aja Sadiqullah is the first poet of contemporary Punjabi literature to have an entire volume of his work translated into English. He has published only two books over the past three decades, yet that has been enough to secure his place among the indispensable voices of modern Punjabi poetry.

His poetry carries a Wordsworthian touch with a tinge of modernity.

There are very few books that translate modern Punjabi poetry into English. I cannot recall many titles, but I do remember Flames Prefer to Be Naked, a translation of the poetry of Nasreen Anjum Bhatti and Sara Shagufta by Anand Alam (2021), and Come, Awaken the Night by Najam Hosain Syed, translated by Naveed Alam and Dr Asma Qadri (2024). That, more or less, exhausts the list. Irfan Malik translated a handful of poems in collaboration with some American poets, which were published in Salamander.

Recently, at a literary festival in Lahore, the novelist Mohammad Hanif, speaking about his novel Rebel English Academy, observed that English is not divisive, since there is hardly anyone in Pakistan who does not want their children to learn the language. It was surprising to learn that Rebel English Academy sold almost all its copies within a week or two. One may not appreciate this reality, yet English-language publishers appear to be the only ones sustaining strong business, if not truly thriving. In Pakistan, there appears to be a noticeable increase in the publication of English-language novels compared with works published in other languages.

There is no doubt that more works of modern literature written in Pakistan’s regional languages should be translated to secure their place on the global literary map. We have all read great Twentieth-Century poets such as Pablo Neruda, Nazim Hikmet and Rabindranath Tagore in translation. Why, then, should readers be denied the opportunity to read modern Pakistani poetry in English?

It would be appropriate to say a few words about translation and translators before turning to the book itself. Poetry is sometimes considered impossible to translate. Two opposing views are frequently cited: “Poetry is what is lost in translation,” wrote Robert Frost, while Joseph Brodsky maintained that “poetry is what is gained in translation.” Pablo Neruda once advised, “Don’t just translate my poems; I want you to improve them.” Alexander Pushkin referred to translators as the “couriers of civilisation.” Susan Sontag described translation as “a passport into the community of literature.”

Raja Sadiqullah’s The Fragrance of Seven Colours is a translation of his Punjabi collection Pehla Puur (1998), rendered into English by Dr Munnawar A Anees, an academic consultant. While reading the English version, I often forgot that I was reading a translated work.

Let us now turn to the poems themselves. The third poem in the collection is titled Siachen.

“We are the prisoners of icy abodes.
Whenever we peep out, nothing is visible across vast distances in this frozen isolation.
There is, after a delay, hardly any news of value that reaches here.
Here, the news from far off is all the same.”

Apart from the excellence of the translation, 10 Punjabi lines have been rendered into five English lines, which shows that the translation is not literal. The structure has been altered, but the essence has not been lost.

Here are two more lines:

“Harvest season has commenced

And the crops will be threshed.”

Ketein and Kaatik are nouns and the names of local months associated with particular seasons; therefore, they cannot be translated literally. However, taking a considerable risk, the translator has referred to them as “Harvest Season.” Although this is not an exact translation, it comes very close to conveying the intended meaning. For a reader unfamiliar with the cultural significance of Ketein, the phrase Harvest Season effectively communicates the seasonal context.

There is another line like this ...

“I don’t recall whether it was early spring or summer.”

Here, too, the names of three months have been translated very effectively.

Let us read a poem without referring to the Punjabi original and simply enjoy the translation.

Reading A Different Evening, I was instantly reminded of Full Moon and Little Friends by Ted Hughes. The crisp, sharp and piercing lines of Sylvia Plath also came to mind.

Munnawar A Anees’s translation is excellent and deserves a far wider readership than it is likely to receive. One cannot help feeling that the book might ideally have been published in the US or the UK, where it could have reached a broader audience. Readers unfamiliar with Punjabi will nevertheless find much to appreciate, for Raja Sadiqullah’s poetry is deeply rooted in the landscape and spirit of the Punjab. Even in translation, the poems retain the power to evoke the beauty of the region and the texture of life within it.

The Fragrance

of Seven Colours

Author: Raja Sadiqullah

Translator: Dr Munnawar A Anees (from poems in Pehla Puur)

Publisher: PILAC 

The reviewer is a Lahore-based Punjabi poet, academic and short story writer. He was a Dhahan Prize finalist in 2014 and 2020.