Sana Farheen: Poetry is my calling

‘Love’ is a strange thing. Sometimes, it makes you feel like you are flying, with an almost dreamy unstoppability. But then there are moments when everything can come crashing down, making you wonder if it all was really just a dream.

Tears, smiles, tears, smiles — after all, that’s what love is, isn’t it? Writer and ‘pomedian’ Sana Farheen understands this better than most, drawing from her experiences and crafting relatable shayaris. At her poetry-storytelling-comedy show ‘Badnaam Mohabbat’ at The Comedy Theatre, she made Hyderabadis feel a wave of emotions as she bared her heart about love.

“People know me as someone who does badnaami of mohabbat. So, the show was all about, ‘Main aakhir kyun aisa karti hoon?’ That’s what it answered, covering topics of cheating, how different generations perceive love, and so on,” she explains.

What is most interesting about Sana is her self-bestowed label of ‘pomedian’. “Pomedian is poet plus comedian; essentially, I talk about the saddest situations in love but smile and laugh as I tell it. So, although the words may make you tear up, I find humour in the pain,” says Sana, whose poetic moniker is ‘Shayra Sana’.

Sana built her social media presence step by step, at her own pace. That sense of calmness and joviality comes from an inner strength that she had to develop to deal with critics. “My relatives…I openly call them saanp (snakes) for the way they have criticised and trolled me. Although my parents were liberal, my relatives would question why I was wearing jeans and tell my parents to suppress my freedom. But today, seeing how tall I stand, those same uncles and aunties tell their children to be like me!” Sana shares, laughing.

Before she started treading the pomedian path, the IT realm enveloped Sana, who then worked hard to prove her mettle. A successful project manager today, Sana isn’t your stereotypical resentful 9-to-5’er. “I am grateful for my career but chose to share my shayaris because it makes me happy. One day, I just performed at an open mic; the response was great, and so I dove deep into it. This is my calling,” she notes.

Today, when one hears her Hindi shayaris, the heart awakens. And the smile on her face isn’t one of hopelessness but acceptance. And that acceptance is what wipes away the heaviness that often cascades into the difficult moments of love.

“The ideas just come to me when I am half asleep,” she reveals, adding that her best ideas come when she is feeling blue.

It has been 11 years since the Kolkata-born pomedian moved to Hyderabad, and today, she proudly calls herself a Hyderabadi girl. She conducts poetry workshops in colleges, helping the new generation get in touch with their emotions. “Youngsters today have technology but sadly, very few good friends and good family bonds. But when they hear two lines of shayari, they feel understood,” she explains.

Now, Sana is writing a book titled Dream of a Mother. “It is about a girl who gives up her dreams, gets married, and loses herself. When she births a daughter, it is a turning point; she transforms into a sherni, raising her little one with strength. I won’t reveal more than this, but cannot wait for you all to read it,” Sana says excitedly.

For Sana, her style of pomedy is simple yet unique: “Haste haste rulaungi, aur rulaate rulaate hasaungi” (I’ll put you on a rollercoaster of emotions, making you laugh and cry in equal measure). My goal is to meet people, know their stories, and laugh with them.

— Story by Nitika Krishna