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(1)
Modern Punjabi literature cannot be viewed in any meaningful way without including Shiv Kumar Batalvi's exquisite and immensely significant body of work. Safir Rammah's observations on Batalvi's poetry are perceptive, thoughtful, and even thought provoking. Unfortunately, the embarrassingly unpoetic, incorrect, and at times absurd translation, was a grave disservice to the poetry of Batalvi as well as to the points made by Mr Rammah. No one reading this translation is going to think "Wow! what a wonderful poet this is!". And that should be the goal.
One hopes that you will continue to educate your readers about Punjabi writers - but with justice to their work.
SUMAN KASHYAP
California, USA
(2)
With reference to my article on Shiv Kumar Batalvi (July 28), I greatly appreciate that you took the time to provide an excellent translation of Shiv's verses that were quoted in the article. Allow me to bring to your attention a discrepancy in the translation of Shiv's famous poem "Shikra".
In classical Punjabi literature, there is a well-established poetic tradition that sometimes the poet assumes a feminine identity while addressing his beloved. It is commonly used in sufi poetry to emphasize the poet's complete submission and devotion to God. Both in sufi poetry, as well as, in the lok and popular songs, it opens up an extra dimension and rather charming possibilities for the poet to express his feelings.
For example, while using the symbols of Heer and Ranjha, it is common for Punjabi poets to write poetry in the role of Heer.
Ranjha Ranjha kerdee nee main/Ape Ranjha hoee
Repeating the name of Ranjha/I have become Ranjha myself (Bulleh Shah)
The refrain - Mai Nee Mai - is almost always an indication that the poet is writing in his feminine role.
Shiv, like many other modern Punjabi poets, has selectively employed metaphors and poetic traditions of Punjabi classical poetry. A number of his poems are in the form of a geet or a song. In his poem "Shikra", the shikra (falcon) is a male and the poet or narrator of this poem a female. Shiv has used masculine pronouns and verbs in all references to shikra. The repeated refrains "Mai Nee Mai" and "Nee main waree javan" clearly establish that Shiv is writing this poem by adopting a feminine identity.
The otherwise brilliant translation was marred by assuming shikra as a female (she-hawk) and caused a misinterpretation of the whole poem. I hope this clarification will provide a better understanding of Shiv's poem for your readers.
SAFIR RAMMAH
Fairfax, Virginia, USA
(3)
The translator replies:
The objections to "Shikra's" translation appearing in Mr Rammah's article on the poet Shiv Kumar Batalvi as a 'she-hawk' instead of his preferred 'falcon' seem banal at best. We are not told what would a she-falcon or a she-hawk be called in Punjabi, because as far as one knows the language, there is no such word as shikri.
Banalities aside, the point that like many sufi poets Batalvi sometimes also assumed the female gender is rather obvious and must be taken for granted for anyone acquainted with Punjabi literature. The obvious example of this is Batalvi's poem that runs thus:
Tussi kehRi rute aaye mere Ram ji'O
(Look, when you have come to me)
Now there are two ways of translating this poem in which a woman laments about the lover coming to get her 'too late'; too late meaning now it just cannot be anymore. The traditional way to interpret it would be the easier way out in which the girl's lament becomes her last cry. But Batalvi was the farthest thing from such mundane thoughts, let alone make them subject for his poetry.
His was a very contemporary idiom and sensibility, which sought something that would perhaps always elude human grasp; hence the tragedy. He was an existentialist and believed only in one thing with conviction: worthlessness of life, unless proved otherwise.
It would be unfair to read the sufi in his thoughts, for, like Manto, Batalvi had rather be called a rascal than a mystic. His bosom buddy, Balwant Gargi, would vouch for it any time. He lived life to its full, deceived and used girls (and perhaps boys) and got used by them, and, in the process, composed some of the best contemporary poetry in Punjabi. Punjabi has more than enough unsung heroes than it deserves, and if the living gurus of the language and its largely rustic literature cannot create a more contemporary idiom today the least they can do is not to masquerade some exceptional contemporary works as neo-classics. Batalvi would have hated this.
It was not Batalvi's fault, after all, that he was stuck with a language whose idiom has really not grown much beyond where the masters left it. Urdu, on the contrary, thanks to the Progressive Writers' Movement, managed to shed its rustic classical skin to some extent, and Majaz was able to express the same thought as that expressed by Batalvi in Tussi kehRi rute aaye, without having to switch the gender, by composing Ab mere paas tum aai ho to kya aai ho.
We need more people like Batalvi to take the language farther from where he left it. And those who still live in the trance of a classical idiom and sensibility are the least equipped to do so.
MURTAZA RAZVI
Karachi
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Lyrical sweetness - the magic touchstone of poetry - found a permanent home in Punjabi poetry more than a millennium ago. While Baba Farid (1173-1266) wrote most of his Punjabi poetry in the melodious two-line metre of dohras, many major Punjabi poets that followed him explicitly set the lyrics of their poetry in well-defined ragas of classical Indian music. Punjabis relate to their poetry primarily through singing. Whether it is Baba Nanak's saintly verses, Bulleh Shah and Shah Hussain's kafis, Sultan Bahu's baits, Waris Shah's 