K Kishwar Naheed wrote these lines on her 38th birthday. Birthdays and New Year nights are special moments. They are occasions for celebration, self-evaluation and making resolutions.
Kishwar Naheed, now 84 and suffering from age-related bodily deterioration, continues to speak out against the will of a patriarchal and authoritarian society. Her resilience and commitment to the power of words remain as strong as they were in her youth. She appears to have believed in Friedrich Nietzsche’s words: “All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with; then I can turn the world upside down.
” Her poetry and prose have significantly contributed to changing the landscape of Urdu poetry and challenging societal perceptions of women. The power of the word is incomparable. She proudly declares in one of her poems, “I write poetry; I did not take my life.
” She seems to imply that it was poetry – the power of words – that protected her. She speaks out not just to gain recognition but also to achieve emancipation. In another poem, she vows, “I swear, if my eyes morph into a blister, I’ll shed tears and cry.
” Shedding tears and crying are forms of resistance. She has been determined to document the suffering experienced personally, by women around the world and by humanity at large. Modernists and progressives have had contrasting views on the power of words.
The modernists believed that when writers express hidden, repressed or tortured emotions. They gain relie.