Ghazal, an ancient form ofpoetry practiced in the Middle East since long before the

birth of Islam, mostly explores the theme of unrequited love. The Oxford Dictionary defines the ghazal 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 notonly ‘love’ but also the larger issues around loss and pain. Made of rhyming couplets with structural, thematic and emotional unity, modern ghazals can be used by skilled poets to express almost anything.In his second anthology, Gopi Krishna Dhungana has used ghazals to explore his own self and theselves we create amidst this flux called reality, and thus the title of the collection—Aafain Bhitra—which comprises 52 poems altogether. Dhungana’s poems are oftentimes paeans to the nation, nature or god, but primarily work as vehicles through which the poet achieves catharsis. Some of the poems

are also used to express angeragainst the political, social andcultural ills rampant in our society and the short-sightedness of our leaders, and they call out the

politicians’ penchant for mudslinging and backstabbing.

Some of Dhungana’s more patriotic ghazals seem chillingly 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 Aba warns about foreign interference if the nation cannot take care of matters itself:

Najogae jhuknasakchha

Sagarmatha shira

Mauka chhopi bidesile

parlan lutuputu

Buddhalai Bali is another political poem that asks Nepalis to shun violence and live up to the ideals of Lord Buddha.The poet also explores the usual ghazal fare—romantic love, usually among youngsters—and all the trials and tribulations that they have to

live through. Perhaps because the form does not allow for cynicismand weariness when it is used to explore the issue 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 issues 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 get 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 recent ghazal-writing circles. Out of 52 poems, 14 have four shers, 22 have five, eight have six and the remaining eight have seven shers. Almost all the ghazals have used full rhymes and a few have used partial rhymes, known as kafias (the words before the radeef). Undoubtedly, the use of radeef adds a certain harmony to the compositions, but the execution is not flawless. There’s 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 overreaching.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 he thus holds much promise.

Baral is a lecturer at theCentral Department of English, Tribhuvan University