Vienna Snapshots

It was a 10 day dream escape. Things were not going well with the world in those days. I came back to a place where one couldn't avoid TV and newspapers. And the images in them could make you wonder whether there is any meaning in all these; whether anything matters in human life. 

But for a short while Vienna gave me a chance to be lost fully in new sights, smells, sounds and tastes. There was even a heavy rain that drenched me while I hoped in vain that the biggest tree in the Botanical Garden would give me cover. There is a lot of history scattered everywhere in the city. All of us know that, and the guide books give you more information than necessary. I could sense a lot of romance in the air, and a bit of laziness and sadness too. And yes, music. The music that cannot be named. The kind that comes in search of you if you are ready to be silent.  

Life is a mix of the unexpectedly good and the terribly bad that lurks behind it. I wonder whether our sense of aesthetics remains the same all the time. But Vienna can never be considered an ordinary city. The beauty that has emerged out of its good and bad times cannot ever be compared to the gargantuan obscenities that many consider to be the modern buildings that impose on you a sense of immense wealth and power. I wonder whether cities like this can ever be made again, with an eye to details, a special care given to the way they compliment nature instead of overpowering it. It's just like the larger-than-life David Lean movies that are now becoming part of history. Those were made for a purpose, in times when they could afford it. But film industry can have good alternatives, even though it involves a lot of capital and focused effort by a lot of people. When it comes to the making of a city, the dimensions are unimaginably larger and unmanageable. We may have to be content with the crowded cities full of tastelessly constructed skyscrapers.

Oh, all that rant apart, let me come to the point. I went to Vienna to read a story at the 13th International Conference On The Short Story of English held at Juridicum, Vienna University. I will write about the conference in another post. Here I will share some snapshots. It was hard to choose these from the thousands of pictures clicked by me on my Samsung Note 3 and a Sony video camera that shoots not-too-bad stills, and by my sister on her Sony proper still camera.  None of these can be termed professional, though my video camera can be considered a semi-professional one, but only for its videos. Anyway, I felt like sharing some random selections. I tried to include those that left some impression in me, and not the regular ones that are similar to those you can find all over the Internet, if you google images for Vienna. Here they are...

I was in the right mood for people watching. The man was very busy on his phone. But at some point he noticed the two well dressed ladies staring at him. The shameless ones!

This guy kept staring at me for full five minutes. I kept staring back and then, believe me, he laughed. When I tried to click one more picture, he said "No, please! This is between you and me. I have a reputation to keep" and went back to his stare-self.

This is the place from where I got the idea in my head of taking a ride in a horse carriage, but I found out that it could be very expensive. And by the time I finally made up my mind, I had seen most of Central Vienna by walk. So I decided to go for a ride in the Central Cemetery, which was too vast and secluded to be seen in one day by walk. And the ride there was much cheaper too - a decision I did never regret.

Henry the gentle fiaker (horse-carriage driver) and his naughty (and lovely) horses took us for a 30 minutes ride inside the central cemetery. Henry told us about all the 'music guys, art guys, culture guys and literature guys' who are buried, or have memorial graves, there. That was a unique experience and there were some surprises too - hope to write about it soon.

The happiest man I met in town...

I don't know how much time I spent hunting for graffiti art in Vienna. But I forgot where I spotted this. 

This was in Wien Mitte/Landstraße. I had to wait endlessly to get this shot with no people in front of it. It's a very crowded place, all times of the day. I just got lucky for some five seconds and I made it!

This is not exactly the result I wanted, though I tried a lot of positions to get it framed this way, including the one in which I almost lay down on the pavement, next to horse shit. 

I loved the way that cycle stood there, with so much confidence and attitude.

Oh, these big things, and these tiny things...

Yes, the bird was shooed away, successfully.

I didn't want to bore you with my 'lamp post series' but thought this was special.

We entered the Belvedere from some place near this.

You find these folks everywhere - they are quite good-natured, almost all the time.

This was a great story. I guess his name was Robert, and he wanted to run away from the place, from his mom, who was very energetic and witty the way she treated him.

You must agree that this is a great idea for a photo frame.

Well, I didn't follow the advice, and did even forget to buy a Klimt Kiss. 

Belvedere. You may get a better picture on wikipedia, but I felt this was an achievement for a photo taken on phone.
 

Cafe Central. I can write pages on that place. I felt very special sitting there. Perhaps the fact that it was the usual haunt of many famous guys like Trotsky and Freud mattered to me too, but to be honest, I was more drawn to the ambience, the way it is designed, the ceilings, the paintings, the music. And yes the coffee and the cakes. I wish I could be there again, right now.

