LOVE IN KASHMIR: A BRIEF HISTORY

Your hair strands buried deep

as veins inside my chest,

my gasps circumambulating

the oasis of your ear,

your intricate coiffure

the topology of the universe,

with you illuming the front seat

I am cycling near the speed of light

and the gasps, the oasis, the universe

grate into fine strands of hair,

lines - illuminating hair lines.

Time behaves erratically

like your aesthetic tantrums.

In the moment riding now

I see everything in a now

Past, present and future now

THEATRE LOVE circa 1970s-1980s

You, Me and an awaiting

outside the Regal.

Among pattering voices -

chai, cigarettes and black tickets -

I, in my usual bell-bottom pants,

you, in your unusual burqa.

We're planning a coup

(against our families)

in that dark hall with screen

illuminating the face of Omar Mukhtar

Like a torch:

All revolutions go out of fashion

like the bell-bottoms.

BUS-STOP LOVE circa 1990s

Dressed in a decent school uniform,

too erotic for me.

I lose two bus stops and an hour

to reach yours in time.

The bus is crowded in cursive lines

like our hearts effusing bodies

scattered in a grenade blast.

The grammar of crackdown

marks the bodies in line,

each alphabet separated from the other -

You remain inside the bus,

I wander in barbed wires:

Every love story does not end

by the gates of the school.

SATELLITE LOVE circa 2000s

The bus addas have been extracted

from the jaws of Lal chowk 

like a rotten tooth

leaving a historical cavity

grafted with telephone towers.

It rings in your landline

I hear it in a PCO cubicle.

We're arranging a meet -

timing fixed,

spot decided.

Around the margins of the University

some restaurants serve love.

Shutters fall, hartal -

Two boys murdered.

No buses to carry us:

Not all stories travel uplink and downlink.

Some hop by autos

shrouded in black.

BLANK LOVE, 2019

We encounter a blackhole,

every story into the event horizon

SOCIAL LOVE circa 2020s

A desert of digitality

under the sun of connections.

No me, no you

nor our shadows,

some algorithms controlling the narratives.

We don't meet,

we don't talk,

a rhythm of blocking and unblocking

Keeps things afloat:

Messages don't always travel,

sometimes we have to.

FUTURE LOVE circa Unknown

Under the last Chinar tree

a machine that serves

Masal Tchout,

two hologram lovers eat

and pretend they're real lovers:

The future echoes no lines.

THE TREE OF SEPARATION

If we ever happen to meet

ten decades after a decade

of separation,

under that tree

with twenty autumns inside it

assuming the shape of an eye

covered with wrinkles,

I have so many things to ask you.

Ask for example;

What happened to that tooth

hollowed by the cavity

akin to my heart?

Does it still throb with an aching pulse

Or did you fill it

with all the remorse of your life?

Did you ever adore yourself

with that sari that I gifted.

You must have missed the bindi

that still lies clinging

to the passport sized photo of you

inside my ragged wallet.

Did you finish that novel?

That soundtrack

Do you still listen to it?

That box

containing all the knick-knacks

and trinkets,

does it still smell Me?

Did you this and

did you that

about such and such things,

the list will go on

And the tree, our milestone of separation 

may see twenty autumns more.

But when you will arrive,

I know,

all these questions -

I will never be seasoned enough

to ask.

I know

It will only be about your eyes:

Did you ever go to that

opthalmology test that we booked together?

And you will look at me

with those eyes

squinting 

and I will have to acknowledge 

the power of your sight.

In all my nakedness

I will wilt

like a closed eyelid.

THE BIRD TRAPPED INSIDE

"Imagine a bird trapped inside

this classroom . . ." -

In those moments of lectures

when you feel trapped

you tell your students,

because you have hit a wall

of incognizance

from the other side.

In that fluttering instant

You catch a feather 

to make them fly

conjuring up a bird.

Imagine a bird trapped inside,

seeing the other side clearly

oblivious of the transparent glass

in-between

hitting with all its being.

They believe you are some magician.

You think they are the metaphor,

all the while relishing the thought

that the metaphor fits your life too well.

The poem starts here:

It will take us all

Infinite moments

spread over years and years of

spring, summer and fall

to realise that

the trap

was a portal to freedom

while the world outside

waits with feathered cages.

THE SHAPE OF THE EAR

Ridged,

irregular,

a dune in the desert of the body.

Silence in a foetal position.

It does not speak -

the irony

that it is in a relationship with lips!

Parched with wrinkles,

a crumpled paper,

coiled like a dead snake,

a half-blossomed rose -

it is the most solitary of the organs.

It is the lover

in waiting.

