Nāzninay poetic review by Sadaf Munshi

Nāzninay ‘O beauty!’ is the most recent music video in the Voices and Bridges series which was produced and composed during the pandemic. Using excerpts from a Kashmiri ghazal pūrɨ māh ‘full moon’ by Ibrahim Miskeen and a Farsi poem Beneshīn Marā ‘Stay with me’ authored by the Iranian poet Fereydoun Moshiri, the composition is arguably the first ever such collaboration between Kashmiri and Iranian artists. Nāzninay ‘O beauty!’ is a story of unrequited love which begins with a flashback in a “far off desert”, and in which the lover remembers his childhood sweetheart who left him. The lover is reminded of his solicitations imploring her to “stay” and of the beautiful moments they spent together in their youth. He celebrates the beauty of his beloved by comparing her “radiant face” to the beauty of the “full moon”, and “a fairy” who stole his heart and his faith. The story concludes at the current state of the lover who is left in a lonely place, battling the “heart’s solitude” in absence of the beautiful beloved.

The collaboration, supported by Kashmiri and Iranian diaspora in the US, had a strong impact and was covered by some leading news outlets in India and Iran such as LiveMint, Tehran Times among others.