I won't forget a comment made by my friend Mahesh, who works in Geneva and came to Vienna to see the place and to show me around a bit: "If we were here at a very young age, it would have been a dreamland. But why is it that we see all these lovely pastries only at a certain age when we have to remind ourselves to pull our tummy in whenever someone takes our snaps?". Hmm...that's a question and a half.

A place we loved and were not meant to see in detail. On both the occasions we tried to see it, rain threatened us, and in one case,  drenched us. 

Lovely lady.
 

 Mahesh was next to me when we saw this too. Each of us just let out a sigh this time.

 Saints for sale.

I never managed to get inside. Just stole a glance through the window. Well, don't look at that painting. I warned you!

Schonbrunn Palace. We went there two times. Once it was too dark to take a picture of the city from up there, and the second time it rained, so we couldn't even go up there. There is supposed to be a next time. 

 I loved to spy on them.

That was my first giant wheel ride, and I thought it was quite good. The view was great on all sides. 

 Another view, from the Giant Wheel.

I love anything that has two faces.

 A view of the Central Cemetery.

I had to go near them, they had to bow, and then I had to bow, and the lady had to give me a beautiful smile.

Not a great fan of Madam Tusaauds, but I confess I loved some parts of this one, especially the ones on the 'music guys', as Henry the gentle fiaker would call them.

I couldn't take my eyes off this. It seems there's so much more growing up for me to do.

 Another view, of the Botanical Garden.

Well, this is what they call the Giant Wheel there.



Thanks so much for your patience. That was just a bit of the Vienna I experienced. I hope to return with some more serious news in the next post, on the conference.

The Gaza Blame Game And Children Who Live, With No Choice

There is no doubt that graphic images of wounded and dead children, who had no role or agency in the Gaza issue, are heartbreaking. Wherever you turn to in this age of incessant ideas, you find lamentations, rants, angry slogans, calls for revenge in this world and the other, and even calls for peace and solutions. It is all very troubling, and life-changing too, for a thinking person. Can we really think of a solution? I can't, to be honest. I can't, unless we shift our focus, at least for arguments' sake, from the children who are dead, to the ones who are not dead. The ones who are not dead and have to live, with no choice.

The inane blame game and its uselessness is looked at with great insight in the recent Guardian article here.  It concludes with a strong view of "[N]ot one more shell in a Gaza schoolyard, ever." Let us hope so against our hopes, against what history warns us. Even then, the question remains of those who survive the experience - both those who suffer and those who cause the suffering directly or indirectly. They will have to live in a world devoid of real choices, morality apart. This is not a pleasant situation, especially when a part of these survivors turn out to be children. Children who grow up to realize at some point in their life that they cannot separate themselves from the history of dead children. Not just because the dead children were related to them by the bond of blood, religion or nationality but also the stronger bond of an ideological situation.

Philosophers keep wondering about free will. Can the idea of free will exist in a world where unfettered thoughts don't exist? Parental influences and institutional/religious indoctrination are not the only things that work against free will. History plays a major part there, a part that can be compared to what our genes play in our biological existence. Just like there is generally no choice in deciding on the genetic pattern/condition we need, there is no choice in deciding what we are in the context of the history that defines our positions.

This may sound like a complex issue, but it is an important one when we try to label people on the basis of existing knowledge systems. It goes beyond the possibilities we count on our fingers about what traumatic experiences can cause in a child's development. It doesn't help to take the case of a so-called terrorist or suicide bomber and work backwards to see how her/his life experiences have led to the 'wrong' decisions s/he had taken in the only life at the only time s/he had, just in order to write her/him off as a causality of history.

We have more causalities around us. Our children, who are alive, and have no choice but to see what is happening around them, to read about them, to be transformed by them. In a case of being drawn into a senseless conflict, one has only two choices - to be on one side, or the other. But those choices are no choices. The real choice would have been to stay away from the senseless conflict, and to focus on something that the individual considers sensible. History draws us to that senseless conflict. Perhaps that's an existential situation, beyond human intervention. Or, is that so? If we talk about decisions, it has to be in the context of someone who is capable of taking them, someone who has choices.

