Made With For Love
Poems 
Thahaani Hashir

While these excellent poems are by themselves the fulfilment of an earlier promise, this anthology is yet another promise. A greater promise. And that promise is Thahaani Hashir. As an ordinary individual it is beyond me to make prophecies but these poems prophesy that greatness. And she has the wherewithal of imagination, language and craft to fulfil that prophecy.’

– K Jayakumar

FOREWORD
K. Jayakumar

I had the privilege of watching Thahaani Hashir ripen into
an accomplished poet in a span of three to four years. Without
sounding condescending, I recall that when I wrote a
brief Foreword appreciating her poems a few years ago in
her liminal phase, I had a fair conviction that poetry for
Thahaani is serious business. As she navigates her teens,
poetry has blossomed in her with incredible effulgence. This
volume signals her mastery over the language and form of
poetry. While dealing with the theme of love it is all but
natural for poets to lapse into overdose of sentiments and
wax eloquent in self-pity and hyperboles. For young poets
writing on love it is not easy to escape these trappings. That
is precisely why these poems stand out with their masterly
control of emotions and brevity of expression even as
feelings find expression in their true intensity. It is not the
absence of emotions but their condensation and compactness
that lend these poems an unusual brilliance and poise,
often associated with seasoned poets.
It is self-evident that these poems are the poet’s response to
love in its multidimensionality. However, it may not be
correct to describe them as ‘love poems’ in the usual sense of
the term. Love’s pathways are rather intriguing. Even while it
entices, it inflicts pain. Even while it wraps life in beauty it
can leave scars as well. But love’s might can neither be ignored
nor resisted. That is why the poet says rather piquantly:
You look like my fate.
Inescapable,
Unforgiving. [Kismet]
She is acutely aware of the power of love. It will drown one in
the comfort of its silence. Her heart is all willing to give in
completely to love.
If it is my tears that is your joy
I’m willing to cry oceans [Oceans]
Why is love so captivating and irrefutable? For this poet love
is so valuable because love understands. The inner desire to be
understood without filters is the primordial urge that draws
one towards love. It is an ache. Her heart aches ‘for someone to
finally understand.’ It is the ‘longing desire to be read like a book.’
This desire to be understood without judgement is indeed
idealistic and destined to meet with disappointment. It is as
painful as ‘unweaving’ a fabric. Several poems in this anthology
carry the scars of this dejection.
The constant sheer emptiness
Running through me,
An immortal testimony
To the love you never gave me. [Promise]
Consequently ‘crimson sunsets and light showers/seem lonelier’.
The dejection and sense of hurt is so deep that she has to
admit that
Every wound on my skin
Bled your blood
Every scar on me
Spelled out your name [Thread]
Is that kind of communication and oneness really possible?
Is it only a romantic ideal? In a flash the poet too muses
‘Why’s all I want/All I can’t have?’ in the poem ‘Welkins’, this
correct to describe them as ‘love poems’ in the usual sense of
the term. Love’s pathways are rather intriguing. Even while it
entices, it inflicts pain. Even while it wraps life in beauty it
can leave scars as well. But love’s might can neither be ignored
nor resisted. That is why the poet says rather piquantly:
You look like my fate.
Inescapable,
Unforgiving. [Kismet]
She is acutely aware of the power of love. It will drown one in
the comfort of its silence. Her heart is all willing to give in
completely to love.
If it is my tears that is your joy
I’m willing to cry oceans [Oceans]
Why is love so captivating and irrefutable? For this poet love
is so valuable because love understands. The inner desire to be
understood without filters is the primordial urge that draws
one towards love. It is an ache. Her heart aches ‘for someone to
finally understand.’ It is the ‘longing desire to be read like a book.’
This desire to be understood without judgement is indeed
idealistic and destined to meet with disappointment. It is as
painful as ‘unweaving’ a fabric. Several poems in this anthology
carry the scars of this dejection.
The constant sheer emptiness
Running through me,
An immortal testimony
To the love you never gave me. [Promise]
Consequently ‘crimson sunsets and light showers/seem lonelier’.
The dejection and sense of hurt is so deep that she has to
admit that
Every wound on my skin
Bled your blood
Every scar on me
Spelled out your name [Thread]
Is that kind of communication and oneness really possible?
Is it only a romantic ideal? In a flash the poet too muses
‘Why’s all I want/All I can’t have?’ in the poem ‘Welkins’, this

sentiment finds subdued but cogent expression.
I belong to the city
(I belong to you)
The city belongs to me
(You belong to me) [Welkins]
The impact of an unfulfilled love is so devastating that these
lines make the reader really feel concerned.
If you just never looked me in the eye again
I don’t exist
If I don’t exist to you
Do I?
I remain as ashes of what I used to be. [Guilt?]
This ‘unbearable vulnerability’ will lead to what sociologists
call anomie or alienation from oneself. The poet tries to
convey that state of mind through the uniquely eloquent
phrase ‘unbelonging there/unbelonging here.’
As mentioned earlier, it would be rather naive if the reader
alludes that all the sunshine, rain and winter in these poems
are all about a conventional teenage love. Of course, it could
be read at that level, but these poems demand a deeper
reading. The ideal of love that the poet seeks is beyond a
persona. She gives a clue in one of the poems:
What are poets
If not the biggest liars?
For a truth half said
Still a lie.
You’re not
What I write you to be.
Never trust
The hand that holds the pen. [Poets (Liars)]
In the same vein she makes another statement amounting to
a caveat:
It is not you
Whom I write about
But my love for you.
For at the end of the day
It’s me.

Me,
it’s all me. [Amorist]
Such ideas need to be appreciated carefully while trying to
unlock these well-crafted poems.
These poems are the golden alphabets of a young poets
attempt to grapple life with all its enchantments and deceptions.
Thahaani Hashir has a remarkable control and great
mastery over the art and craft of poetry. Often, she reminds
of Emily Dickinson for whom poetry has to tell the truth but
tell it slant. The appeal of any good poem is not in what it
tries to say but how it is said. With remarkable sleight of
hand she can create extraordinary metaphors out of ordinary
words. It is a pleasure to read lines like:
You’re the pressed flower
In the pavement of my being. [Pressed Flowers]
Or when she asks:
How can someone call themselves ugly
When the garden of remorse
Blooms within them ever y day? [Gardens]
One is startled by an insightful observation like ‘there is no
greater penance than immortality’ from a poet who is still in
the second decade of her life.
While these excellent poems are by themselves the fulfilment
of an earlier promise, this anthology is yet another
promise. A greater promise. And that promise is Thahaani
Hashir. As an ordinary individual it is beyond me to make
prophecies but these poems prophesy that greatness. And
she has the wherewithal of imagination, language and craft
to fulfil that prophecy.