Touching the ground on which I put the first shaky footsteps,
\nSeeing the majestic contours of the undulating skyline,
\nWhich my eyes had never tired to range,
\nBack in Kashmir, I feel the echo of my genesis –
\nAn expatriate\u2019s answered prayers.<\/p>\n
Buried here lie the pristine years of my childhood,
\nWhen wonder turned into thought,
\nDesires into dreams,
\nThe visions was uncluttered,
\nAnd conflict took root.<\/p>\n
Does a man owe something to the land of his birth,
\nOr is it his insecurity that binds him to his roots?
\nOr is it all an alluring angle of the architecture of emotion,
\nOr simply an elemental pull to gravitate to one\u2019s origin?
\nIf child is the father of man, then what is growing up all about?<\/p>\n
Unblemished by the coarseness of life,
\nUnmarred by the waywardness of the world,
\nReposed in the frozen perspective of time,
\nStill gleaming lie the first experiences of life:<\/p>\n
The integrity of self,
\nThe uniqueness of the individual and the brotherhood of mankind,
\nThe uncomplicatedness in human relationships,
\nThe simplicity of understanding,
\nThe unquestioned joy of living,
\nThe clarity of the way ahead,
\nJust being, not becoming.<\/p>\n
We go back to the roots,
\nTo replenish the vision and the spirit we have lost,
\nTo regain our identity and reclaim our history,
\nTo reset the balance between nature and mind,
\nTo feel an element of the universal spacetime.<\/p>\n
But the chilling vision shattered the trip down the childhood:
\nKashmiris living the fossilized glory of their past,
\nApathy their unshakable creed,
\nCynicism the only energetic hope,
\nLiving between tyranny and anarchy of political pendulum.<\/p>\n
Walking down the desolate ruins of Srinagar\u2019s streets,
\nShapeless stretches of thoughtless construction,
\nChaotic services and nightmarish traffic,
\nWhere time has frozen in the inner city,
\nAnd darkness envelopes the winter months.<\/p>\n
Plundered, ravaged, and defiled through ages,
\nBy its soulless bandit rulers,
\nNeglected eternally by its crass inhabitants,
\nTo wither slowly in the irreversible arrow of time,
\nThis bounteous gift of nature, Kashmir,
\nMoans in pains unnameable,
\nIts soul heaving with curse eternal
\nFor its unworthy sons.<\/p>\n
The clandestine evil schemes of 80\u2019s
\nHatched in our neighbor country
\nCoalesced into one infernal insane fire in \u201989,
\nDestroying the finely woven culture of a millennia in the valley,
\nDisturbing the tranquility of a million years among the mountains.<\/p>\n
A friend turned into a murderer,
\nA neighbor into an arsonist;
\nA community acquiesced to become an army.
\nAn angelic valley became a death valley \u2013
\nAll in the name of God and religion.<\/p>\n
We do not know where to begin anew \u2013
\nEven, if we should begin at all,
\nTo resume God\u2019s work,
\nTo revive the spontaneous sparkling smile
\nOn the faces of a thousand gloomy children,
\nTo let the lotuses grow unperturbed.<\/p>\n
We do not know what to do \u2013
\nOur enemy\u2019s brutality has choked our spirit,
\nTheir hatred has tormented our soul.
\nIn one cataclysmic insanity
\nThey have destroyed the Kashmir built by Gods.<\/p>\n
But Kashmir always beckons me to homecoming,
\nA quivering echo of a distant thunder,
\nA withered glow on the horizon,
\nRemnant of a fire kindled a long time ago,
\nIt will remain my tombstone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-971","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-poems"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stagingserver3.com\/Maharaj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stagingserver3.com\/Maharaj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stagingserver3.com\/Maharaj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stagingserver3.com\/Maharaj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stagingserver3.com\/Maharaj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stagingserver3.com\/Maharaj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stagingserver3.com\/Maharaj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stagingserver3.com\/Maharaj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stagingserver3.com\/Maharaj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}