Inklings From The Dark

Introduction

Inklings From The Dark is the English translation of one of Rahi’s most powerful Kashmiri poems, Pai Chu Zulmate Wuzan. The poem is translated in English by G.R Malik. The poem expresses a gradual shift from despair and sadness to hope and a promise of happiness. At the beginning of the poem, we find the poet disturbed by the thoughts of violence and the alienation on the weak by the hands of the powerful, but later we find solace in the innocent peaceful sleeping of his son. The poem shows that there are lessons to be learnt even in the darkest of thenights just like the oyster that undergoes troubles and faces pain to finally yield a pearl. Thus though the poem starts on a depressing note as there are violence and alienation and it concludes on a positive note and hope for the better future that is signified by the son who is the symbol of future.

Summary and Explanations

An eagle ( Symbol of tyranny and evil) is seen by the poet in his dream carrying a dove ( symbolizing innocence and virtue) in its tyrannous claws and its cruel beak busy in pulling out and shedding innocent victim’s feathers over hilltops together with blood dripping from its hapless body. He overturns his head on the pillow but is horrified still more by sighting a deep dark chasm. The horror of the dream drives off the poet’s sleep and he sits up in his bedpost resting his back against the wall with the chill of the winter settling in the marrow of his bones. It forces him to pull up the quilt to combat the cold but the Kangri gets overturned and its cold ashes cover his feet intensifying his discomfiture still further. His horror is intensified when he looks up and finds a cat sitting upon the peg on which he had hung his Pheran before going to sleep. To add to the gloom and despair, he feels incomprehensible and unintelligible whisperings going on outside the windowpanes and an owl hooting “ O woe to you”. It sends a shiver of terror and fear through his spine and carries his discomfiture to unbearable limits.

Suddenly he remembers his son having gone to sleep while listening to his bedtime tale about the travails of an oyster trying to bring forth a pearl. The poet jumped off his bedpost, switched on the lights and heaved a sigh of relief on finding him in deep slumber resembling a mushroom on a mount with pleasing, innocent smile brightening up his face and drops of sweat shining like pearls on his forehead. He surmises that the child must be dreaming of oyster bringing forth the pearl. Thus the poem ends on a happy note with a promise of a bright and beautiful future full of hope.

Literary Devices

Metaphor

1. ‘the thread of my fancies slit
2. ‘the cool of the winter in the marrow of my heart’
3. ‘fragrant blossoms blooming on my lips’
4. ‘a drop of sweat dawned afresh, playing on his brow’

Simile

1. ‘like a moonstruck man’
2. ‘found him lying by the wall like a mushroom the mount’

Personification

‘the cold hapless ashes kissed my feet’