Waiting for the downpour 

from those lips

that have not spoken in ages.

ORIGAMI HEART

The day you straightened your hair

was the day I felt

all the creases leaving

the fabric of life,

it was the day

my origami heart

unfolded in its essence -

a spiral sheet of paper

ready to be slid in

that old typewriter

crumpled in a corner of your room

for a poem;

yet unwritten.

LIMERENCE (For the girl who insists that it's Love)

Resembling an act of divine meditation,

goats burn themselves,

in some rare cases,

throw themselves into fire,

play with flames.

This fiery fascination though

inspires no one in the animal kingdom

for even they know -

self-harm is no authentic healing.

Goats are hellish

and foolish,

humans say,

but are they?

Atleast they have some fur to burn

in order to get rid of lice and ticks

kissing them to death.

Human-goats in fire

burn their skin

and smoulder the soul.

The parasites keep digging 

deeper and deeper

until the breasts instead of milk

drip pus

and the tongue whispers smoke

instead of songs.

All the while

the goats believe

they have wings

and as light as moths

are rising upwards to the divine light.

SCRIBBLINGS (For Hummaid and Yusra)

A line somewhere on the wall,

an angel monstrous in shape, entangled.

A number here on the window frame 

whose multiplication partner-number

is written somewhere in the other room.

A clunker runs over this almirah

without tyres, on absolute trust.

A pink watch on my arm

with no hands

embracing an infinite time.

I even carried a dwarf giant on my cheek

for many days.

Lines, dots, doodles, smileys

numbers, cars, shapes -

the world is paper for children,

a single sheet folding out into

walls, frames, almirahs

wndows, surfaces, skin.

May they never grow to know

that walls are bricks and cement

meant for heads and hurts,

that windows are wooden 

opening to an indifferent world,

that cars run on oil and exploitation,

that skin is a bruised abyss,

that numbers are monetary,

that the adult world is a world

of razor tongues and rumours,

of pain and separation,

of sharp edges and gunpowder

with thousand ways of communication 

that we have chosen not to.

LIFE (For Mubashir)

Only the person, says our barber,

who sits in my working chair

is a customer. The rest,

who wait, can leave anytime.

Waiting seems like

an aqueous island between oceans,

an intertestice of infinite possibilities

between two accomplished impossibilities -

one can pace up and down,

one can go or call or chat,

smoke or have tea,

kill someone or kill oneself.

All those who wait

can never be customers,

he's right. In his waiting for people

how closely he

misses Life,

all the while keeping

three chairs

for one customer.

POORE SAAL KI AADHI NAZM / پورے سال کی آدھی نظم

Muhabbat ka December

Gham ka pur-malaal aasman

Dard ki shadeed baarish

Aur tanha Bheegta mai

Yaadon ki chaadar tang

Aur safar taveel

Judai ke January ki barf

Pighlane ke liye ab

Tamaam yaadon ko hi

Jhulsana hoga

...

December ki thithurti nazm gar

February mein yun utregi

Sochta hoon

Zindagi Kaise guzregi

محبت کا دثمبر 

غم کا پُر ملال آسمان 

درد کی شدید بارش

اور تنہا بھیگتا میں 

یادوں کی چادر تنگ

اور سفر طویل 

جدائی کے جنوری کی برف

پگھلانے کے لئے اب

تمام یادوں کو ہی

جھلسانا ہوگا

...

دسمبر کی ٹھٹھرتی نظم گر

فروری میں یوں اُترےگی 

سوچتا ہوں

زندگی کیسے گزرے گی 

The Birdfeeder

The birdfeeder outside burns

with a grainy tongue of taste

attracting birds as moths -

Pigeons and Mynas, the usual visitors

but also Crows and Eagles,

sometimes Bulbuls and

Thrushes.

This year, however,

we had unusual ones -

Parakeets -

visiting in groups

like college students

bunking classes,

missing the whole semester 

during peak summers.

Yesterday our neighbour called

requesting to ensnare

some of these tiny rackety rascals.

But we don't . . . I answered

and it dawned on me

how love is a trap for some

and trap, love for others.

and You

My nocturnal fortunes were never fair:

I couldn't ever see

Srinagar skies with you,

gifting you shapes in the stars

sliced like cakes,

whichever shape you wished.

Stars, skies and shapes 

I lost everything;

I lost the shape that emerged

out of your womanly body

into motherhood.

Your gustatory shift from tea to coffee,

I lost too,

your sartorial mutations.

I lost your acquisition 

of driving licence

or the coordination you acquired 

between your hands, feet and eyes

that was absent

in your life.

