Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai:  “A versatile poet”
By Saleem Bhutto Lateefi

As I hold Shah-jo-Risalo in any hands I see the great poet Shah Abdul Latif smiling at me rather wryly, as if saying, “I have yet again expectorated blood in my verses.” Our great poet’s poetry embodies such ever-recurring human problems that shakes the very essence of existence, and gives away the helplessness of a sensitive being. Shah does not portray an asthmatic characters with no one around them to help them in hale life but these characters are deeply routed in soil with all the colors of culture overhatowed by social system. As a result, the poet is sweet, at times even he is subjective. He is optimistic, at times, and some time ironical to the extent of acerbating his hearts and head. But his words, whatever, readers reaps benefits. Poet’s virtrilic attitude and subjectivity make him create verses that titillate the mind and wrench the heart, with technical prowers that can only be labeled “matchless”. It is not just the context, as it were, that makes poetry an incredible collection to go through. It is also the stupendness verse-writing style. Who can use the words employed almost in the form of alliteration uncessing in every line and as the rhyming utterance in the end, and with fitness of meaning that almost appears divine and not pre-worked. This resonance of alliteration could best be felt and enjoyed in original text in Sindhi language but for example few vers4es are quoted as under:

1. Sahar, Suhni, and sea, are the same and one.” 

2. The knot, that Knot, Saher tied soul within me,
Until Sahar is brought that knot can not be unknotted,
Lord! Unit me with Sahar, that unknotted is that knot.

3. Those with love in their soul, are thirsty beyond relief.
Drink a cup of thirst to quench your thirsts,
Beloved drink me, I may quench thirst with thirst. 

Shah Latif is master of potentially tedious powers of poetic technicalities. For it is not just metrical composition but the words that he uses, he had immense command over. The poet sees life eyeball to eyeball, when he does that he finds himself painfully lonely and that is where his creative self tries to turn loneliness into a meaningful solitude, churning out the verses, lines and phrases that simply blow the readers away.

1. Cry arose in the wildness like that of crane’s,
What appeared to be the song of crane, in truth was loves wail.

2. Cry arose in the great waste like a fiddle’s not,
What men considered woman’s wailing was the voice of Love’s scope.

Frankness, is something that Shah Latif never flinches back from. So when he contemplates life in its entirely, he finds no hesitation in claiming that to exist is to constantly change between the ’toilsome’ and the relatively easy. This kind of conditioning leads to the thinking where even romance becomes on ambiguous struggle. Shah Abdul Latif often appears to be longing for difficulties, loathing easy pickings.

May I always be in search of Beloved, never find, never meet,
Lest longing within my heart is eased.  

No doubt Shah Latif loves being in difficulties but he perhaps, the only poet who has dealt with mirth and miseries, sorrows and joys with utter disclaim, and in equal measures. It is like a existentialist, who does not find any inherent meaning of this word. When there is meaningless around, what do you do? You consider the entire enigma of existence as one mundane, bevel reality and what our poet does. He is unlike a normal human being ho could get in a queue to have his turn of demise. He simply detests such perfunctory exercise and challenges death, takes death as a source of union with beloved and transitional phara.

1. Those who desire to live, find the life as mountain high,
Oh death! Be my guide that I may your steps try.

2. Life you have may attachments, get away,
Death come to me, that I may follow your way. 

Discussing meaninglessness and an escape from life and an escape from life does not simply, by any manner of means that our poet was a man devoid of spirituality or delicate emotions. In his poetry, when he writes verses on or about women, romance seems to reach special heights. He makes even the mot robotic of people think about treading the amorous path. One our poet things an epithet at his beloved. She may be, assumes a mythical appeal. Because our great poet contemplates chiefly on the divine attributes of love, his mysticism has also been called love mysticism, as most of chapters reveal. History of love is embodied in musical thoughts of the highest and profoundest aspiration of spiritually evolved being, fused with the deepest emotions that touch the very core our hearts, here its power, it beauty and its appeal.

1. hundreds of seems may rise, Eighty Four full moons of the year may shine,
By God, without my love, in darkest night all I find. 

2. Oh full moon! with thousand adornments you rise,
With all your arts never can you beloved’s beauty reach;
Your whole life’s beauty in his moments appearance lies. 

3. No remedy can restore my peace lost at his glorious sight,
Yesterday I had a glimpse of it, it was all light. 

4. Those who saw the Beloved, made this their garland,
How can others know what is his alchemy’s worth? 

5. Such magic resides in fisher maids eyes,
To her, his soul at once fires,
See love’s miracle, the king carries on his shoulders the fishing net. 

6. Loved one comes in the garb of clouds, that bring rain,
A lightening midst those who their whole life long for them. 

7. ’Yes’ or ’No’ are still within human reach,
Loved one’s beauty is beyond what man can conceive. 
Loved one is like multi-colored silken embroidery,
Can I forget the one who makes my mind ecstatic.

There are few annotators of Shah Latif’s poetry pertaining to the beauty of the beloved as reference to the excellence of Beloved, which far exceeds the light of the sun, moon and the stars and everything under the sky.

For, Shah Latif love leads to complete annihilation of the self. Here is another interesting side to the poet, after discovering that life means nothing to him and that the people are mortal, our poet goes into the deeper phase of intellect and leads his heroines to such climax of love that all his heroines seer her beloved’s reflection in his herself and that love of her remains with her till she breathes her last, often after death she possessed of her love. Their love is beyond the units of space and time and become immortal emotion ever haunting her soul.

1. Where do I direct the camel? All is light of love,
Within me is Kak’s colorful palace, within me is ludans bright,
All is Rano and Rano, nothing else exists.

2. Casting a glance within, I conversed with my soul,
I found no mountain in the world for yearning for Beloved,
All suffering was for Sasui, gene was it when Beloved I became.

3.  Sasui’s screen was gone, she herself Beloved because.

4. Sasui became Beloved, her beauty disappeared,
The love crazed one in ecstasy task Beloved in her arms. 

5. I was in confusion lost, for Beloved I myself was,
Remaining close to Beloved, myself “I” forgot,
Without this sight, knowledge is of little gain. 

6. When the angel of death awakened the maid,
Sasui surmised a messenger Beloved has sent. 

7. When Sasui saw the angels of enquiry,
At once from them she made this enquiry,
“Did you all see my love’s party passing by?” 

it is true that Shah Latif’s poetry is brimming with many a top-notch verses all of them mind blowing too. There are many verses that are perhaps more give-away of his personal life which tend to empress his opinions wrapped in the stylish garb of poetic artistry. To list the may pieces that are already referred give a fair idea of poet’s and language. All are constructed in a way as if the poet was born to employ such poetic empressions in Sindhi language. He writes such surprising lives that simply get etched in the reader literary memory. Shah Abdul Latif’s poetry with all the verse wielding magic that is associated with our poet only, has the ability to make the reader thumb through it over and again. I sincerely wish that Shah Latif’s poetry and its every verse causes such a splash effects and make the bareness of modern poetry appears green with freshness. After all our poet’s poetry, is the different colors of life that he always splatters his poetic canvas with.

1. Arabian horses in the yard, twisted horned,
buffaloes and huts outside, a pleasant sight,
Rain outside, coach perfumed, loved one beside,
May all the days pass like this. 

Whatever, people say, but something is clear in poet’s poetry that he allows his inner self to vent his opinions and draws attention to some of the perpetually injustices that people around the world face, from rulers hegemony, to inequalities in global sense, to growing human rights violations and environmental degradation of man.

1. From waters, land and trees, one voices is heard;
All of them ask in the same way to be punished,
All are ’Mansoors’, how many on gallows will you long? 

(Continued)