War Tent House

2010 January 04

Kashmir that sleeps as dew drops in the midst of the garden of apple. Cloudy doves all over the sky resembling the circular moon that plays by chasing the butterflies! The wind of spring all over the body like the chillness of the river that tumble and falls into the ocean. The flowers that keep their face so sad in the foothills of the mountain! The dream of freedom in the boundary line like the breathing of the May-flies! Spying love in the chest cage like the dumb man’s language! I stand guarding my father like penance for the past one hundred and twenty full-moons time i.e. for ten years.

The sounds of the bullets as the fun of crackers in the sky from hither thither like the tiny rain drops! Even the phoenix birds that were extradited will somersault even after getting the wing injuries and make the lame children laugh; the red rose forest there at a distance where the multiple war time cross heaped; that was singing the raga mukAri along with soft wind!

I remember that I met you last while I was five years old; I lent the said to be the dye of smile in the market of butterflies; the kite is not to be seen and missing; only the thread is in my hand; the waves in the sea is coming and going again and again; the shore is dwindling; my dad’s kisses that were my dad’ lips signed on my cheek; those are the autographs hidden in my heart! There is a waiting in my mother’s face; she searches the moon in the day; searches the river in the night; my temple is nearer, but the God is not to be seen!

By losing the door key, I am imprisoned inside the room for a very long time; It is a compulsion that the lids have to sell to get a little of air; the sound of silvery falls had failed in the boundary line of the neighboring country; in the beaks of the doves for peace, the hearts of army warriors were allowed to hang as the toys of blight in the eyes; the cradles inside the trenches to hide the children; the corpses to arrive this shore every day from that ocean; for the fainted national flag in the six feet ditches, the sound of the guns offers the respect for six seconds; mother gave me a few letters written by you; I melted quicker than the wax while I read those!

The evening clouds were surrendering slowly on the west; I construed the grave for my tears inside my lids! Coming after a wait had failed again; mother will give the sweets my father likes, securely tied; I stand waiting with paining legs; I return back with the heart spread over like pieces of glass; I will hand over the waiting sweets to the beggar woman who does penance as a gift; This too my father had taught me when I was five years old to live contently with whatever I have! The rug vehicle that carries the arms had passed me like a green forest; I too have to pass over this place; The Kashmir city gets quiet by shutting the doors before the moon shows its face!

My room library is like the person who keeps silent and speechless; the secrets of the hidden feathers of peacock delivering small feathery babes; the books taking bath in the breaths of tied flowers; its pages look like the colorful fields of butterflies!

In the midst of these, I found out my father’s diary!

I am afraid to see the war-front of the gunman without his permission; I feel as if I lost my fingers with a thinking to cut the nails; I get lost in the wave frequency of the breathing air; I turn the pages on compulsion finally!

2010 July 03

Neither the month of Margazhi nor the summer, it is a day in between these two; I kept pouring the tears into my pen; I suffered without words like the tongue of a dumb person; I laid fallen on the ground like a lame person; an earth quack in the breathing air that day; an angel holding the hands of the orphaned warrior was suffering with struggle; I was dying piece by piece; He smile was my world; A delivery riot there; the doctors took the instruments In their hands since the placenta was encircling the neck of the fetus; for my angel who suffers even if an ant bites, the problematic minutes fought with the seconds recovered her life! The angel was in sleep with fainting tiredness; Two cradles near her; While one cradle is moving, another died before the lull; This secret is not known to my angel; My elder son is buried in the midst of rose garden; the younger one is cradling inside my life!

I search the bygone days; I get defeated with the passing seconds: Oceans everywhere into the eyes; pins and needle all over the heart; I became a refugee into the diary as a bird that had lost its wings; like the golden fish that believes the well water on compulsion as sea water; the shadows are drawn with brushes today: The real brush had faded that day like the water illusion in the summer; I kept the secrets locked into my life like my father!

A letter to my father after a very long time; this is hundredth letter.

2020 June 03

My sky is gone demolished; the moon and the sea had sticking together; my flowers had withered; the dried leaf and thorn are playing with fate; the veena of my heart alone sings in spite of strings torn; My blood stain is smeared over the cob web; The weaver birds build their nests by stealing my lids; the crows too pecks my eyes thinking that it is cuckoo; They killed my mother’s sister after raping; they spit away Asifa who resided in the opposite house; I gave the toys I collected to the orphanage homes; I allowed the pair of love birds that I kept in cage to fly in the sky; my school girl friends were abducted to the brothel houses in Mumbai a few days ago; Rape had become cheap like tamarind seeds; I am going tomorrow as a soldier to the ‘war tent camp’ at local Panip pukar. My mother died of heart attack yesterday; that angel had slept quietly like a child; I buried my mother and the secret diary in the rose garden where my elder brother sleeps!

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