Introductions & a first poem

 I have always been interested in the nature of South Asian literature, especially poetry and the impact that it has on society even today! I have always been impressed by how poetry has almost been a factor that unites populations within our divided nations, and I want to delve into why that is the case, whilst exploring poems that may be in different languages to mine, yet are similar in the respect that they are all from the same region. 

I am Pakistani, so my primary focus will be on poetry that is in Urdu or Hindi, because those are languages that I understand. I can even read and write in Urdu. 

My favourite line of poetry is in Urdu: شمع ہر رنگ میں جلتی ہے

To give you a better sense of how I write, let me give you an extract of a poem I recently wrote. It is about Karachi, the city by the sea. It is unnamed as of now. 

What is the city by the sea? 

The city is nothing to some, 

Yet everything to me. 

Some may call it fiction, 

Yet to me it is supremely real. 

The city by the sea is something animate, 

Living. Breathing. 

Whilst one may call it a city of disrepair, 

A city broken

beyond repair; 

These are people too foolish to care. 

The city is one of movement and noise;

In the summer or spring,

Winter or fall, 

I can hear the city move around me.

I can see cats brawl on the pothole lined streets, 

And I can hear rickshaw drivers have the gall,

to honk their horns even when the birds didn't call. 

I can see those who walk, with purpose or aimlessly, 

along the littered sidewalks of the city. 

I can feel the salty breeze from the sea nearby, 

I have come to associate this with the plaintive cries, 

Of the crows that fly, 

Above this city by the sea. 

Even the graveyards have no stillness; 

Shady cypress trees sway to the gentle tango of the sea air,

And sometimes it makes those difficult days, 

easier to bear. 

I almost have no choice but to stare, 

At those leaves moving without a care.

I often wonder how they fare,

No salvation from the breeze that conquers.