Words without borders – poems about loss and longing

The first edition of cross-border poetry event ‘Sarhadain Saraab Hon’ was held on Sunday evening at Namud Resource Centre, featuring 20 performances – live and recorded – from Indian and Pakistani poets.

Organised by the Pakistan chapter of Rhyme Republic, a poetry collective, the event was simultaneously held in Delhi and Karachi, with the teams of both countries respectively trying to make things work, connected to each other through a video link.

The session started off with a video performance by Sidrah Ahmed from Pakistan and Nandini Mehra from India about the grief of separation post Partition in 1947. This was soon followed by participants in both cities who read out their own works on themes revolving around borders, long lost love and longing as well as the similarities between both nations as opposed to differences.

An interactive session between the attendees in Karachi and Delhi followed after the performances. One of the participants who came from Lahore, Eshah Shakeel did not only narrate her poem about her friendship online with Sehaj, she also managed to talk to her Indian friend during the session.

Rhyme Republic is a poetry platform founded by Abhijeet Khandkar and Aseem Sundan to hold cross-border poetry events and help poets interact with their counterparts across borders. “It seemed far-fetched at that time owing to technical difficulties as well as [difficulties in] coordination across borders. However, upon meeting some like-minded individuals who were driven and loved the idea because they had also felt an impact of Partition and visa-control policies, our efforts led to fruition today,” explained Khandkar.

“There were endless conference calls, and people from all across India sent their pieces with entries amounting to 150. It was quite an uphill task to shortlist the participants as we had works from Ludhiana to Hoshyarpur,” he said.

When asked what his takeaway from the event was, Khandkar said it was the moment when the Indian audience in Dehli started singing ‘Dil Dil Pakistan’ and in response the Karachi audience started singing Allama Iqbal’s ‘Saray Jahan Se Acha.’

“They sang in unison and that was quite something for me since I’ve never witnessed that before,” said Khandkar. According to Sania Sidiki, one of the Pakistani organisers, effective coordination of the whole event was essential to its success since Rhyme Republic has core members from all over Pakistan – from Peshawar to Rawalpindi.

“Social media played a very important role because we all had connected through Bookay, an online [book] forum, which has people from different areas of the world, who are fond of reading and writing,” Sania added.

She explained that she approached Khandkar, whom she met on the forum, with the idea of holding a cross-border poetry event, and this was how their collaboration began. Habiba Nasir Mirza, also an organiser, said she had decided to send gifts across the border in the shape of personalised bookmarks and letters to 10 people in India, but the letters never made it.

“Although they are strangers since I had never met them personally, I decided to send them a token from our end,” she said. “But while they received their respective bookmarks, they did not get the letters. I was shocked when I got those same letters back to me in a terrible condition,” she said.

Khandkar who had received the bookmarks on the behalf of the Indian recipients was also upset to learn that the letters had somehow been returned to the sender. “All of us felt miserable and in order to put those feelings in words, Khandkar wrote a poem which led me to believe that borders were actually non-existent,” said Habiba. “When we were preparing for the event, the line “In that moment you’d be Delhi and Delhi would be you” kept coming back to me, and I was extremely glad that we were able to organise against all odds, relying on our teams only.”

Dedicating the event to university student Mashal Khan who was lynched in April by fellow students after being accused of blasphemy, Khandkar said that he was deeply moved by the incident especially the injustice surrounding it.

He added that Khan’s words that, “Lakeerain buhat ajeeb hoti hay... khaal pe khich jaye to khoon nikal deti hain... aur zameen pe khich jaye tu Sarhadain bana deti hai,” echo in everyone’s hearts, hence the dedication.