Dated 25th of Feb.

Don’t look at me,
Or look at where I am.
Chances are that I look at
Where you are, or we both,
In a here-and-nowhere-space.

Don’t listen to me,
Or listen to your own words,
Uttered by a breath
I inhale with your lungs
And you exhale with mine.

Don’t come close to me,
Or move to a place
Where we both exchange ribs
And other organs with
Others, casually passing by.

Don’t identify me,
Or try, call me, loudly or within,
Chances are that
You become me
And me into wet earth,
And earth into a vulnerable tree.

Don’t cut me,
Or you cut yourself,
To mourn endlessly
Despite Basant
Celebrated a while ago.

True, it is winter in Kashmir,
But Sonth is round the corner. 

( sonth =spring in kashmir )

................................................................ .......................................................................
Dosah payihay
Radio phutihay
Kainsah gasihay

Violence is inevitable,
If I touch, touch even minutely
Anything, anything
That brings a change.

Each healthy and unhealthy cell of my body
Is aware about this fact,
But I still yearn for a change.
A paradox , but how true.

A change could have
Simply happened on its own;
It simply could have been like
A sudden collapse of a wall
Or like a sudden death of a radio…
But alas !

( the first three lines are by CL Kantroo, a poet, a teacher and once a famous Naxalite in kashmir )
I have tried to capture the essence of his beautiful piece in the last stanza )
………………………………………………………….

KASHMIR VIEW- June-2006, New Delhi.
( on seeing Late R.C. Mehta’s collection)
For dear Musafir.

Let us build a Naya Kashmir
Brick by brick
Photo by photo.

Let us live with those who are dead,
Their hands merged into our hands
Their Photos superimposed on our photos.

We all know it so well,
How thin is the line
Between the real and the artificial.

So we are metamorphosed,
Into flowers and butterflies together,
But for a camera’s click alone.

No wonder our faces
Look like human being’s faces
Whenever we look at our photographs.

Because it tells us a sheer lie,
And in absence of a challenge to that
We begin to believe in the truth of that.

And while building the nest
Unlike the bird’s straw by straw
We bring a photograph disguised as a brick.

And with our own hands,
We construct a magnificent lake,
By comparing it with rain filled road side ditch.

And we regret not having a camera with us,
While looking at the dove
Who bathed in garden’s leaking tap-water.

Who visited the spot again;
Keen to get photographed ?
But the gun was keener to shot her first..

There were many such doves,
And many cameras and many guns
Trying to outwit each other, unwittingly.

Time’s business seemed to fill the attic
With a darkness, and negatives, of both
Living and dead, waiting to be scanned for a digital print.

Lo and behold, Rasool Mir’s Posh Mall
Is still waiting like a fish holding her Taraga
In front of an old latticed wood-work which is so dry.

And this Sopore bridge, like a twisted back bone,
Still connecting white turbaned men in Pharen
Like nerve knots of some extinct language.

And this image of King’s family, standing,
Against the murdered Tigers and Stags,
Ought to have been tilted at 90 degrees.

These birds on the electric wires
Would fly, sooner than before
Once the image is free, frameless.

A humble fire in the cold poor Kangri
Alas, near a Shalimar’s historic fountain:
So all the images have a snow, within.

And this image which claims to show us snow only
Is in fact conveying its loneliness to River Veth,
Which is coming towards us

It was time to move out, out there
And look at what is coming towards us,
A Naya Kashmir, or …
………………………………………………………………


Hariya thavak na kanti lo lo
Zar main totas vanti lo lo

In Kashmir;
Poet urges Mynah,
To convey:
His tale of woes
To parrot,
Living either in Islamabad or in New Delhi.

The Mynah’s long flight,
Somehow mixes her own form
With that of poet’s content.

Still something;-

But parrot’s masters abroad
Stealthily insert their own prose
In the meeting between
The Mynah and the Parrot.

No wonder, each time,
The resultant song
Is hotchpotch

( the first two lines are kashmir folk song )
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Vaguley translated after listening a song by Ahad Zargar ( Kashmiri Poet )


THIS I SAID AFTER DECLARING MYSELF AS KAFIR.

Know the deep mind-heart-belly’s hysteria
Truth of all the true arts is revealed to the awakened only.

Let the living and dead fornicate;
In a drunken state diffuse the message of love,
And without indulging in physical games
Know the principles of female-male union.

Be careful with your Father,
Give him your neck, if He asks
But merge with your own creator.

I suckled the milk from the breasts
Of whom I got married by contract;
Be careful with what logicians may interpret it.


Throw away what is unethical, gift your superfluous
Offer your praying where God is radically unconventional
Dye the forehead of your religious supreme
With the colour of other religion

I am the core, I exist
May be I am the core of a particle somewhere.
That way Mind-heart-belly constitutes the world

I gave life to the clay model
And named it human being
I gave birth to Mohammad and Quran
If there is almighty it came out of me.

