‘The Story of Eve’: Zehra Nigah’s poetry makes the reader feel heard and understood

Poetry is what we turn to when all else has ceased making sense. Poems speak to us in ways that they miraculously end up listening to what we wish to express but cannot find the language to do so. Amidst a web of emotions to cope with, anxiety and helplessness triggered at the faintest hint of an imminent disaster, the incomprehensibility of daily events – in the neighbourhood or across the border – turning darker every passing day, the vulnerability stemming from the knowledge of the self’s limitations, the gradual indifference to the growing injustice, violence, and despair around us as normative realities, poetry reveals itself as a calming force. It might not promise solutions or an immediate and instant recovery from all pain and tragedy, but it surely joins us as an able companion in the shared space of silence, reflection, and introspection.

Zehra Nigah’s nazms and ghazals are those able companions that ferry us through the unforgiving days of confusion and conundrums to a haven of emotional security. Nigah’s verses lie awake by our side on sleepless nights as we toss and turn between compulsions from the past and duties of the present.

Poet of few poems

The Introduction to The Story of Eve: Selected…

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