writes Eijaz Kashmiri
“We shall meet again in Srinagar
by the gates of the Villa Of Peace,
Our hands blossoming into fists
till soldiers return the keys
and disappear…”
Maybe if I share the path I walk then a little more of your pain will vanish. I want you to heal, whoever you are. I don’t care what pain you’ve brought the world; I just want yours to subside. No matter what, your path is yours. Don’t follow misery or worry. Devote every moment of your life to improving your dreams. Love your world. Cherish the good you do. Let go of hatred…” Sometimes it’s too tough to get peace when the whole world is at War, when there are many to fight and less to live…
It feels a sorry figure when a country which calls itself as a big democratic and Republic, says that Kashmir should now be developed economically; but whenever such progress is faced with protest, it is considered by the people sitting in Delhi as an uncivilized act. Please for the sake of God how can you start a new chapter when there are still some unfinished chapters in its History? AND I feel that without completing those unfinished chapters and starting a new chapter…the book of Kashmir cannot be completed. Still the incidents of Kunan Poshpora are alive in our minds. Sometimes when i turn the pages of conflict in Kashmir I find that the human rights situation is steadily worsening, with increasing numbers of civilian killings and injuries and for a time, the highest number of reported ‘disappearances’ in Kashmir. The use of excessive force, the killing of students and innocent civilians by the security forces is totally unacceptable. No country Has a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.
The experience of being in exile is thought to be analogous to travelling in history, which inscribes cultural memories that are crucial for overcoming the sense of displacement. The continuity of a living memory therefore mitigates the distance across both the spatial and the temporal divide. The poet transcends this divide by taking us from Srinagar to Karbala, to hint at the similarity in human struggles across centuries: described by Aga Shahid Ali:
So nothing then but
Karbala’s slaughter
through my mother’s eyes at the majlis,
mourning
Zainab in the Damascene court, for she must
stand before the Caliph alone, her eyes my
mother’s, my mother’s
hers across these centuries, each year black-
robed
in that 1992 Kashmir summer—
evening curfew minutes away: The sun died.
We had with Zainab’s
words returned home:
Hussain, I’m in exile from exile, lost from
city to city.
Perhaps this war will pass like the others, leaving us dead, killing us along with the killers but the shame of this time puts its burning fingers to our faces. Who will answer the questions hidden in the innocent blood?
I am left with nothing just some memories some words which i sometimes recall, while moving through those deserted streets where once i spend my Childhood; and want to conclude with these words:
When through night’s veil they continue to
seep, stars
in infant galaxies begin to weep stars.
After the eclipse, there were no cheap stars
How can you be so cheap, stars?
How grateful I am you stay awake with me
till by dawn, like you, I’m ready to sleep,
stars!
If God sows sunset embers in you, Shahid,
all night, because of you, the world will reap
stars.
Thus, if you cannot refuse to fall down, refuse to stay down, lift your heart toward heaven like a hungry beggar, ask that it be filled and it will be filled. You may be pushed down. You may be kept from rising. But no one can keep you from lifting your heart toward heaven-only you. It is in the middle of misery that so much becomes clear.
The one who says nothing good came of this is not yet listening.
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