Abstract : The Poetic corpus of Agha Shahid Ali is intricately woven with many shades of

region ,religion and cultures. As he grew up in Kashmir ,his poetry reciprocates his love for the
land of Kashmir .This paper is an attempt to analyse the role and the character of Kashmir in
the poems of Agha Shahid Ali. This Paper explores the poet's love for the beauty of Kashmir.
Ali melds the landscape of Kashmir along with the conflicting emotions of exile, immigration
and loss.

Keywords: Kashmir ,Love, Beauty, exile, Emotion, Identity, Immigration ,Loss.

Agha Shahid Ali was an American poet who belonged to Srinagar, Kashmir. He is of Kashmiri
ancestry and upbringing and played a very significant role in the development of modern Indian
literature of the twentieth century. Agha Sahid Ali attempts to synthesize and generalize
ethnicity, nationality and identity through his poems. Most of Ali’s poem concerns on the painful
confrontation of individual experience about his distant homeland Kashmir.

Agha Sahid Ali poems are mainly set in Kashmir, a place with historical depth and rich cultural
heritage. The nostalgic portrayals of Kashmir are the central theme in his poems. As an
immigrant poet, he has embedded his poem with the sensations of loss and longing of his social
bloodline Kashmir which is a predominantly active theme in his poems. Ali has endowed his
homeland Kashmir with extravagant beauty paralleled with his mournful experience of exile.
Each poem by Ali is extremely personal and also a reflection on the universal exile experience.
His poetry is autobiographical with allusions to exile and Ali’s identity as a Kashmiri. Ali writes
his poetry which pleads of the great loss of his motherland, friends and foreign land, his beloved
Kashmir.

In the poem “Postcard from Kashmir”, Ali seems forced to part with his birth place and he gets
back to it after he receives a postcard from Kashmir .The opens in an abrupt manner informing
us about the arrival of a letter in the mail box of the poet where he finds the beautiful picture of
his homeland Kashmir in a postcard. Ali’s opening of the mailbox take him back to Kashmir
which is beautiful by the tall Himalayas and scenes of natural beauty that capture one's heart .He
finds great solace as his mood undergoes a sweeping change. He seems to be away from his
homeland for many years travelled by unavoidable circumstances and the postcard reveals the
deep love and longing for his homeland .Agony grips in as he travels back to to the past .He
feels that his return to his homeland may not be so rarely or that an eventual return the sights of
his land may not be the same .

When I return
the colours won’t be so brilliant
the Jhelum's waters so clean,
So ultramarine.'

He feels that Kashmir may change its nature its colour or beauty or even the Jhelum river might
not remain that clean as it used to be in the past. He feels that the blue water of the Jhelum might
overexpose his love for his land of birth. Thoughts and feelings of his homeland take him fast
while he physically remains in his present place of living. The poet towards the end of the poem
realises that when he reaches Kashmir same years hence, the changed scenario would distract
his memory .He might not get the same Kashmir as he head lift once and even his memory
could not be able to bring back the Kashmir of yesteryears. It would remain ' a giant negative
black /and white , still under loped.' Though the speaker is far away from his home land he
portrays Kashmir in a delightful and pleasant light matter than the agitated atmosphere which
prevailed in reality at that time. In spite of chaos and uncertainty, he glorifies Kashmir ,
Himalays and the Jhelum. His proud statement ,This is home .And this closest I'll ever be to
poem ' Ironically Kashmir had When the hotspot for conflict and the most inflammable part of
India. He belongs to India and is proud of Kashmir .It means still at the bottom of his heart ,he
has privileged position for India and Kashmir .He celebrates the glory of Kashmir and intimacy
that forces him to keep it at his heart. The poem ‘postcard from Kashmir 'contains the critical
reference of Indian chaos in Kashmir which is the Muslim density area .There is severe strife
between India and Pakistan regarding the ownership of that region

“The Sesason of the plains” is Ali's thematic poem endorsed by the melancholic thoughts
generated by the poet's mother .The poem commences with the information that there are four
seasons in Kashmir but it delues or particularizes only are season for description for his mother
had a strong affinity to words it when she was young and staying at Lucknow.