The alignment of your lips and tongue

is not the same as I left them quivering then,

I have lost the sound

of words

that you pronounce differently now.

I lost in a lifetime

what others gain in one

And you

And you

And you

FOR MY DAUGHTER

Fragile glass sheets

sliding down the rocky mountain -

that's how your mother's life has been;

always on the verge.

She has more twisted ankles

than steps on the ground -

Losing hairpins, and books and bracelets

and people,

raging all the time, furious and impatient,

she could never carry herself.

It is not a miracle that she carried you

Within her

without losing,

It is her sheer will.

Now that you are here

she is back into the rocky life

of breaking and losing,

of anger and ferocity.

You, my child, carry half

your mother's burdens and her outrage.

You are your mother's daughter

You will carry her well.

A BROKEN UNIVERSE

I have a broken-hearted friend

with a wound

as deep as universe

wherein he resides.

He gloats facts all the time:

Universe, he says, is 95 percent darkness.

Every galaxy has its own black hole.

He goes on in the similar way

about Plants, Animals and everything in nature,

except Humans. He has no insights there.

Blinded by people. Hurt he is,

wounded, betrayed and broken.

He sees no 5 percent light there

neither any galaxies.

He's addicted to those videos wherein

old, antique broken things are repaired, restored.

And I understand why:

The videos are a metaphor for a condition

unattainable.

For years

the poetic interpretation contented me

until yesterday when 

I asked him the reason:

"Lucky bastards dig up an antique treasure every other day".

Aatish Paraston ki Ek Devi / آتش پرستوں کی اک دیوی

Shakhon se ubalti rui

Jab pedon ke badan se utar kar

Shehar ki sadkon pe bikhar kar

Kinare kinare saujati thi

Tou ek chingari se usey

Jaga kar

Jhulsa kar

Hum phir hawaon mein uda dete they 

Ladakpan mei  aag se

Kise ragbat nahi hoti

Muhabbat nahi hoti

Magar phir zindagi mein

Samjhdari ke ek mod par

Mujhe aatish paraston ki

Ek devi mili

Rooh jiski aatishi thi

Aag se raakh

Raakh se khaak

Aur khaak se gubaar banana

Jiski zindagi thi

Har woh shay

Jo uske badan ki hidat se guzri ho

Jhulasna uski taqdeer thi

Apne badan se utre kapdon ko

Supurd e naar kar

Ghanton unhe taka karti

Hawa karti

Hansa karti

Phir us raakh ka naseeb woh jaane

Mai raakh ho chuka hoon kya?

Ab mai jo uski utran hoon

شاخوں سے ابلتی روئی 

جب پیڑوں کے بدن سے اتر کر

شہر کی سڑکوں پہ بکھر کر 

کنارے کنارے سوجاتی تھی

تو ایک چنگاری سے اُسے 

جگا کر 

جھلسا کر

ہم پھر ہواؤں میں اڑا دیتے تھے

لڑکپن میں آگ سے

کسے رغبت نہیں ہوتی

محبت نہیں ہوتی

مگر پھر زندگی میں

سمجھداری کے اک موڈ پر

مجھے آتش پرستوں کی

ایک دیوی ملی

روح جسکی آتشی تھی

آگ سے راکھ

راکھ سے خاک

اور خاک سے غبار بنانا

جسکی زندگی تھی

ہر وہ شے 

جو اسکے بدن کی حدت سے گزری ہو

جھلسنا اُسکی تقدیر تھی

اپنے بدن سے اترے کپڑوں کو

سپرد نار کر

گھنٹوں انہیں تکا کرتی

ہوا کرتی

ہنسا کرتی 

پھر اس راکھ کا نصیب وہ جانے

میں راکھ ہو چکا ہوں کیا

اب میں جو اُسکی اترن ہوں؟

مغالطہ/Mugalta

THERE'S NO LAST CIGARETTE FOR ANYONE

After billowing the last

cloud of smoke from

the cloudy mouth and

stubbing it out into

the Moon ashtray,

something always remains

burning between the luscious lips of

mind. A poking stick some

call desire, some dream, some

prefer to call it fantasy, some

call it appraisal, some promotion,

some craving, someone something . . .

By the end of it all, there

always remains in hand

a new cigarette.

FOR MANSOOR

A poem in your memory

has been long in coming -

dying alongside you

would have been the alliteration,

buried in the grave with you,

the aesthetic enjambment. . .

A mourner is an inveterate gravedigger.

But today I realized,

walking in your shoes,

touching the ground as You 

dovetails poetically.

Poetry still has not arrived,

the shoes are here on the page,

the poem is strolling.

