ke bhi dekh liya, kya hua? We have so many problems. There are no schools for girls. In both nations, we are not taught history well, we aren’t taught geography well. I also feel girls in our countries don’t fully recognise the power of education. Girls become doctors but will stop working if their husbands tell them not to. More than women, our men need to be emancipated,” says Naheed, dressed in a black kurta embroidered by the women who are trained as weavers by her organisation.

With her eye on what happens in the world around us, Naheed has been following the discourse in India over recent events. So, if she had to write about it, what would she say? “Well, what I want to say was best said by Fahmida Riaz in her poem a few years ago: Tum bilkul hum jaisey nikley/ab tak kahan chhupe the bhai/voh moorkhta, voh ghaamarpan/jis mein hum ne sadi ganwai/aakhir pahunchi dwaar tumhaarey/arre badhai bohot badhai (Turned out you were just like us; Where were you hiding all this time?; The stupidity and ignorance that we wallowed in for a century has finally arrived at your shores, congratulations!). We have suffered these problems since the times of Zia-ul-Haq but now you, too, are facing this. We used to think you are liberal and secular — and you are that, but there are some people who have taken over the scene. This is wrong. It won’t be good for the new generation,” says Naheed.