Two cousins from north Kashmir’s Baramulla district have jointly launched their maiden book titled Mercuric Desires. The book was published by Lieper publication in Srinagar a few weeks ago.
Maria Altaf and Masooda Bashir, both in their early 20s, have tried to highlight every aspect in their poetry which includes their association with the family besides their career.
Currently Maria Altaf is pursuing MBBS while Masooda Bashir is pursuing her B.Sc agriculture from SKUAST-Kashmir.
“I used to write poems from my school days because I was interested in poetry from my school days,” said Maria.
From her childhood, Maria was inspired by the writings of Iqbal. “But obviously, our poetry cannot be matched with Iqbal’s writing. We have just made an attempt to pen down our thoughts in the form of poetry,” she said.
The book comprises 35 poems in which 20 poems have been written by Maria while 15 poems have been written by Masooda.
“I have written some poems on my mother while few poems are on my grandmother. I have also written poems on my dream to pursue MBBS,” Maria said.
The book also consists of some poems on Kashmir wherein the poetess has tried to highlight the beauty of Kashmir in form of verses while it has also mentioned the struggle of people living in Kashmir.
Both the cousins used to write poems from an early age after which they collaborated with each other and decided to shape their poetry in the form of a book and get it published.
“My cousin Masooda and I decided to publish our poetry last Ramadan,” she said.
The writers have used simple language in their poetry to make it easy for the readers to understand their poems.
“Instead of using jargon, we kept our poetry very simple. We want to tell people that poems can be written in simple language as well,” Maria said.