Are we the grown up versions of children who were drawn to conflicts, by histories that define our existence? Is there any way in which some histories can be shaken off, or is it against the rules of Nature? If the latter is the case, we are doomed to produce a generation of no choice. They will end up repeating the cause and effect nonsense, especially if we teach them who they are and bring them up with a great sense of belonging to places and ideologies. There will always be some scores to settle, to prepare the field for a fair game. And the process of this preparation will go on endlessly, through the myriad unfair games that are part of it.

We won't be able to think of a real solution yet, unless we think a little less of what we have to pass on to children. A little less of what we believe in, what we stand for, what we fear, what we dream of, what we are entitled to, what was taken away from us, what others have done to us, what we have to do to others, what we have suffered, what we have done to cause suffering to others, what we should continue to do to cause suffering to others, what was done to our forefathers, what we have to do to their children...Oh, I am tired. I just hope some of you get the point.

Tracing The Origin Of Violence: An Interview With Michelle Cohen Coresanti, Author of 'The Almond Tree'

There could be multiple readings of a novel that deals with conflicts, especially when it is related to recent history. Years of media intervention and endless discussions on the Israel-Palestine issue has seemingly inured the conscience of people who are not directly involved in it. Regional and religious feelings interfere with the varied responses that come out occasionally, as a reaction to the horror that comes out of the situation, like in recent times. What literary works do in this climate is in fact a subtle intervention - for the number of people who would read hundreds of pages to get a deeper insight to the issue are much lesser than the ones who do their armchair theorizing after watching a 3 minute TV footage. 

'The Almond Tree', published in 2012 had made an impact on its own terms. Michelle could have spent a lot of time to give her Palestinian Muslim male narrator an authentic voice. Many could have raised arguments that a Jewish woman can't simply do that, no matter how hard she tries. There could have been varied responses to the underlying theories of the book, from both sides of the parties involved in the conflict. However, I was more concerned about the creative process involved in the whole effort and her take on the issue when I interviewed her soon after the publication of the book, for the journal I edit, Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts. I just thought a blog post which features that interview might be relevant in the light of the recent Gaza operation and its unfortunate aftermath. I hope to have one more post after this about the role of literary works and films, if any, in this scenario. 

The interview focuses mainly on the creative process involved in conceiving the book, how the voice of the protagonist was shaped, instances of scholasticide that don't often get talked about and the author's insights on the whole situation.
                                                           

                                     THE INTERVIEW

Jose Varghese (JV): How did The Almond Tree materialize? 

Michelle Cohen Corasanti (MCC): The idea for The Almond Tree materialized when I realized that a writer can reach into readers’ hearts and change them forever. I grew up in a Jewish, Zionist family where we were taught that after the Holocaust the Jews found a land without a people for a people without a land and made the desert bloom. We were also taught that the Jews were always persecuted due to no fault of their own. In high school I went to Israel and learned that what I had been taught was a lie. I was horrified to see how the Palestinians were treated. I wanted to devote my life to help bring about a just peace. But there was little that could be done at that point. Once I read The Kite Runner, the line about how history, politics and religion are virtually impossible to overcome, I got the idea for my story. During all my years involved in the conflict, one of the only glimmers of hope I saw was at Harvard where a Palestinian and Israeli were working together with a Nobel Prize winner. I could see how strong they were when they combined forces and decided to build my story around that seed. 

JV: When exactly did you think of writing about Ichmad? Why did you choose to write from a male perspective, and how challenging was it?

MCC: I don’t think I ever chose to write in the voice of a male Palestinian Muslim. When I went to write the book, I put myself in his shoes and became him. I knew who the protagonist was at the core. It was so natural because I heard the stories from Palestinian males. I was at their houses. I saw how they lived, how they were treated, where they came from.

JV: As one can see, it's not at all a fabricated story. How much of reality is there, and how did you fictionalize it?

MCC: The vast majority of the novel is fictionalized reality. I wanted to put a name and a face on the news. We often hear five were injured or two were killed or about thousands of political prisoners. I wanted to show that they are someone’s mother, brother, sister, father.
For example, I got the idea for the protagonist from someone I knew at Harvard. I’ll call him Hasan. His father helped a refugee who snuck back into the country to plant weapons and was sentenced to 14 years. Hasan was twelve at the time, the oldest of nine with an illiterate mother. He was forced to become the breadwinner of the family. He was only able to attend school infrequently, but it was enough because he was so gifted in math and science. He received a scholarship to attend the Hebrew University. There, in an environment of publish or perish, the Israelis recognized his genius and embraced him. Initially his first advisor for his masters was right-wing and racist, but when Hasan helped him publish more than he ever had, the professor embraced him. In fact, for his PhD, a top Jewish Israeli professor became his advisor and when Hasan graduated, he helped Hasan get a post-doc at Harvard with a Nobel Prize winner. The Israeli professor paid for the other half of the post doc so that they could continue working together.

