"So many Selves" [Review on Dhungana's Ghazal Anthology "AAFAIN BHITRA" (2072-06-23)

 'Ghazal,' an ancient form of poetry, practiced in the Middle East since long before the birth of Islam, mostly explores the theme of unrequited love. Oxford Dictionary defines it as "a lyric poem with a fixed number of verses and a repeated rhyme, typically on the theme of love and normally set to music." Today the form, having expanded its horizons, incorporates themes of not only 'love' but also the larger issues around pain and loss.  Made of rhyming couplets with  structural, thematic and emotional unity, modern ghazals can be used by skilled poets to express almost everything.

In his second anthology, Gopi Krishna Dhungana has used ghazals to explore his own self and the selves we create amid this flux called reality, and thus the title of the collection- Aafai Bhitra- which comprises fifty-two poems altogether.  Dhungana's poems oftentimes paeans to the nation, nature of god, but primarily work as vehicles through which the poet achieves catharsis. Some of the poems are also used to express anger against political, social, cultural ills rampant in our surroundings and they call out the politicians'penchant for mudslinging and back-stabbing.

Some of Dhungana's more patriotic ghazals seemchillingly prescient given the milieu we are living in, and they shine a light upon our society's constructs, which lead to divisions and the creation of hierarchies. He calls for national unity despite our differences, for example, one ghazal entitled Chandi (Silver) Jhulne asks the Tarai and the Himalayan regions to come together and Dukhnuparcha Aaba warns about foreign interference if the nation cant take care of matters itself:

            Najogae jhuknasakxa Sagarmatha shira

            Mauka chhopi bidesile parlan lutuputu.

Buddhalai Bali is another political poem that asks Nepalese to shun violence and live up to the ideals of  by Lord Buddha.

The poet also explores the usual ghazal fare- romantic love, usually among youngsters-- and all trials and tribulations that they have to live through. Perhaps the form does not allow the cynicism and weariness, when it is used to explore the theme of love, Dhungana's love poems mostly sing the praises of the beloved.

Although ghazals mostly try to make the mundane transcendent or sometimes elevate quotidian pain into tragic pathos, Dhungana does not desist from creating poetic material out of the lived stories that made up our daily grind: even isuues such as unemployment and inflation get the ghazal treatment. Dhungana seems to be attempting to widen, at least for himself, the scope that the form can be used to encompass --to transform the ghazal into a poetics of the people.

But despite his willingness to work with novel themes, Dhungana does not attempt to give too experimental with his prosody. Every title of the anthology begins with the first two words of the first line, a practice that is  acceptable in the recent ghazal writing circles. Out of fifty-two poems , fourteen ghazals have four shers (couplets), twenty-two have five, eight have six, and remaining eight have seven shers. Almost all the ghazals have used full rhyming and a few have used partial rhyming kafias (the words before the radeef). Undoubtedly, the use of radeef  adds a certain harmony to the compositions, but the executions are not flawless.There is also the matter of the poet's drawing from eclectic influences--a technique that great experimental poets can pull off with elan when the going is good--but the mixing of folk sensibilities with English words in Dhungana's creations sometimes comes across as instances of overcoming.

     To break the monotony, the poet could perhaps opt for more stylistic variations in his future collections. The poet does have a way with proverbs, idioms, and phrases, using them in supple configurations to produce a novel euphony, and thus holds much promise.