Guftugu/گفتگو

گفتگو 

(برتولت بریخت کی ایک نظم کا ترجمہ)

ہماری نا ختم ہونے والی بات چیت

کچھ ایسی تھی 

جیسے دو چنار کے درخت 

اور ان درختوں کے درمیان کی گفتگو 

جو کئی برسوں تک چلی تھی 

اور اب خاموش ہو گئی ہے

اب تم کیا کہتی ہو٬ کیا لکھتی ہو

میں سن کہاں پاتا ہوں 

اور نا ہی تم سن پاتی ہو 

وہ سب جو میں کہتا ہوں

میں کہ جس نے 

تمھیں اپنی بانہوں میں سلایا تھا

تمہاری زلفوں کو سنوارا تھا

میں نے ہی تمھیں

لڑنے كا فن سکھایا

اور کسی مرد سے برتنے کی روِش

اور کتابیں اور چہرے پڑھنا 

لڑنا اور آرام بھی

لیکن

اس سب کے بعد بھی

مجھے یوں لگتا ہے کہ 

کتنا سب ان کہا ره گیا 

کتنی باتیں

جو میں  کہہ نہیں پایا تم سے

اکثر میں 

رات میں جاگ اٹھتا ہوں

دم گھٹنے سے

کئی فضول باتوں پر

Guftugu

(A translation of Bertolt Brecht poem) 

Humari naa khatm hone wali baat cheet

Kuch aisi thi

Jaise dou Chinar key darkth

Aur un darkhton key darmiyaan ki guftagu

Jo Kai barsun tak chali thi

Aur ab khamosh ho gai hai

Ab tum kya kehti ho, kya likhti ho

Mein sun kahan paata hoon

Aur Naa hi tum sun paati ho

Woh sab jo mein kehta hoon

Mein ki jis ne

Tumhe apni banhoon mein sulaya tha

Tumhari zulfon ko sanwara tha

Mein ne hi tumhe

Ladne ka fan sikhaya

Aur kisi mard se baratne ki ravish

Aur kitaabein aur chehre padhna

Ladna aur aaraam bhi

Lekin

Is sab ke baad bhi

Mujhe Yun lagta hai ki

Kitna sab an-kaha reh Gaya

Kitni baatein

Jo mein keh nahi paaya tumse

Aksar mein

Raat mein jaag uthta hoon

Dum ghutne sey

Kai fazool baaton par

Khaayi / کھائی

Kitne ashiq

Is khayal ki dewaar se

Sar patakte reh gaye:

Ki kisi ko

Yunhi

Tumhare husn ka chashma

Tumhari deed ka paani

Hamesha hi sairaab karta hai -

Ki kisi ko tum

Musalsal hi

mukamal hi mayasar ho

Aur kisi ne

Tumhari deed ki khatir

Jo bejhi thi ye dou aankhein

Woh ab tak Laut kar nahi aayein

Ki judai ka na-beena daldal

Kha Gaya aankhein 

Ki aankhon ki jagah sar mein

Hai wasl ki gehri ek khaayi

Ki is khayi ke aakhri ghar mein

Koi dewar, koi dar nahi

Wahan tumhari deed tou kya

Apni zaat mayasar nahi 

کتنے عاشق

اس خیال کی دیوار سے

سر پٹکتے رہ گئے:

کہ کسی کو

یونہی

تمہارے حسن کا چشمہ 

تمہاری دید کا پانی

ہمیشہ ہی سیراب کرتا ہے -

کہ کسی کو تم

مسلسل ہی

مکمل ہی میسر ہو

اور

کس نے

تمہاری دید کی خاطر

جو بھیجی تھی یہ دو آنکھیں 

وہ اب تک لوٹ کر نہیں آئیں

کی جدائی کا نابینا دلدل

کھا گیا آنکھیں

کہ آنکھوں کی جگہ سر میں

ہے وصل کی گہری ایک کھائی

اور اس کھائی کے آخری گھر میں

کوئی دیوار' کوئی در نہیں

وہاں تمہاری دید تو کیا

اپنی ذات میسر نہیں

DREAMSCAPES

Have you ever had that dream

so sad, that you cry

waking yourself up?

I had one last night

where we couldn't meet 

yet again

for many dream years

again and again.

In many surreal restaurants

under bizarre cielings,

I searched for you

only to find myself sipping alone -

the tea served for two.

I wandered the cloudy pavements

riddled with the embers of vestigial desires.

Centuries of dreamscapes

proliferating in a moment

and in every century, every moment -

Loneliness.

Only the dream, not even the dreamer.

I cried

Waking myself up to a life

much like dreams.