Coalescence of Form and Content in Ali’s English Ghazal: The Trauma of Kashmir in The Country without a Post Office

Abstract

This paper investigates the enunciation of meaning in the coalescence of form and content in the ghazals of Agha Shahid Ali. In the last decade of the twentieth-century escalation of political and civil clashes handicapped the social system in Kashmir; all the government institutions remained closed for months. Post offices were one of those institutions which remained shut and the letters piled on without finding reaching their addressees. In this backdrop Ali wrote the collection, The Country Without a Post Office, where Ali mourns the state oppression. This research explores through literary stylistics the chaos and trauma inextricably interwoven in the form-content synchronization in the English ghazals of this collection. The form and content of these ghazals have aptly enunciated the trauma of Kashmir. Although ghazals to-date have been sung to mourn the unrequited love and separation of lover yet Ali has given this a novel thematic dimension by incorporating the blood and shreds, cannons and sticks, and nostalgia and dreams.