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Chapter 13 Do not Ask of, Me, My Love, Comprehension I, Question 1., When does the speaker realise what he thought about love was not true?, Answer:, When he experiences other sorrows and pleasures in the world than what love, offered him., Question 2., ‘That’s the way I imagined it to be,’ suggests, Answer:, (b) the speaker’s realization of realities., Question 3., ‘for there are other sorrows in the world than love,’ here ‘sorrows’ refers to miseries, Answer:, (b) caused by poverty and deprivation., Question 4., ‘You are beautiful still, my love.’ Here the speaker is expressing his, Answer:, (b) inability to pay the same undivided attention to his love., Comprehension II, Question 1., What does the line ‘those dark and brutal curses of countless centuries’ suggest?, Answer:, Faiz Ahmad was a Marxist and believed in the idea of an egalitarian society. When, he writes, ‘those dark and brutal curses of countless centuries’, he probably means, the suffering caused by stark poverty which seems to be a brutal curse on the, hapless poor. The phrase ‘countless centuries’ suggests that the poor have no, escape from this state of want. At another level, the phrase can be taken as having, political allusions. It highlights the betrayal of the founding of Pakistan., It is to be read as addressed to the nation of Pakistan, which Faiz had embraced, with much hope, and with whose political leaders he became disillusioned. The, persecution of minorities, martial laws, public floggings and public executions, changed the nature of the creation of Pakistan as a nation. The vulnerable were no, longer safe in the land created to protect them.

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Question 2., What harsh realities of life have drawn the speaker’s attention much more than the, beauty of his beloved?, Answer:, The beauty of his beloved cannot keep him riveted to it as other harsher realities of, life trouble. him. Pitted against his beloved’s beautiful face, he sees bodies bathed in, blood, smeared with dust, and sold from market-place to market-place. He can also, see bodies which are afflicted by a number of diseases and bodies from which pus, oozes out. That is why, though his beloved’s face is still beautiful, he cannot give his, undivided attention to the beauty of the face alone., , Question 3., What transformation in the perception of love do you see in the poem?, Answer:, We see that Faiz Ahmad moves from the personal to the political, from the particular, to the general in his concept of love in the poem ‘Do not ask of Me, My Love’. If the, poet was confined to the world of romantic love in the past, he now moves out of it to, enter the world of love where he can extend his love to his fellow brethren. It is not, that he loves his beloved less, but that he knows that the emotion of love is allencompassing and it need not remain limited to one individual., In the past, if one individual happened to be his world, now he sees that the world is, much more than just an individual. Earlier, if he thought there was no greater joy or, sorrow than the ones resulting from his love for the beloved, he now knows that the, world has greater promises and greater trials too. Thus, the speaker accepts the, truth that in the past he wove around himself an illusory web of love, but now he, knows that such a world was far from being real. Thus we see that the poet rises, from the material to the ideal in his concept and avowal of love., Comprehension III, Question 1., At the end of the poem we feel ‘the speaker does not love his beloved less, but the, suffering humanity more’. Do you agree?, Answer:, Yes, certainly. The very fact that he addresses the poem to his beloved makes it, clear that he wants to lay bare before his innermost feelings. Perhaps he has the, courage to do so because he knows that his beloved would understand his feelings., If he has to have that confidence in his beloved, then the love between them must be, real. It is as if the speaker seeks the approval of his beloved in taking up work that, would make him serve the less fortunate in society., There is a note of pleading when he says, “But I’m helpless too’. It is as if he is, saying that unless she understands him and cooperates with him, he will not be able, to continue on his path of fighting for the cause of the less fortunate. So, in a way,, the poem can be taken as an indirect plea of the poet to the beloved to let him go so

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that he can take up the national and political cause. So, though at one point of time, the poet says that his earlier love seemed to be an illusion, it is clear that he still has, a love for the beloved, but is impelled to answer the call of the suffering humanity. It, isn’t that he scorns love, but that he understands that it can’t exist in isolation from, the world., The phrase ‘comforts other than love’ suggests the joys of political struggle and, comradeship, which are a different and wider form of love. In the repetition of ‘my, love’ in the final line, Faiz nevertheless re-emphasises how difficult it is to leave, behind his former bliss. This is a poem about the heavy burden of taking on, responsibility, and the inner struggle that it entails.