Vignettes from Majrooh Rashid’s Snow Flames

Fine — let’s push aside the lace gloves and speak directly: Snow By Flames by Majrooh Rashid? It’s not something that just sits pretty on your bookshelf — it’s the kind of thing that kind of haunts you (in a good way). The poet has that ability to strike a match in the coldest, lonely corners of your mind with poems that seem to both burn and freeze. Yeah, I get it, snow that burns? Rashid isn’t mindlessly scrawling humorous nonsense, either. Each poem in here feels like a small spell, half confession, half cosmic sermon. It’s not storytelling, not really. More he pries open the universe for a second and challenges you to see inside. You either find yourself caught up in the weird beauty of it, or you just ricochet off. No middle ground.

Some lines land with such force they nearly stop you in your tracks. Like,

 When I close my eyes...

I climb the flights of stony stairs in one go

and cherish the fete of the rainbows

on the ashen hillock under the generous sky

 That’s not just someone looking at nature; that’s someone looking through it, as though you might be able to wring out every last secret. Majrooh does not like the ordinary. He’s digging in the stuff your fingers won’t even reach — longing, regret, those old ghosts that you can’t shake. And the metaphors? They’re wild, but always more than wildness for its own sake. Take that bit:

The snow clad pine in the corner

looked like an unconcerned ascetic and meditated all night

despite the uncanny chill.

 Nature itself seems to be in on the search for meaning, pulling up a blanket and taking a seat for some cosmic meditation. I mean, who hears the word pine tree and immediately thinks of monks and existential despair? And he’s not afraid to take it personal, either. The hurt in these poems isn’t all sad violins and damp pixie flowers. It is more like — pain as accomplice.

Life how can I thank you? You obliged me all through, by enriching my spirit,

with a phenomenal pain, that never let me down,

stood always by my side

when all others turned their back on me.

That’s some real stuff right there. His scars hang on him like jewelry. You have the feeling that Majrooh Rashid has read all of the greats — Yeats even gets a shoot-out — but what he isn’t here to do is to parrot anyone. He’ll take those voices of old, doff his hat and trail-blaze like it’s 2019. His poems feel as ancient as they do brand-new, as if they’ve been sitting in some dusty temple, waiting for you finally show up and listen. And the style? It skitters here and there, never intending to make you feel too at ease. One moment he is all lush and mystical, the next he’s stripping it back, giving you just enough to feel the ache. He’ll drop something like,

A word must look like a lamp lighting

in the niche of a room at midnight

sucking dark

 and you’re sitting there looking at his page, feeling kind of awestruck, kind of wishing you had written that one yourself. So, to sum it up: Snow Flames is not a read it and forget about it. It’s that type of poetry collection that sneaks up on you, breaks you open, and leaves you looking at the world a little stranger, a little brighter. Majrooh Rashid is not interested in casual fans — he wants fellow travelers. If you’re prepared for the weird and the deep, this book is your ticket. If not? Well, perhaps you’d better stick to the greeting cards.

Every once in a while the poet casts down these homey, kind of kitchen table-y moments — suddenly you need to turn your head so the smell of life doesn’t make you pass out among the cosmic debris. So yeah, that thing about his mother getting on his case:

 … be careful and exercise extreme caution

of dreaming things

that turn your imagination into a gypsy girl

 That’s it — classic mom wisdom, tethering all of this lofty musing to something you can feel in your bones. It’s as if he’s saying: fine, float through your metaphysical clouds, but never forget your mom’s cooking. It is obsessed, throughout, with “who am I?” — but in a manner more panicked than peaceful. He drops this killer line:

Who am I?

A word given by the past, pinned to on the wall

of an empty room

covered by cobwebs

a blurred sketch of the future hung on it,

awaiting vision and colour.

 I mean, yikes. That’s not just existential dread, that’s existential interior decorating.” He is stranded between what is over and what might never come, like a spirit haunting its unlived life. And then — you have these black hole moments:

I turned into a black hole,

at the last moment,

you were about to lose your very existence

in its emptiness.

 Heavy stuff. Cosmic metaphors meet emotional meltdown. Majrooh Rashid takes you to the precipice where everything (and perhaps everybody) could just blip out. And he doesn’t stfu — listen:

On the banks,

of my turbulent sleep,

I saw the rainbow sinking deep, in the dark waters.

 Dream, death, beauty — it’s all tangled together in it, like a sort of psychedelic fever dream. It’s true, Majrooh Rashid has an imagination out of this world. The one about the wise old white owl —

whose hoot turns into Midnight poem

written by Sappho,

singing of loneliness and forsakenness.

 —that’s wild. He’s not just flirting with the classics; he’s letting Sappho out for a midnight séance and having her sing backup on his heartbreak anthems. Who does that?

At its heart, Snow Flames isn’t not only a collection today of poetry — it’s like, a battlefield where opposites collate. Fire and ice, stillness and restlessness, memory and myth — they’re all jockeying for space. Majrooh Rashid isn’t writing poems, he’s building portals. Each line feels like a tremor at the edge of what can’t be quite said. Well, I think the book is asking you to hang out in that strange, hallowed dusk between talking and silence, the space in which turning your pain into something (precious, or at least something to scribble on) makes you some one.

In a planet that never stops talking, Snow Flames is a quiet riot, a caress, a salty tear, a wrestling match, and a humble reminder that poetry can still set the world on fire, melt the ice and snow, and perhaps, if you play your cards right, even make your tired soul shine a little bit. This is not just a book; it’s a road trip for the heart. And believe me, you don’t come back the same.

 The reviewer is a postgraduate gold medalist from the University of Kashmir, Srinagar. Presently working as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Education J&K, he has authored two books, “And the Silence Whispered” and “The Chill in the Bones”.