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Agha Shahid Ali, a closer look
Updated On: 30 May, 2021 10:05 AM IST | Mumbai | Sucheta Chakraborty
A new biography of the poet traces his friendships with figures like Begum Akhtar and the journey he charted from Kashmir to the US, delving into the life, concerns and politics that shaped his verse
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Agha Shahid Ali and historian and translator Saleem Kidwai with Begum Akhtar in New Delhi. Pic courtesy/Saleem Kidwai, Penguin Random House India
Author Manan Kapoor whose debut novel, The Lamentations of a Sombre Sky, was published when he was only 21, remembers being drawn to literature and poetry early in life, his mother quoting poets like TS Eliot to him and her books covered with marginalia. He started writing in his teens and although realising that his interest and skills as a writer lay in prose, poetry, he says, has always had an important place in his life and thoughts.
Kapoor had been reading Agha Shahid Ali’s poetry for a long time, but it was while studying for a Master’s degree at Ambedkar University in Delhi that he started looking closely at the poet’s life and was surprised to find, despite the poet’s renown, how little there was on it beyond the academic writing on his works. It was a gap he sought to fill, attempting the poet’s first conclusive biography with A Map of Longings: Life and Works of Agha Shahid Ali (Penguin), to be released on June 7. “…I really felt that he had lived a life that deserved to be celebrated, that deserved to be written about. In a way, I ended up writing the book that I wanted to read,” says Kapoor in an email interview with mid-day.
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