Words worth for cause of peace

SURAT: ‘Panchi, nadiya, pawan ke jhonke... koi sarhad na inhe roke’, went a popular Bollywood song in the film ‘Refugee’, shot on the Kutch border with Pakistan. The diamond city of Surat has added poetry to the armoury against defined boundaries.
A group of poets in Surat have unleashed a war of words across the border for the cause of peace. About half a dozen poets have teamed up online with a set of ‘shayars’ in Pakistan to pen poems of love and peace.Here’s how it works. A Surat-based ‘shayar’ writes a ‘sher’ which is completed by his counterpart from across the border.
“It is an attempt to spread the message of love and peace,” said Raeesh Maniar, a well-known literary figure, a part of the group. Maniar says a number of ghazals, jointly penned by ‘shayars’ from both countries would come online soon. “Once we write a ‘sher’ and mail it to this group, they add another one to it and so on,” said Mukul Chokshi, a member of the group which has ‘shayars’ Kiran Chauhan and Gaurang Thakar in Surat. Pakistani poets Rafique Meghani, Wahid Sos, Bedar Lajpuri and Kamil Junagadhi have joined the initiative.
It all started at a time while havoc was being wreaked by Tsunami. A cultural event — ‘Sarhado Ki Jugalbandhi’ — was organised in Surat’s indoor stadium where well-known Pakistani singer Gulam Ali shared stage with Indian shayar Nida Fazli. Soon, ‘Tarqeeb’, an anthology of Urdu-Gujarati ghazals jointly written by Gujarati poet Adil Mansuri and Pakistan’s Jafar Iqbal, was released. The ghazals in this collection end with Gujarati couplets. The two events inspired a group of poets in Surat, who started building bridges with Pakistan.
“It is an Indo-Pak initiative that proves that distances can’t come in way of poetry. Borders don’t matter when it comes to literature,” says Lajpuri, a known poet of Karachi, who now lives in London.