Sitting at the Southbank Poetry Library, I was browsing through the Spring Issue of London Poetry Magazine when I came across an interview of Moniza Alvi who had just penned a long poem about India’s partition, “At the Time of Partition”. For those who do not know, when the British left India in 1947, the country was divided into India and Pakistan based on religious lines. In the ensuing communal bloodshed, over half a million lost their lives and 220,000 were declared missing as per official figures. About 14 million people crossed over the border from either sides post the partition, often leaving everything they had behind.
The subject of Partition moves me. I did a speed write on that subject- first in English, then in Hindi and from four A4 pages of text, selected 10 lines worthy to go into a poem. The poem is about that voice I heard, interlaced with incidents during Partition. The poem’s complete now, and I want to share the last few lines from it:
That same hand now holds a sword of steel
It strikes. Delta of tears and blood.
The blood. It still flows. Sixty years after that line divided us.
Meanwhile a couple of weeks ago I went to the Alchemy Festival where they had a section on Partition (thanks to Citizens Archive of Pakistan). And this weekend, Moniza Alvi’s poetry compilation arrived in post. I started and finished it in one afternoon – just could not put it down. It is a gripping, moving account, of her family’s experience of partition, narrated as one long poem across 50 pages. Beautiful. Touching. Moving.
Something’s telling me to continue the work on Partition – maybe a series of poems, reflecting and meditating on photographs, people’s accounts, letters…it is a story that needs to be told.
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