Book review: Themes and treatment in the poetry of B N Betab’s
Latest collection of poems ‘AEL NAASH’
Ashraf Raavi
B N BETAB; a household name and familiar voice for Kashmiri speaking people as a broadcaster and news reader in PrasarBharti has delved so deep into the annals of conscious to search for the ages old values that have sustained the existence of our culture. Remaining wherever for the job, he has been living a real Kashmiri life and not mere a cosmetic one just to put forward his literary works. That is why he has been deep rooted in his culture throughout his literary works. In his poetry we find here and there the scenic description of local landscape, metaphors of spring and river.
The poems are worked by the creative and aesthetic use of the traditional language. His literary works are replete with the idioms which he has rejuvenated by using them in the creative and multi -faceted figurative style. B N Betab’s latest publication “AelNaash” the ruin of the nest, a poetry collection consists of poems written in free verse manipulating the meter as per the requirements of theme. The treatment of the theme follows a certain rhythm. Some poems are prose poems which don’t follow a certain rhythm throughout. The beauty of some poems is that they are written in free verse but here and there the rhyming words within the lines create a melodious symphony.
The themes of the poems are universal in nature as he is the poet of human pain. The pain of displacement from the valley has been delineated figuratively. This type of treatment of the themes makes the appeal universal keeping intact the local manifestations. The thought in the poems like Preznath, PraniKath ,Hisabsifruk, Graav is developed and expressed so figuratively that it has attained the universality, sublimity and eternity. Otherwise the treatment of such hard realities might have been merely journalistic in nature if not handled adeptly and aesthetically.
B N Betab has woven the thought in the poems by the warp and wood of myths, legends and history of this patch of land. His love for the mother land and a sense of belongingness is conditioning him to versify the myths, legends and history of Kashmir to give context to the displacement and the ruin of the settlements. The same is figuratively connoted by the name of the book as AEL NAASH. He longs for the return of the days and is nostalgic for the days lived here before displacement.
Besides the expression of pain Of displacement, There are the pantheistic tendencies in harmony with the Sanatan Dharma and Kashmiri Shivism. The poems like Preznuth, Mang, Om pun,Graav, Aahoti are mesmerizing. The poet seems to be the ardent follower of the belief system where in he finds the Shiv everywhere and self nowhere Or self in Shiv permeating everything and nothing else in essence. There seems to be the mixture of a number of thoughts in his poetry and these are the thoughts pertaining to metaphysical and spiritual domains of our composite culture. The book gives a panoramic view of the Kashmir in its totality and dramatically unravels the turn of eras. The themes chosen, the treatment and the aesthetic quality of the poems make the book a good read. It will surely add to the beauty of the Kashmiri literature in general and the literature on displacement in particular.
The writer is a Poet, critic and translator
