Category: Kashmir

Partition | Fatimah Asghar

~ Sundeep Dougal ~ Leave a comment

you’re kashmiri until they burn your home. take your orchards. stake a different flag. until no one remembers the road that brings you back. you’re indian until they draw a border through punjab. until the british captains spit paki as they sip your chai, add so much foam you can’t taste home. you’re seraiki until your mouth fills with english. you’re pakistani until your classmates ask what that is. then you’re indian again. or some kind of spanish. you speak a language until you don’t. until you only recognize it between your auntie’s lips. your father was fluent in four languages. you’re illiterate in the tongues of your father. your grandfather wrote persian poetry on glasses. maybe. you can’t remember. you made it up. someone lied. you’re a daughter until they bury your mother. until you’re not invited to your father’s funeral. you’re a virgin until you get too drunk. you’re muslim until you’re not a virgin. you’re pakistani until they start throwing acid. you’re muslim until it’s too dangerous. you’re safe until you’re alone. you’re american until the towers fall. until there’s a border on your back.”

Fatimah Asghar. “If They Come for Us”.

The season of the planes

~ Sundeep Dougal ~ Leave a comment

In Kashmir, where the year
has four, clear seasons, my mother
spoke of her childhood

in the plains of Lucknow, and
of that season in itself,
the monsoon, when Krishna’s

flute is heard on the shores
of the Jamuna. She played old records
of the Banaras thumri-singers,

Siddheshwari and Rasoolan, their
voices longing, when the clouds
gather, for that invisible

blue god. Separation
can’t be borne when the rains
come: this every lyric says.

While children run out
into the alleys, soaking
their utter summer,

messages pass between lovers.
Heer and Ranjha and others
of legends, their love forbidden,

burned incense all night,
waiting for answers. My mother
hummed Heer’s lament

but never told me if she
also burned sticks
of jasmine that, dying,

kept raising soft necks
of ash. I imagined
each neck leaning

on the humid air. She only
said: The monsoons never cross
the mountains into Kashmir.

– Agha Shahid Ali

And to honour his mother’s memory, here are the two greats – Siddheshwari Devi and Rasoolan Bai– in a rare recording, singing together.

The Last Saffron

~ Sundeep Dougal ~ Leave a comment

Next to Saffron cultivation in interest come the floating gardens
Of the Dal Lake that can be towed from place to place.

1.

I will die, in autumn, in Kashmir,
and the shadowed routine of each vein
will almost be news, the blood censored,
for the Saffron Sun and the Times of Rain

will be sold in black, then destroyed,
invisibly at Zero Taxi Stand.
There will be men nailing tabloids
to the fence of Grindlay’s Bank,

I will look for any sign of blood
in captions under the photos of boys,
those who by inches – after the April flood –
were killed in fluted waters, each voice

torn from its throat as the Jehlum
receded to their accounts and found cash
sealed in the bank’s reflection.
I will open the waves, draw each hushed

balance, ready to pay, by any means,
whatever the drivers ask. The tone
called Eyes of Maple Green
will promise, “I’ll take you anywhere, even

in curfew hours,” and give me a bouquet –
“There’s a ban on wreaths!”

2.

I will die that day in late October, it will be long ago:

He will take me to Pompore where I’ll gather flowers and run
back to the taxi, stamens – How many thousands? – crushed
to red varnish in my hands: I’ll shout: “Saffron, my payment!”
And he’ll break the limit, chase each rumor of me. “No one’s
see Shahid,” we’ll hear again and again, in every tea house from
Nishat to Naseem. He will stop by the Shalimar ghat, and we’ll
descend the steps to the water. He’ll sever some land – two
yards – from the shore, I, his last passenger. Suddenly he’ll age,
his voice will break, his gaze green water, washing me: “it won’t
grow again, this gold from the burned fields of Pampore.” And
he will row the freed earth past the Security zones, so my blood
is news in the Saffron Sun setting on the waves.

3.

Yes, I remember it,
the day I’ll die, I broadcast the crimson,

so long of that sky, its spread air,
its rushing dyes, and a piece of earth

bleeding, apart from the shore, as we went
on the day I’ll die, past the guards, and he,

two yards he rowed me into the sunset,
past all pain. On everyone’s lips was news

of my death but only that beloved couplet,
broken, on his:

“If there is a paradise on earth,
It is this, it is this, it is this.”

(for Vidur Wazir)

– Agha Shahid Ali

Farewell

~ Sundeep Dougal ~ Leave a comment

At a certain point I lost track of you.
They make a desolation and call it peace.
when you left even the stones were buried:
the defenceless would have no weapons.

When the ibex rubs itself against the rocks,
who collects its fallen fleece from the slopes?
O Weaver whose seams perfectly vanished,
who weighs the hairs on the jeweller’s balance?
They make a desolation and call it peace.
Who is the guardian tonight of the Gates of Paradise?

My memory is again in the way of your history.
Army convoys all night like desert caravans:
In the smoking oil of dimmed headlights, time dissolved- all
winter- its crushed fennel.
We can’t ask them: Are you done with the world?

In the lake the arms of temples and mosques are locked in each other’s
reflections.

Have you soaked saffron to pour on them when they are found like this
centuries later in this country
I have stitched to your shadow?

In this country we step out with doors in our arms
Children run out with windows in their arms.
You drag it behind you in lit corridors.
if the switch is pulled you will be torn from everything.

At a certain point I lost track of you.
You needed me. You needed to perfect me.
In your absence you polished me into the Enemy.
Your history gets in the way of my memory.
I am everything you lost. You can’t forgive me.
I am everything you lost. Your perfect Enemy.
Your memory gets in the way of my memory:

I am being rowed through Paradise in a river of Hell:
Exquisite ghost, it is night.

The paddle is a heart; it breaks the porcelain waves.
It is still night. The paddle is a lotus.
I am rowed- as it withers-toward the breeze which is soft as
if it had pity on me.

If only somehow you could have been mine, what wouldn’t
have happened in the world?

I’m everything you lost. You won’t forgive me.
My memory keeps getting in the way of your history.
There is nothing to forgive.You can’t forgive me.
I hid my pain even from myself; I revealed my pain only to myself.

There is everything to forgive. You can’t forgive me.

If only somehow you could have been mine,
what would not have been possible in the world?

– Agha Shahid Ali