"In Kashmir, where the year

has four clear seasons my mother
spoke of her childhood."

According to Ali's mother the monsoon was the best of all the seasons for the young in
Lucknow .She felt that in this particular season lord Krishna play his romantic turns sitting by
side of the river Jamuna ,which fascinated young ladies ,roving back to his past ,Ali us aware
that his mother used to play the old records of the Banaras thumri singers and listened to the
songs of Siddheswari and Rasoolan .From his mother he had love to know that monsoon ignites
romantic hearts and make lovers long for each other .Heer and Ranjha are invocated and prayed
by every young heart .They pray by burning intense sticks and eagerly wait for the reciprocal of
their love and blessings of the love bird. The poet's mother only said that the monsoon never
crossed the mountains into Kashmir . Ali by this means to say that Kashmir never enjoys such
pleasant environment because of socio political unrest in that region.

The poem “The country without a post office” is perhaps one of the best masterpieces of Agha
Shahid Ali .The poem wants out the songs of the poet who is integrally broken by the widespread
violence in Kashmir and how the government machinery like past offices stopped working due
to the communal distress between the Hindus and Muslims communities .Ali write this poem in
1991 when the local Kashmiris took the guns to fight against the Indian rule in the state. The
poet brings to light the state has been so widespread and bloody that people shift to the plain
areas ,or become refuges by leaving their ancestral properties. The Kashmir valley, which is
known as 'paradise ' for its beauty today has become the valley of death of innocent Hindus and
Muslims .The speaker say 'The soldiers light it ,bone the flames ,burn our world to sudden papier
mache.The reference to us and then in the fifth line of first section of poem means the Hindus
and Muslims who are burning houses of each other. Through the poem, the poet ,who acts as a
speaker in the poem, brings forth and posturizes the realistic pictures of Kashmir violence .

Kashmir forms the center of his world . The constant urge of the poet longing for the beauty and
identity of his land raises the relative question about the political unrest between India and
Pakistan .It is the vehicle which the poet opts to reflect the love his homeland which was once
called the paradise on earth .In ancient time it was a land where people from Hindu and Muslim
religion ,lived in complete harmony . Thus such Hindu Muslim bonding made land a beautiful
picture of strong socio religious land. Unfortunately ,with the corpse of time, Kashmir had sadly
turned into a continues war of the warship between the two countries India and Pakistan .The
people of Kashmir have been badly affected due to this political and religious war. Many people
have migrated and left their home due to unbearable socio economic conditions and the harsh
realties ruling this land .Thus ,the people of Kashmir are in constant search for their identity and
their love for homeland .

Ali in his poems connect that Kashmir is no longer a paradise on earth .In ‘Post card from
Kashmir' he says that the present condition of Kashmir is gloomy ,which is in indirect contrast
with the picture of Kashmir in the postcard .The image of Kashmir on the postcard is same and
beautiful .The poet longs for that mesmerizing beauty of his homeland which Kashmir doesn’t
hold any more Similarly in ‘Seasons of the Plains’ too Ali portrays the picture of Kashmir and
says that it never enjoyed the monsoon which means that Kashmir never enjoyed such a blissful
environment because of the socio political turmoil . In country without a postcard ' Ali portrays
Kashmir which was broken because widespread violence between the locals and the government
.Thus,Kashmir plays a very important role in the poetry of Agha Shahid Ali

Work Cited :
Devi , Reema .Indian Sensitivities : An Anthology of Indian poetry in English . Union Book
Publication , 2nd Edition : 2016.

Mehrotra, Arvind ,Krishna ,Twelve Modern Indian poets. Oxford University Press,2004.

Danita ,Julius.Agha Shahid Ali's portrayal of Kashmir in his poems .

https://www.academia.edu, 2/4/19

Kacker ,Saloneey .The Role of Kshmir in the poetry of Agha Shahid Ali.
https://www.academia.edu, 2/4/19.