# Songs of Light

- Link: https://writersworkshopindia.com/2017/05/17/songs-of-light/
- Published: 2017-05-17T02:28:54+00:00
- Author: shuktara

5/5 - (3 votes)

**Author:** Ayaz Rasool Nazki[](https://writersworkshopindia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/WP_20170515_17_15_43_Pro-1-1.jpg)
**
Pages:** 104 **Year of Publication:** 2017 **Price:** Rs 200 **ISBN: **978-93-5045-
150-2 (9789350451502)

_**About the Author**_
 Professor Ayaz Rasool Nazki is the Regional Director at 
Indian Council for Cultural Relations, Ministry of External Affairs, Government 
of India, in Srinagar, Kashmir. He comes from a family of scholars and poets, was
trained as a biological scientist, and taught science. He has written both poetry
and prose in Kashmiri and Urdu, and has published a number of volumes of poetry 
in these languages. His other works include a novel, which is in the final stages
of production and a translation of a selection of his father, the legendary poet-
scholar Mir Ghulam Rasool Nazki’s classic Kashmiri _rubayiaat_ or quatrains into
English, titled _Echo_. _**Songs of Light**_ is his first collection of English 
poems.

Both in his poetry and prose, Professor Nazki essentially represents Kashmir: its
ethos, its pain, its past, present and future. The poems in this volume also provide
a glimpse into the mind of an artist totally wedded to his land and the consciousness
that it represents.

_**Teaser**_

_Random Thoughts_

Let us meet somewhere,
 it has been ages since we sat on the steps of the ghat and
watched boats ferry across loads of men, women and children all on their way to 
somewhere.

If we make it today
 to the same ghat let us enquire from the waves and ripples 
on the water about all those men, women and children who had crossed the span; what
happened then? who met whom and who came home?

It has been ages,
 generations have come and generations have gone a thousand suns
have risen and sunk into the water in front of me.

A lonely, dull moon hangs there
 outside my window, the chill in the air cuts a 
sinew, I am frozen to the core, my friend has sent me a note on Facebook in an alien
tongue which I can’t read.

People are the same
 making families raising children building homes opening accounts
in the nearest banks.

My papers lie on the table
 the tax return, the unpaid bills the medical insurance
and my will yet unwritten.

Reviews of the book can be read in [The Hindu  ](http://www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/songs-of-experience/article18435814.ece/amp/)
and [Muse India](http://museindia.com/Home/ViewContentData?arttype=book%20review(s)&issid=78&menuid=7762).

_**Contents**_
 68 poems