The gesture of Nissar Ahmed

The Living Stream

Hardly had the news of Nissar Ahmed’s death come, people started reaching for his poems turned into song: Nityotsava (“The Eternal Celebration”), a paean to Mother Kannada, Kurigalu Sir Kurigalu (“Sheep, Sir, We are Sheep”), a satire on how the rulers and the ruled had lost sense of direction, Yella Maretiruvaga (“When everything has been forgotten,”) a wistful recall of a past love affair.

Unlike his modernist peers in Kannada literature, in the 1960s, Nissar Ahmed composed lyric poems. As he repeatedly recalled, “communicating” with the ordinary people was important for him. Not wanting commercial Kannada film songs to dictate popular tastes, he personally produced, Nityotsava, an album of his poems set to music by Mysore Ananthaswamy in 1978. The songs caught on. The world of light Kannada music (Sugama Sangeeta) embraced other poems of his over subsequent years and Nissar Ahmed was everywhere: school and college day functions, inaugural ceremonies, radio and television programmes. The Kannadiga NRI households he visited during his trips abroad, he has recalled, had the Nityotsava audio tape with them. He remained grateful for the affectionate place Kannadigas made for him in their minds.

While the metaphors and cadences found in his poems on love, nature, the Kannada land, historical personalities, among others, show how much of an insider he was to Kannada society, his poems which express his feelings of alienation from the same society show the relationship to be a troubled one. His 1968 poem, Nimmodaniddu Nimmantaagade is a powerful instance. Its opening stanza goes thus: “Being with you, and yet not be one of you/To not give in when pulled/and to stay distinct/Despite being rooted in this soil/to have to raise my head as an alien, you see/It’s a very tough task.” Although the narrator’s identity remains unidentified, the poem is pitched towards the dynamics of exclusion from the nation. After ruing that “the cat hidden inside” the words of the dominant community had scratched at his integrity and spilt blood, the poet concludes: “The investigation done in my own presence/for elements of nationalism in the spilt blood/Facing that moment with a false smile/It’s a very tough task.” Relentless and unsparing, the suspicion of the dominant community has initiated against religious minorities a chain of violence whose murderous potential can be glimpsed even through the poem’s tone of gentle irony.

Another poem, Anaataru (Orphans, 1972), also holds out a bleak vision. Addressing himself to a patriot, the poet hints that he hasn’t been able to afford to send his children to school and that their future lay in a remand home. Economic hardship, he connotes darkly, will likely push his children into petty crime. Another powerful poem, Savatiya Makkala Hage (“Like Step-Children”, 1982), asks a mother not to “regard” and “torment” Muslims like they were “her step-children.” Clarifying soon that the mother it invokes is India, the poem shares an anguish about the many discriminations facing Indian Muslims. While asking for their difficulties to cease, the poet also asks the mother to forgive “the misguided ones.”

In a wide-ranging conversation recorded with noted Kannada literary critic, Rahamat Tarikere, in 2001, Nissar Ahmed repeatedly disavows any interest in taking a conflictual stance in his writings. “If we are pained about something, we need to share it with others and try to make them see it,” he said. “I don’t wish to criticise others.” His poems which bemoan social orthodoxy among Muslims, like Amma, Achara mattu Naanu (“Mother, Orthodoxy and I”) also share this non-confrontational stance. They are content to point at a difficulty and put their faith in the possibilities for reconciliation.

Appearing among the columns he wrote for Tushara, the popular Kannada monthly magazine, during the early 90s, his essay on the Hadiths ended with the hope that it spurred readers to wish to become aware of the life and thought of Prophet Mohammed and the life-affirming philosophy of the Quran. His poems on Ugadi, the mischievous deeds of the child Krishna, and many others reveal his strong acquaintance with Hindu religion. And, his moving poem, Shilube Yeriddaane (“He has Ascended the Cross”, 1982), which sees Christ being crucified daily in courts, factories, prisons, hospitals and in the tiny dark homes of Dalits, shows a familiarity with Christian theology as well.

Nissar Ahmed’s writings reveal a reaching out to the communities around him. They oblige us to return the noble gesture.

(Note: All translations found above are mine)