Firesmoke - Sheniz Janmohamed

It’s been four years since Toronto poet Sheniz Janmohamed published her first collection of English ghazals. 

Bleeding Light was a bold attempt at fitting into a form that is not natural to the language, but she seemingly enjoyed the “discomfort of squeezing yourself into a form.” 

She described ghazals as “the cry of the gazelle when it is cornered by a hunter and knows it will die.”

Her first collection had some memorable ghazals.

The one that stayed with me was In Crimson because of its rich imagery.

In Crimson

A man sells packets of socks in a gully where most men walk barefoot.
What can he do but rest his head on that ledge, hastily painted crimson?

In Old Town, Allah hu Akbar pounds the walls of crumbling Fort Jesus.
A taxi cuts us off, Allah is Great plastered on his window – in crimson.

At the Coast, we bargain shillings for bags and kisii stone elephants.
Indians are not good customers. The seller brands our skin crimson.

Bombs detonate at the steps of every mosque, in the throat of every believer.
If Allah is a war cry, how can we lift Bismillah from asphalt stained crimson.

If only we planted a thousand trees for each page we discard and crumple.
When her last pen snaps, Israh will draw blood and scrawl words in crimson.

Recently, TSAR published Sheniz’s second collection of poems Firesmoke. It’s a combination of ghazals, free verse and short verse. The poems are in three sections – kindling (ghazals), fire (free verse) and smoke (short verse). 

In the Preface, Sheniz says, “…to write this poems, I had to locate, gather and lay down the kindling of my past – my attachments and fears – and watch them burn. I had to let go of my idea of what the future would hold and watch it disappear like smoke. The only presence that was present was the life of the fire itself.”

Time transforms everyone, ageing us, slackening our muscles, making our bones brittle, turning our breath sour. For all of us it’s an entirely avoidable process, especially because it doesn’t make us any wiser. Time transforms the poet, too, but in an entirely pleasant manner. It helps the poet discovers her voice, and although the journey is perhaps no less painful for the poet as it is for you and me, it is tremendously more enriching for the poet than it is for us, this is because time doesn’t necessarily mean the same to the poet as it does to us.

In Firesmoke, Sheniz has found her voice – wanderer, lover, mendicant, and activist, a lover of nature, and, of course, a woman. Some poems have a rough texture to them, the hoarseness of sloganeering. Some are impervious, impermeable. As in the first collection, the ghazals in the second collection weave a rich tapestry of imagery and emotion.

I liked Unleashed – perhaps because it describes a common Bombay occurrence.

Unleashed

They believed a witch unleashed a storm when she loosened her hair.
How many hurricanes have hurled through towns because of your hair?

Leaning against a traffic light, a ragged street doll clasps her hands together.
A couple of coins will never rinse the pain out from her dirt-streaked hair.

Each strand of her hair is silk spun from the night. She will never tie it.
She tells me her power is not in her hands, lips, eyes. It’s in her hair.

Her glance is an arrow cracking the oak of your heart.
Even thunder whispers when Israh unties her hair.

Israh is Sheniz’s takhallus

Lingering Tide and Other Stories

Latha Vishwanathan’s Lingering Tide and Other Stories is an endearing collection of short stories.

Lata takes us to places that are mostly homely, but get lonely and forlorn as we get know them better. It’s a world that we wouldn't want to leave once we’re in because it’s where we meet people who’re like us and yet quite different and distinct, and they stay with us a long time; long after you’ve read the book.

It’s a world of cloistered neighbourhoods; of a lovable though tragic character of Ammini (Brittle), who savours peanut brittle. This seemingly inexplicable addiction, when explained later in the story, leaves us with a lump larger than a brittle in the throat, and one that refuses to melt.

In Eclipse, we meet Divya, the flexible wife and mother who is eager to and therefore successful in adjusting to a new life in Canada. Her husband, Sharma, a maestro of sorts, is unable to make the transition; and is reduced to watch his world transform radically from the sidelines. Suddenly, the difference in age between the not-so-young wife and the old husband becomes an unbridgeable and an ever-widening chasm, and he wonders, “Why had he not seen this, her agility spanning continents, skipping oceans?”

Lata Vishwanathan

These stories are of people in India, North America, East Asia, and one that is of a young alchemist in medieval India, who is an expert at making rose attar. Each milieu as carefully crafted as the characters.

In Lingering Tide, the time difference between India and the US is described thus: “The hours Surya struggles to fill in India have yet to be born in America.” Or Sharma’s brother in Eclipse, experiencing the vastness of Canada for the first time, observes, “Isn’t it odd; I haven’t seen so much of the sky at one time.”

The coming of age of girls is described with subtlety and tenderness. In Bat Soup, Robona’s sister describes her thus: “Sitah noticed how Robona walked since she turned sixteen. She wound her sarong tightly, pulling at the edges before tucking in. Then when she walked, she swayed just a little, thighs brushing, small tight buttocks seesawing; so glad to be alive.”

At the Fall launch of TSAR books, Latha read an excerpt from Cool Wedding; a poignant and hilarious story of an immigrant housewife, writing a letter to her sister. 

Here’s a sample from that story:

“You will not believe the competition in America. What with all the smart Chinese children. Thank God for the Americans. Without them, how will our children shine in America? I, personally, am very glad about the one child only per couple in China. Wish the Chinese in America would also take it up.”

You can buy the book here: TSAR

Images: TSAR Publications

Sheniz Janmohamed at Writers' Forum

Sheniz Janmohamed

Last Sunday, Toronto’s Writers’ Forum organised a reading by Sheniz Janmohamed of her ghazals in English from her collection Bleeding Light, published by TSAR. 

I wrote about the book earlier when I covered TSAR's annual launch in Fall at Gladstone last year.

After the initial hesitation to accept ghazals in English, I quite liked Sheniz’s collection because of its raw appeal. 

Although the audience at Gladstone launch was generally appreciative of Sheinz’s experiment, too, I couldn’t help feeling that most people there were unfamiliar with the form.

Hence, I was keen to see how an audience seeped in the glory of ghazals would react to her experiment. When Writers’ Forum organised an event featuring Sheniz, I decided to attend, even though it was on Sunday afternoon. 

Writers’ Forum “promotes Pakistani / Urdu literature, culture and personalities.”

Sheniz read several ghazals from her collection. She appeared relaxed, sure and at home with this audience than she seemed at the Gladstone launch.

Importantly, the audience loved her ghazals; I even heard muted “wha, wha” behind me – something that is quintessential to a ghazal recitation: a learned and appreciative audience.

Here’s one of ghazals she read:

Ladders Without Rungs

On deep sleep, our children sip nectar from the snow of Kashmir
At dawn, blood soaks their bed sheets like dyed cashmere.

We have swallowed black stones washed up on the shore,
And on the heavy pit of our stomachs, we idolize our fear.

They drill oil from oceans, drag seals to slaughter, unsalt seas.
But whose hands will control the boat when there is no boat to steer?

Call the saint a fool. He welcomes death in a puddle of sunlight.
Declare the fool a saint. He refuses death until his body is revered.

Build your skyscrapers and towers, stretch your hands towards God.
Israh scales the ladder without rungs. Without rungs, the sky appears.