I changed many aspects of the story. The Palestinians inside Israel were ruled by the military government until 1966 so they were under similar laws to those of the Palestinians in the occupied territories starting in 1967. The protagonist is born in 1948 so he grew up under Israeli military government so the conditions were more like those of the occupied territories from 1967. Most of the events actually happened, but again I fictionalized reality. Obviously, Nora was killed like Rachel Corrie. On many occasions I had to tone down reality because if I was to tell what really happened, no one would believe me. For example, an Israeli pushed a Palestinian man and his son who were working at a construction site off a scaffold. The father fell on barrels of rocks and eventually died from his injuries. The son managed to grab onto a pipe until they were able to rescue him. Instead of having Abbas die from his injuries, I just had him crippled.

JV: Did you attend any creative writing course in order to create this highly readable novel that strikes a chord with the hearts of readers from across the world? If you did, how useful were they, to make you a better writer?

MCC: When I decided to write this novel, I thought it would take three months. I said to myself if Khaled Hosseini, a medical doctor, could write The Kite Runner, then surely I, a lawyer trained in writing, would have no trouble. Twenty-one writing courses, six editors and seven years later, I finished the novel. I absolutely couldn’t have written this book without the writing courses. When I first wrote the book, I just wrote a story. There was no dialogue, no hooks, no cliff hangers, no complex characters, no tension. Basically I took every course from dialogue, character development, word painting, grammar, plot and so many more. Also, I think one has to learn to read like a writer. When reading, one has to keep analyzing how the writer made one feel a certain way. I read all the best sellers to see why they were best sellers. I read all the classics to see why they endured the test of time. I wanted to bring about social change so I read books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin that helped end slavery in the US.

My goal in this book was to change the way that people saw the Palestinians, particularly in the United States because I think that for there to be change, the US has to change its policies. I wanted to humanize the Palestinians and show why we should celebrate differences and focus on our commonalities to advance humanity. I wanted to reach as many people as possible so I knew that I would have to keep my language simple. Most Americans want a fast-paced gripping story and the message has to be sent through the back door. I knew I would have to plant seeds and appeal to human values. I understood if I started to try and prove facts, I would enter into a bottomless pit.

JV: Do you advocate creative writing courses to budding novelists/writers?

MCC: I most definitely advocate creative writing classes. I think the best ones: 1. Tell you what needs to be done, 2. Show you examples of it in famous books 3. Have a component where in each session you have to write something pertinent to what you are working on, say dialogue, that needed to be submitted to the entire class and everyone comments. Feedback was critical for me.

JV: There are striking parallels and paradoxes in the depiction of women characters in the novel, though it is mainly narrated from the viewpoint of a male protagonist. Are these female characters based on people you know? How much of you were transferred into them?

MCC: First I will admit that the absolute hardest character for me to write was the Jewish American human rights activist. In retrospect and with hindsight I can say that I wanted her to be everything I wished I could have been, but failed to be. I was unable to give her any flaws. No one likes a perfect character. Everyone hated her and eventually, I found a way to give her the most courageous death I could.

In writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe tried to appeal to white women because she thought they would be more sympathetic to the plight of the blacks. So she had, for example, Eva, the purest girl who sees Uncle Tom the slave as a human being and is against slavery. She is angelic. Stowe made her into a heroine to give women someone to try to emulate. I tried to do that with Nora and Justice. I wanted to give examples of women who didn’t judge a person based on their religion. On the other hand, I portrayed Professor Sharon’s first wife as a nasty racist and their marriage ends in divorce.

As far as the women are concerned, Mama was based on women I met, particularly the mother of the scientist form Harvard. I didn’t do that to put her down. I did that to try and show how far he had come. His achievements in my mind are even greater considering the distance he transversed.

I got the idea for Ichmad’s second wife, Yasmine, from a class on Arabic literature that I took in college called east-west. The class dealt with what happens when an eastern man goes to the west to study, meets a western woman, falls in love, comes back to the east and is pressured into an arranged marriage with an eastern woman. Typically he is blinded at first by the west and he looks down on his own culture until he learns to appreciate how much his eastern wife brings to the table and then he realizes they are cut from the same cloth. As far as Ichmad is concerned, when he meets Yasmine, he is still not over Nora. He doesn’t appreciate her until she has his son and then once he sees how great she is with his son, he realizes they were cut from the same cloth.

