Partition of India poem wins poetry prize. Partition of India was one of the worst things to happen in thr history. Very little is mentioned, unlike the Jewish holocaust where there are museums, movies etc.
Faisal Mohyuddin never knew his grandfather.
But the man who was murdered or died in a car accident–Mohyuddin doesn’t know which–inspired him to write a poem called “Eid-ul-Fitr, 1946,” a wrenching, fictional ode to a little boy lost amid the prayers and politics of Pakistan.
The poem, which won this year’s Ray Bradbury Poetry Writing Contest, was chosen from among 118 entries from adults worldwide and submitted to the Waukegan Public Library, where a two-judge panel critiqued the works.
Mohyuddin, of Rolling Meadows, began the poem during the feast of Eid-ul-Fitr, which Muslims celebrate at the end of Ramadan. It caught the judges’ attention for its personal narrative and striking prose.
Mohyuddin, 27, an English teacher at Highland Park High School, wrote his poem after watching a little boy frantic to get his father’s attention during prayers that conclude the holy month of Ramadan, he said.
The scene of a little boy crying and tugging at his father’s white gown reminded Mohyuddin of his own father, and he wondered as he watched the boy wail whether his father had ever felt distanced from his grandfather before the grandfather’s death.
It’s a subject Mohyuddin has never had the nerve to broach with his father.
“I was always afraid to ask,” Mohyuddin said. “I’m afraid to bring back memories.”
The poem fuses the scene of the little boy with the politics of Pakistan in 1946, a year before the country was separated from India. In the process, millions of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs were uprooted from their homes to create the country of Pakistan.
“[The poem] is about impending loss, a lot of violence, pain and suffering,” Mohyuddin said.