Shahid stopped
at the Gates of Paradise
and found it had
no post-office.
He travelled back
to New York
through New Delhi
and Boston,
then, from atop
the Twin-Towers
declared
the magic words of
a poet.
The beloved
witness saw:
The army trucks
whining past the high-way,
puffing, fretting
and fuming,
dodging the
grenades and the IED’s
while the Valley
was de-weeded
through Kalashnikovs,
loaded with Jehad
and what they understood of the Holy Verses,
through letters
of twenty-four hour deadlines
dispatched in a country without a post-office,
through calls
from loud-speakers blaring from atop the Minarets,
through streams of
cold blood
frozen into icicles
trickling into droplets of death,
through decrees
scribbled on the inside of a
cigarette box.
And, as terror
mounted on stallions of fear,
the German Gestapo
reincarnated
in Jehadi uniforms.
Shahid must have
seen this
(as true witnesses
do):
the crackdowns,
the missing
lists,
the mothers whose sons didn’t return ,
the whip of the
goons
unleashed by the Occupying
Forces.
Shahid must have
seen it, seen it all.
in the land of his
longing .
Sarvanand Premi,
the poet from
Anantnag,
received the
honours with bullets
for dreaming a freedom
not as good as what
Shahid dreamt.
Shahid must have
seen the rape of the hounded tribe
as the last of
them left the Valley
fearful of those
who swore by freedom.
Shahid must have
seen from Earth to sky;
poets see it all.
They are no
step-mothers of Truth,
they do not seek repose in laps
which snatch the
terrified from theirs.
True poets grow
on terrains of
tear and torment.
Shahid must have
seen it, seen it all
from atop the
twin-towers:
The fate of a land
where people prayed five time a day;
Where leaders, at the slightest hint,
recalled and recited from the Holy Book
while making houses
while making houses
where bridges were meant to span
or schools were aimed to be;
Where beggars had bank accounts
and the rich died in penury;
Where land was pushed to the landless
who passed on their labours
to the labourers from Bihar;
Where young boys, donning the white caps of the faithful,
issued receipts
to fund the pulpits for the Muezzin’s
calls,
that directed to pick Smart Bombs and Smart Guns,
to kill ingeniously
on the sly
at the call from the Land of the Pure
against the Infidels, the Mukhbirs
and, of course,
the Occupying Forces
raised in a land:
Where subversion of a vision of a Global Village and
disdain of the dream of a Common Umbrella
flourish freely;
Where avarice, embezzlement and God
are worshipped in one voice;
Where men aspire immortality
and hate those of lowly birth;
Where free pens and voices of high reason
whet the appetite of enemies;
Where gun-toting accused
walk leisurely behind Court Rooms;
Where pot-bellied prisoners send their guards on errands
and jailors accommodate and associate;
Where truth measured by numbers
and a lie uttered by a
multitude
becomes the voice of God;
After used ballots and bullets,
after the consecration of new idols of
strife
the Avatars of avarice,
the Dons who don the dress of the Mahatma,
proclaim sacrifices in public
and pass parcels in private
heralding an army of leeches
who suck in public
from across every table of the State.
In this land of absolute merchants,
in the bazaar of competing religions,
people wallow in dust and decay
while chanting verses of eternity.
In this bizarre landscape of colossal neglect
beaten out of shape,
gods and goddesses
are shuffled across
over a crescendo of deafening pop-hits
in fierce processions, by night and day,
over river-banks and lake-shores drenched in slime,
across gutters chocked in plastics,
overseen by Sahibs and Babus
moving in cavalcades,
burning fuel and making mansions,
not all from their allocations,
while busy executives,
business goons and tycoons
and their wives,
after having sent their sons to
the US,
drive across garbage piles
on roads of madness
to plush interiors, malls and multiplexes,
unmindful of the pot-holes
that kill everyday.
Shahid must have
seen it, seen it all,
from atop the
twin-towers
as he lifted the
Valley of self-fulfilling tears
from the pits of
decadence and dust
on the broad
shoulders of his poetic fortitude
into the portals of
a hallowed revolution
trampled under the
boots of the Occupiers.
Shahid must have
seen it,
as Lal Ded or Nund Resh would have seen it,
seen it all :
The Infidels
of the Valley
fleeing across the
tunnel
with broken trunks
and forlorn homes.
Their shadows
becoming as murky as the smoke
that lifted their
hearths into heavens
while their
well-meaning neighbours
showed them the
hidden fortune of their flight.
While narrating
the sordid stories of their own plight,
they helped them
sell their lands
to them
at one-tenth the
price.
The Infidels, like true infidels,
failed even to
acknowledge
this act of faith.
The fodder sent
from across mountains and seas
piled in orchards
and paddy fields
to foster the
revolution of the faithful
commanded from the
fortress across the line
which
separates the pure from the impure.
Shahid must have
seen it, seen it all
as the deathly
dance of Karbala
descended once
again
at the Gates of
Paradise
in the camps
of the Infidels,
the Mukhbirs and the Occupying Forces.
And while History
receded into the dustbin of time
Shahid, much
before the Judgement Day,
got a glimpse of
that what he didn’t see
At the Gates of
Paradise.
© Ranjan Nehru
"Shahid must have seen it, seen it all
ReplyDeletefrom atop the twin-towers..."
A fan of Agha Shahid Ali, Ranjan Nehru was dismayed by the way the separatists appropriated Shahid's poetic legacy... so much so that now former militants preside over events in honour of the great poet. Ranjan felt a need to convey that it is not just post-offices that are missing "in the land of his longing" but an entire community...
However, Ranjan was reluctant to publish this poem, which he considers bitter. But after I persisted, he has allowed me to share it for the first time in public domain.
Bitter and true. Somebody goota tell the other side to make history look straight
ReplyDelete