Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Art Works and Art Criticism of Wasim Mushtaq Wani Most of us are unfortunately blind to the world of art, and it means virtually blind to an aspect of experience. It means we don’t live or enjoy life, or understand expressions of divine life fully. Our education is faulty. We don’t teach or cultivate the faculty for art in ourselves. Granted almost universal alienation implying our inability to devote ourselves to what we have been compelled to do and thus failure to make things beautifully (that is the real definition of art) we could at least try to understand what beauty of art world lies before us or survives in certain forms today in the work of contemporary artists.  Seeing the works of great art is such an important part of education and if we fail to provide to our children it means our fees spent on education is not well spent. We produce colour blind, form blind children. Ask any student around to name 5 great artists and their works and you will be greeted, generally s...

Agha Shahid Ali is one of the greatest and most famous names internationally in recent history of Kashmir.. Veiled Suite: The Collected Poems presents his poetry in one volume. Most Kashmiris, even those who have been students of English literature, find it very difficult to understand. Except a few poems and occasionally a few verses here and there Agha Shahid sounds Greek to people here. The difficulty of comprehending him extends to his sensibility. He belongs to a different epistemic and cognitive universe but he does share our pain and has been our ambassador in a way. It is through him that the pain of Kashmiris became better known to the world.  However it is sad to note that he is not so well known here. Very few Kashmiris have read him and fewer have understood him. Even his illustrious father acknowledges that he doesn’t understand his poetry. He was indeed a difficult poet, not unlike most modernist poets. There are reasons for this. I wish to talk today regarding the...