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Introduction

Postcard from Kashmir is a poem by famous Indian-American writer Agha Shahid Ali, a part of

his collection of poems called The Half Inch Himalayas published in 1987. Ali was a writer of

Indian origin from Kashmir living in the United States since 1975 till his death in 2001. Though

a Kashmiri Muslim, Ali is best known in America and identified himself as an American poet

writing in English. The poem may be termed as a diasporic one because Ali wrote this and many

other poems away from his motherland India and his native home Kashmir from America. This

poem has elements of loss of homeland and one’s national identity and also how being away for

so long has almost faded away one’s memories regarding home.

In the poem, the poet feels denationalized and finds himself without an identity. He goes

through an attempt to link an old home that is no longer home to a new home that never feels

quite like home no matter how much he has tried to assimilate into its culture. The poet, an

exiled Kashmiri, experiences three torments; the regret of ever having left his home, the pain of

feeling like an outsider in America that has yet to come to grips with a diversified society, and

the struggle of coming to terms with the changes that would have inevitably occurred in his

absence in Kashmir.

This inward battle is shown as he looks at a postcard photograph of Kashmir. The

narrator is harshly awakened to the reality of his displacement from home as he sees that all that

is left of his Kashmiri heritage is a four by six inch photograph, which is now only a faraway

depiction of what used to be. At the time of his death in 2001, Ali was noted as a poet uniquely

able to blend multiple ethnic influences and ideas in both traditional forms and elegant free-

verse. His poetry reflects his Indian, Kashmiri, and American heritages. In Contemporary Poets,

critic Bruce King noted that Ali’s poetry revolves around insecurity and “obsessions… memory,
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death, history, family ancestors, nostalgia for a past he never knew, dreams, Hindu ceremonies,

friendships, and self-consciousness about being a poet.”

Crisis of national identity in the poem

The territory of Kashmir, claimed by both India and Pakistan and even by China to a small

extent, has always been a hotspot and flashpoint for conflict and cultural differences. The

territories controlled by India, Pakistan and China and the ensuing national boundaries have split

the Kashmiri population as to where their national loyalty lies. This might have been the reason

as to why Agha Shahid Ali identified himself more as an American than an Indian or a Kashmiri

because he had become distanced from all the conflict and bloodshed related to his homeland.

This loss of one’s homeland in the poem can be seen from different point of views. In

literary nomenclature, essence of loss is indeed a complex phenomenon and its thematic

interpretations are embedded with psychological, emotional, artistic, social and realistic

undertones. The sense of loss originates from a situation of doubt or when “a man is capable of

being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”, as

said by John Keats. Long back, Goethe in his essay, Escape from Ideas, interpreted the state of

doubt with reference to both human beings and work of art.

Agha Shahid Ali can be compared with other “regional” writers like Seamus Heaney

from Ireland, Derek Walcott from the Caribbean and Mahmoud Dervish from Palestine, whose

art is filled with the politics of their native countries. What these writers share is a foundation in

place and native landscape. Ali writes his poetry which pleads of the great loss of his

motherland, friends and foreign land, his beloved Kashmir. Though a poet of great sensibilities

he portrays gloom and loss. It underlines the reality that poet normally thrive on the themes of
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separation, absence, exile and loss. In the case of Ali it was both in his spirit and blood. To him

the loss and longing appear as a metaphor for his beloved which he willingly embraces and keeps

as his constant companion. In this figuring of his homeland, he himself became one of the

images that were spinning around the dark point of stillness — both shahid and shaheed, witness

and martyr — his destiny inextricably linked with Kashmir’s, each prefigured by the other.

In the Half- Inch-Himalayas collection of poems, Ali’s sense of loss and longing takes

another dimension of his nostalgic feelings. Here he focuses on a specific situation, when he

wrote about the loss and this loss had a name - India, Kashmir and his own clan Agha family in

Kashmir. Ali’s first love was Kashmir, be in New Delhi, Pennsylvania or Amherst, his pen never

failed writing about the loss of people and meadows of the beautiful valley, Kashmir.

His vision of Kashmir has been reduced to the size of a postcard and compressed into a

mailbox. Note the use of the word “mailbox” instead of “postbox” as is common in India, this

shows his integration into American jargon. His “home” he says is reduced to inches and he

always loved neatness, maybe that’s why he never quite returned to his homeland because of the

mess created by the multiple conflicts for its annexation and displacement of people due to war,

ethnic conflict and natural disasters. Obviously he is very geographically distant from Kashmir, a

fact that makes his use of the word “home” ironic. He may have been born in Kashmir and may

have lived there for much of his life, but now he is apparently living somewhere else.

This is the closest he will ever be to home now, holding the half inch Himalayas in his

hand. One of the most impressive aspects of his homeland has thus been shrunken and made to

seem far less impressive and significant. Admiring the beauty of the mountains and landscape of

his native valley and regretting that this beauty of the river Jhelum won’t last till then, it would

be polluted over years of conflict. His memory of his home will be out of focus he says, a giant
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negative; this might be interpreted as negative opinion or image of Kashmir in the eyes of the

West. Their opinion like his memory will be undeveloped and seen in black and white. This may

imply that Kashmir is still in the process of development as a place, that it is at present still too

polarized to live up either to the poet’s idealized memory of it or to the postcard’s and the world

in general’s idealized presentation of its beauty. The Americans would fail to see the grey area in

between and just observe India and Pakistan’s positions respectively. Kashmir under Pakistani

control - Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir, as called by India or Azad Kashmir as called by Pakistan –

and Kashmir under Indian control has really divided the native population regarding their

national identity.

Conclusion

Kashmir is the biggest flashpoint between the India and Pakistan, one that almost brought the

two countries on the brink on nuclear war. Due to the dispute many native people of the region

migrated from there, Kashmir is called heaven of the earth still there many that are away from

their homeland. Through this poem the poet tries to focus on the sentiment of the people of the

Kashmir. Nostalgia for the motherland is the central theme of the poem. Poet is seeking the quest

for national identity.

Thus Ali’s poetry casts its craft and concern upon histories of loss, longing, injustice and

brutality particularly those endured by Kashmir weaving simultaneously the threads of

individual’s experience and that of people close to him. Ali challenged himself to form a

consummate original art and consciousness in order to struggle against the factors which

inevitably work to create a sense of loss in his personal, social, emotional and intellectual

involvements especially in the state of Kashmir that for him remains an alter ego, and a rich
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source of inspiration for creative purpose. Ali’s poetry is autobiographical with allusions to exile

and Ali’s identity as a Kashmiri. His work melds the landscapes of Kashmir and America, along

with the conflicted emotions of exile, immigration and in his later works, loss, illness and

mortality.
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Works Cited

1. Dr. Hena Ahmad. "Exile: An Analysis of Agha Shahid Ali's "Postcard from Kashmir"".

Student Research Conference. 2011. Web. Oct 29, 2014.

2. Ali, A. S. “Postcard from Kashmir”. The Half-Inch Himalayas. Pennsylvania, U.S:

Wesleyan University Press, 1987. Print.