Roots
Touching the ground on which
I put the first shaky footsteps,
Seeing the majestic contours
of the undulating skyline,
Which my eyes had never tired
to range,
Back in Kashmir, I feel the
echo of my genesis,
An expatriate's answered prayers.
Buried here lie the pristine
years of my childhood,
When wonder turned into thought,
Desires into dreams,
The vision was uncluttered,
And conflict took root.
Does a man owe something to the
land of his birth,
Or is it his insecurity that
binds him to his roots?
Or is it all an alluring angle
of the architecture of emotion,
Or simply an elemental pull
to gravitate to one's origin?
If child is the father of man,
then what is growing up all about?
Unblemished by the coarseness
of life,
Unmarred by the waywardness
of the world,
Reposed in the frozen perspective
of time,
Still gleaming lie the first
experiences of life:
The integrity of self,
The uniqueness of the individual
and the brotherhood of mankind,
The uncomplicatedness in human
relationships,
The simplicity of understanding,
The unquestioned joy in living,
The clarity of the way ahead,
Just being, not becoming.
We go back to the roots,
To replenish the vision and
the spirit we have lost,
To regain our identity and reclaim
our history,
To reset the balance between
nature and mind,
To feel as an element of the
universal spacetime.
But the chilling vision shattered
the trip down the childhood:
Kashmiris living in the fossilized
glory of the past,
Apathy their unshakable creed,
Cynicism the only energetic
hope,
Living between tyranny and anarchy
of political pendulum.
Walking down the desolate ruins
of Srinagar's streets,
Shapeless stretches of thoughtless
construction,
Chaotic services and nightmarish
traffic,
Where time has frozen in the
inner city,
And darkness envelops the winter
months.
Plundered, ravaged, and defiled
through ages,
By its soulless bandit rulers,
Neglected eternally by its crass
inhabitants,
To wither slowly in the irreversible
arrow of time,
This bounteous gift of nature,
Kashmir, moans in pains unnameable,
Its soul heaving with a curse
eternal
For its unworthy sons.
Kashmir always beckons me to
a homecoming,
A quivering echo of a distant
thunder,
A withered glow on the horizon,
Remnant of a fire kindled a
long time ago,
It will remain my tombstone.