Ichmad’s first love from the university was beautiful and brilliant, but she was forced into an arranged marriage. Many of the other women were based on people I met or read about over the years.

JV: What is the focal point of your novel? Is it the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seen from a new perspective? How far could you justify/critique both sides?

MCC: I think when I wrote this book, my target audience was Americans though I knew I needed momentum from the rest of the world to really push this novel to become a bestseller. As a Jewish American, who lived in Israel for 7 years, who has degrees in Middle Eastern studies and law with a specialization in human rights and international law, I felt I would be a hard force to dismiss. I didn’t want to argue the facts because those are easily manipulated and truthfully they would probably bore many Americans. I wanted to show what Zionism meant to the Palestinians. I wanted to shatter stereotypes and give the Americans a little Palestinian boy who they could love and root for and want to succeed. My book wasn’t about casting blame or advocating hatred. I wrote this book to show how strong we could be if we just pooled resources and worked together instead of focusing on differences and destroying each other. In fact, many people see this book as much bigger than the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Anyone who has ever encountered hardship can relate. My father-in-law was born during the depression. His father was a new immigrant. They lost their house to the bank, but my father-in-law went on to build a very successful company. He saw himself in Ichmad.

JV: Is scholasticide a wide-ranging phenomenon that comes out of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Do you know of any such particular cases in real life?

The scholasticide I discussed in Gaza in the book was based on reality. Out of all the areas Israel rules, I think their scholasticide policies in Gaza are the worst. In the US the whites denied the slaves education. The Nazis also used such policies.

JV: Does the novel have a clear message to Israel?

MCC: The clear message to Israel is that we didn’t survive the Holocaust to go from victims to victimizers. Never again means never again for anyone, not just Jews. The lessons we should have learned from the Holocaust were not how to have a pure country, but that we can never be bystanders to human suffering. If Israel wants to have a Jewish country in the heart of the Arab world on land that was occupied by another people the vast majority of whom were not Jewish, they will have to murder, steal, persecute, oppress and all the other policies that go along with ethnic cleansing. My message is it’s better to have a secular democratic country where everyone lives together with equal rights instead of a racist, oppressive country.

JV: Is the characterization of Professor Sharon/Menachem totally fictitious?

MCC: The character of Professor Sharon was based on a combination of two professors I had heard about. One was racist who learned the value of a brilliant Palestinian student and his love for science and desire to succeed surpassed his racism and another whose love for science was of utmost importance and he had the brilliance to do something about it.

JV: Can one expect people like him in today's world? Is it easy to transform people's deep-rooted outlooks? How did you make the transformation of him convincing in the novel?

MCC: I think when you get to know someone on the personal level and have respect for their abilities and see how such abilities can benefit you, it breaks down stereotypes. I think that friendships flourish when there are common interests. This is especially the case for true scientists whose love for science can overcome such obstacles. I think that unless people have met someone who is a true scientist they may not be able to understand how science can be a bridge. I happened to see it with my own eyes. Someone doesn’t come from abject poverty and overcome obstacles such as racism and discrimination and make it to Harvard as a post-doc for a Nobel Prize winner unless he possesses certain characteristics: a brilliant mind, a deep passion for science, intense focus, and a willingness to put science above all else. I didn’t write about something that happens every day. If this were the case, the conflict would have ended. I am writing about the rarest of instances. The perfect storm when all the stars just happened to line up. This is by no means the norm.

JV: Were you afraid, at any point of time, that your attitude to the Israel-Palestinian conflict could turn out to be controversial?

MCC: What I have found is that the Zionists who read The Almond Tree have been transformed for the most part and are able to see the Palestinian perspective because I appeal to Jewish values. The people who have had a problem with my book are the ones who have not read it and refuse to read it because they don’t want to hear anything but Zionist propaganda. I call for people to embrace our common humanity. I don’t feel that is controversial, but there are always irrational people who will try and whip something up. I am afraid of those people, but I want my children to know that I did see injustice and I tried to do something about it. Every time I get scared, I think of all the children that are suffering and I find the strength because I’m more afraid for what will happen if I don’t speak the truth.

The Uneasy Task Of Being An Indian English Poet In Kashmir

Mohammad Zahid is a poet from Kashmir. That sets some expectations based on essentialist clichés. Can he have an identity as a writer/poet apart from the one linked to his region, religion and political views? He should have such an identity, I believe - a flexible, ever-changing one. It is true that the place where one is born and grows up has a deep impact on his consciousness. But his artistic pursuits are not solely influenced by the place.
 
