Dwelling in the Light of Fragments: A Study of Dhaji Dhaji Roshni by Qandeel Badr Hammad Niazi Dhaji Dhaji Roshni, a recently published Urdu poetry collection from Balochistan written by Qandeel Badr. Qandeel Badr belongs to “Gohar Ghar”, a prominent literary family of Balochistan. Gohar Ghar has already made a significant mark in Pakistani as well as Balochistani literature. Notable literary names from this family such as Saeed Gohar, the late Daniyal Tareer, Injeel Saheefa, Bilal Aswad, and Tamseel Hafsa — are no longer unfamiliar names in the world of Pakistani literature. The title of the book meaning “Shimmering in Shards of Light” is both an aesthetic and emotional thesis. The poet writes in fragments, in dissolving images, in luminous pain. But these fragments do not scatter without purpose; they orbit an unspoken center, a searching, a presence that feels like absence. The voice that emerges from this book is distinctively feminine, vulnerable but not weak, delicate yet defiant, drenched in metaphor, myth, and a longing that feels older than language itself. This is poetry that resists linearity. The poems do not tell stories so much as they invoke visions. At times, the poetess is a girl made of jal (burning water), at others she is a shattered mirror, a swallowed scream, a walking void. What’s compelling is how fluently she merges the personal with the cosmic. The pain of lost love becomes indistinguishable from a spiritual vacuum. The metaphor of a train’s whistle becomes the sound of separation, exile, the dividing of self and beloved. A window that remains half-open becomes a portal to unfinished dreams. The language is never didactic or direct, it pulses with shadows and reflections, like a lake trembling in wind. Elemental imagery dominates this collection. The poet frequently identifies herself with water, fire, earth, and light. She is rain if she cries, a cloud if she stays silent. Her body is a clay pot spinning endlessly on a wheel, her soul flickers like a dying lantern. In many moments, she does not describe feelings but becomes them. This method of merging subject and metaphor gives her verses a surreal, Sufi-like resonance. She writes, “I drank from the cup of wonder,” and elsewhere, “I dissolved into light.” One cannot tell whether these lines are spiritual awakenings or breakdowns, and perhaps they are both. The sacred and the broken meet constantly in her verse, and it is precisely in their overlap that the poetry breathes most deeply. Her relationship with the divine is as fraught as her relationship with the self. In several poems, she addresses God directly, questioning His silence. She asks, with haunting clarity, whether revelation has stopped coming her way. Even the act of learning letters “from alif to meem” is turned into a spiritual practice, and when this practice fails to yield presence, it leaves behind only exhaustion. This distance from divinity doesn’t result in atheism; rather, it leads to a deeper hunger. She searches the void for signs, and in doing so, offers us a theology of absence, where even silence is a kind of speech. Love in this collection is never romanticized. It is dismembering. It is exile. It is divine and dangerous. The beloved is often faceless, or fused with images of God, stars, or silence. One poem asks: “Was it love, or just the light I got lost in?” The speaker’s identity blurs with that of the other. Even gender becomes fluid at times. The poet writes from a female perspective, but her images reject stereotype. The woman here is not waiting or weeping in conventional ways.She is building rhythms from birdsong, planting suns on her forehead, and arguing with angels. She is writing herself back into myth and scripture with a voice that is both ancient and blisteringly current. Stylistically, the poet makes excellent use of free verse, though echoes of classical ghazal rhythms ripple throughout. Repetition is used not just for musicality, but as an emotional incantation. The lines often spiral inward, each one digging deeper into a central wound. Many poems end not with conclusions but with questions, voids, silences. This refusal to provide resolution is honest; it mirrors the very nature of longing, the very texture of grief. Despite its surrealism, the poetry remains rooted in the lived realities of the subcontinent. References to trains, gumbads, pottery wheels, wedding windows, and familial memory all tie the poet’s voice to the regional and the specific. And yet, she lifts these images into a universal register. The poem where she says she was written with her father’s pen and lost inside her mother’s palm is both intimate and mythic—a memory folded into metaphor, a life turned into symbol. Poems like “Tan Bartan”, “Idraak”, “Main ne zindagi doobtay sooraj se seekhi hai”, “Shaam dhalnay ko hai”, “Lori”, and “Pyaala bhar chuka hai” are certainly a beautiful addition to modern Urdu poetry. This poetry, with its Eastern infused, gendered tone, is rarely seen in the contemporary literary landscape of Balochistan. I hope that reading this book will introduce you to a beautiful tone of our new poetry. In the end, Dhaji Dhaji Roshni is not merely a poetry collection۔It is a spiritual topography, an echo chamber, a mirror house filled with flickering lamps and trembling reflections. It does not seek to resolve the tension between presence and absence, or light and shadow. Instead, it invites us to dwell inside that very tension. This is a voice that whispers, chants, weeps, and sometimes screams—but always, it illuminates. The shards may be scattered, but they shine. The book is published by Gohar Ghar Publication Quetta. Leave a Reply Cancel Reply Logged in as admin. Edit your profile. Log out? Required fields are marked * Message*