Urdu Book review

Urdu poetry’s rising star

By
Amar Nath Wadehra

Rooh kay mander par by Rupa Saba
Modern Publishing House, N. Delhi. Pages: 160. Price: Rs. 200/-

“Beauty and shayari are God’s gifts, when these coalesce they take the form of Rupa Saba” observed Azhar Javed the editor of Lahore’s literary magazine Takhleeq. Such accolades are being increasingly bestowed upon the Ludhiana born, Punjab University graduate, by the connoisseurs of Urdu poetry. Daughter of the accomplished Hindi writer Gurbachan Kaur Nanda, Rupa used to often skip her classes in college in order to listen to AIR’s Urdu Service programs. She began by writing Urdu verse in Devanagari script.

The year 1997 proved to be a watershed of sorts when she participated in a mushaira (recital) at Kurukshetra where such noted poets and litterateurs as Sabar Abrohi, SV Kapil and Mahender Pratap Chand appreciated her poems. Later on, under Chand’s tutorship, she mastered the Urdu script in just one month! She also came into contact with Shabab Lalit, who was associated with an Urdu literary magazine from Shimla named Jadeed Fikro Fun, and published quite a few of her poems. Soon her reputation spread across the international border when her writings began to appear in Lahore’s various publications like Takhleeq edited by Azhar Javed, and were well received by the local readership.

Nature, relationships and pain provide the leitmotifs for her works. While going through such poems in this engrossing volume as Tulsi, Tumhari palkon se, Saugat, Mujhko mananay walay, Wafa, Nadee etc one notices that her blank verse is pretty pithy, viz.,  Roz subah subah mere dar par dastak deta hai, chingariyon se malboos akhbar/Jhoot bolta hai mausam kay thandi hawa chalti hai (every morning fiery newspaper knocks at my door, the weather that indicates cool breeze, lies); or Samandar ki sangani hoon aur sarapa tishnagi hoon/ uskee lehron mein paltee hoon aur seepiyon say tarastee hoon (A companion of the ocean I’m thirsty from head to foot, nurtured among its waves I yearn for sea-shells).
However, as a ghazal writer too she is no pushover. Take this haunting couplet, Pazeb meri thum gayee, sansein bhi ruk gayeen/khamosh ho gaya koyi mujhko pukar kay (My anklet has halted and the breathing ceased too, after calling my name someone has fallen silent); or the thought-provoking, Jo hai pakeezhgi masjid kee wo hi mandir kee/farq jo inmay karay soch hai woh munkar kee (the mosque and the temple are equally sacred, he who differentiates between the two has an infidel’s mindset).

Truly, rising stars like Rupa Saba offer hope to those who have been writing obituaries on Urdu language for quite some time now.

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