Zahid has wide ranging interests - he is an avid reader, cares for the recent trends in art and music, grabs any chance to appreciate world cinema and tries to see life from many angles. How can I say that? Because I happen to be his friend, and even though we belong to two states (Kashmir and Kerala) that are the extreme ends of India, we got chances to meet up, stay together, and even share a stage twice, for our poetry readings. That makes my task both easy and difficult. Easy, because I know the person I am talking about. Difficult, because such a belief is a hindrance when it comes to analyzing the literary works by that person - because such works go much beyond that person, even beyond what that person himself could put in perspective. Anyway, I don't consider myself a critic, or a decent reviewer even. My attempt here is to just have a look at his book of poems, based on my first impressions. 

Zahid's strength as a poet comes from his eagerness to reflect originally on things that many consider mundane, or take for granted. He doesn't miss the small details in things that take place around him. In some cases, he is capable of seeing these things with the curiosity of a newborn - trying to connect the images and to bring meaning out of them from unfettered thoughts. And the surprising fact is that such attempts from his part lead to poems that are highly philosophical, like 'Genesis', 'Questions', 'Addressee Not Found', 'Calling, A Ghazal', 'Canteen Kids', 'Love By The Side Of The Grave', 'Songs Of Silence', 'The Autumn Leaves', 'The Hunter And The Mosquito' and so on. These are the poems that appeal the most to me. 

However, some of the themes and poetic devices that Zahid grapples with may need a little more focus and deeper understanding. As Prof. G R Malik points out in his Preface to the book, Zahid puts his artistry to real test in the ghazals that he attempts. This may also invite unfair comparisons with writers like Agha Shahid Ali, who experimented with the form and succeeded to some extent. Malik observes that Zahid is "comparatively more at home with the ghazal's indigenous ambience." While I agree with that, I see some scope for improvement in the way English language has to be bent to suit this ambience. Salman Rushdie has done that with great ease in fiction, but I feel India is still waiting for someone to do that in poetry. I understand that it is a much tougher task in poetry. I felt Zahid may perhaps need to reconsider some of the forced rhymes, wordiness, too familiar expressions from literary classics and inversions in some of his ghazals like 'Night, A Ghazal', 'Winter, A Ghazal' and 'Game, A Ghazal'. This doesn't mean that his ghazals don't work for me. They do, for their original thoughts, unexpected twists, musicality, fresh refrains and unique phraseology. I just felt that if there is space for improvement, it could be with regard to the creative and exact use of English language that suits the form, without losing the essence of Indianness and the ghazal quality - tough task indeed, but a young poet should have enough time to work on that. 

Among the poems that speak of the agony Zahid experiences about the Kashmir situation, a handful come as quite impressive to me. 'The Pheromone Trail' calls for a close reading, and it is an attempt to say many things by not really saying it. The hints are well thought out and subtle, and the images can last forever in a discerning reader's mind. If that's a poem with which I go on a date, I would end up asking for its hand in marriage. There is a lot to appreciate in that as a work of art, for life. 'The Missing Men, Found' impressed me much before I read it in the book. I listened to him reading it during the 2012 Hyderabad Literature Festival, and was lucky to discuss it in detail afterwards. Though it's based on real events that touched the poet on a personal level, the poem is devoid of journalistic clichés. 'Happy? New year!!!' on the other hand, failed to impress me that much. 'The Stray Bullet' can leave a strong impact on many, I thought, but the use of language could have been a bit more refined there. 

I am not in a position to judge Zahid as an Indian English poet. All I can say is that I see in him a quality that creative writers are born with. Let me remember something in this context. In the 1987 issue of Mar Ivanios College Magazine (Trivandrum, India), an interviewer asked the maverick writer Aubrey Menen whether writers are born or made. Menen's reply was this: "All writers are made writers, but in fact they are born. Journalists can be made, but not creative writers". I believe Zahid is born a writer. He is so young, open minded and earnest. There is so much time left for him to perfect his craft. What matters, in the meantime, is the need to keep the spark alive, despite the horrifying life experiences that touch him deeply, and the unfair comparisons and expectations. We know that he is from Kashmir, there is nothing that can wipe away that fact. He will always be a Kashmiri, wherever he moves to. But let his poems bloom naturally, like the beautiful flowers in the garden he tends.