Speaking Silence

'Speaking Silence' reads almost like an autobiography of a man's journey through life as we wander through different planes and plateaux of the writer's emotions discovering the imprint Kashmir has had on the man. Having heard songs which lie drifting in his consciousness from the earliest of memories and those in the informative years of his schooldays receiving the bread of the great poets Mahjoor and Iqbal who fed the imagination and the soul the author quite naturally creates his form of expression making it uniquely his own. Within the pages of this book Nazir Shawl shares the memories of much within his life in fact we can dip into nine different segments which have shaped and influenced him from people of stature to beloved friends or wander down paths following nostalgic signposts both past and in the now. Throughout we are aware of the passionate love he has for his land and the tragic circumstances Kashmir and her people find themselves in and beneath the layers within this work we read much of what the title suggests. In some of the poems far more is left unsaid in that place of 'silence' where it finds us struggling to comprehend another's pain leaving us aware that the Kashmir issue is very real and politically a time-bomb with politicians passing the ball in time to a music which only the deaf can hear and as ever in any conflict it is the ordinary folk that suffer most. The poems dedicated to all Kashmiris living in the author's 'imprisoned paradise' cover a broad spectrum of the author's life and influences; and perhaps through these poems more people will come to know of Kashmir a tragically divided country striving to be heard above the indifference of the world.