Move, after you burn the religious codes
Then sing like Mansoor
Then separate good from Bad.

Be familiar and intimate with what is not so obvious
Then throw stones at the angels in paradise.
Then hope to avoid facing bad thoughts of the other

Strangle your admirer, slain your witness,
Burn your study rooms,
Be a strong individual.

I am revealing these secretes to the open minded
And these very secrets are death arrows
For those who are complacent and dull,
Listen, this is Ahad Zargar’s murderous weapon in verse
………………………………………………………………….............................


DREAM UNREALIZED ( installation project curated by J.M.L in New Delhi


For Ghulam Nabi Sheikh
( Kashmere Musician )

Near Mukerian, Punjab they woke you up,
On a clever pretext which even could not disturb
Your daughter’s slumber.

“ Don’t push, don’t push him out,
He is a lullaby “ The mother wind
Must have told them
Before they pushed you out from the train
In the middle of a night.

Now the found-dead-in-the-morning thing
Rubs more and more slumberous eyes to wake up
And listen a political song.

And for those who feel their vocal cords missing
Watch the freshly crimson sprouted boughs
Swinging slowly, slowly.

A late nigh in Delhi,
And no is singing:
GOOR GOOR KARYO, KAN KE DOORO,
KAN KE DOORO, GOOR GOOR KARYO.

……………………………………………………………………..................


LAYERS

The surface,
Now cold enough;
Snow settling down,
The fragile boughs atop
Their bending backs
Hiding there when and how.

Both the boughs atop
And the sprawl of innocence beneath,
Know the nature of a sudden stir.

So suddenly,
A dynamics takes over,
Grants a little freedom,
To a little line work
Which draws its organic,
Detaches, itself from own casualty.

But soon the little chosen bough
In the language’s line-work
Goes static;
Disappears anyway.

And then decays the surface drawn upon.

Nearby, upon a window sill,
An all time eye,
Looks,
With an all time purpose,
To add to earth’s memory layers…
..............................................

For menu, these poem like goats sacrificed, which I translated from Kashmere to English.

Mas= unmindlful, innocent.
Mas parith= hari, combed like a girl.

1.
Hair combed like a girl,
The baby is unmindful, in his granny’s lap.
Holding two flowers.
A black and white photograph,
Of my childhood.
Now buried under white snow and black debris of a house.

2.
Beneath the feminine of an apple tree
Ousted our cashmere
After smoking charas.

3.
on the corner of the same lane
she suddenly stopped,
hiding within herself,
Similingly,
Looking at imaginary
Doors and windows
Somebody ( unmarked )
Bua nani
Bua
Daughter of the same house.

4.
House-flies in symmetry,
On the kasher ( on which the corn grows )
On the road side,
With cotton in their ears
Like a gujjar of Kalkut Nag
Under the shade
With a fallen dead dry devdar as his pillow.

5. Isq-pachen twig
would love to invite
her most favourite folk song
this desire , like a stray bullet
hidden in the earthy wall.


……………………………………………………………………………………

THE SHOES BURIED

Close to water,
Veer-i-kul,
Like idle people of olden times,
Gossiping, for any length of time,
Unlike the meaningful of fruity trees,
Which proudly punctuate the solitude,
If they happen to live close to water.

Sweet shadow of Veer-i-kul,
Love the company of little swamps
If a Kashmiri village’s small bluish green milky
Spring is surrounded by
A lean group of Veer-i-kul.

Veer-i-kul leaves in autumn,
Although twisted in appearance,
But thoroughly simple and light in content,
Fall on the spring’s occasionally bubbling depth,
And on the damp edges around,
And on the head of a lonely school boy,
Who loves to throw stones in the spring
To listen the sound, he creates.

Through half naked boughs of Veer-i-kul the generated sound flies,
And touches and kisses all the distant trees,
And ruffles the bird’s conventional calm,
And returns partly from the half open windows of kuchha houses around,
And travels freely in the atmosphere,
To draw and redraw,
Veer-i-kul bough like eye lashes on the face of the sun.

Veer-i-kul neither regrets nor celebrates,
Any daring steps that proceeds to go deep,
To see deep,
And face the risk of getting stuck----
Even if it happens to be a small school boy who moves daringly
Only to realize that he is stuck,
Knee deep in the mud,
And is crying for help.

Veer-i-kul were perhaps always there
To help…
This time for the experienced to hold its firm stem to pull
The hapless boy out ,
Albeit without his shoes.


Veer-i-kul roots know,
How and why the shoes are buried,
Even though a lot has changed on the surface.

( A Kashmiri word ‘veer-i-kul’= willow tree/s )