Nothing without nothingness

Passing a day without you

Is no more than walking

Into a garden without flowers

A tree without leaves

A destination without roads

A painting without colors

A book without words

A mirror without images

A country without language

A forest without trees

A desert without sand

It’s like me –

Homesick without home.

P.S.: For someone who is thousand miles away, yet not so far from me...

From December to January

I lose the track of time

I don’t remember dates now

Day passes by like a stranger

Months fly away like autumn leaves

On the cold island of December

I am waiting on the ebbing shore

For you

To bring me my January

Along with the year too.

"You"

In the long winter nights

Of loneliness

"You"

Are the only candle

I warmly dream by

Half-widow

Come back my beloved, come back!

Oh my beloved

I am full of love for you

Why do they call me your half widow?

Our pillows are full

Of your smell and my lonesome tears

My nights are full

Of your warm memories

My body is full

Of craving for your touch and sight

The tree in our lawn

Is full with fruits

On that cold snowy streets

The cat that you saved

And put inside my warm phirin

Has learned to purr now

Your gifted roses

Have spent their full fragrance

Your love-scribbled letters

Have soaked enough

Of my sobbing nights

The rose on the cup you drank from

Hasn't been watered so long

By your lovely lips

The mirror has grown old

With my face full of wrinkles

The sticks of your kangri are coming out

As if they too are seeking you like me

The clock in our room has stopped ticking

It gave in one evening

When my tears were ticking faster than its hands

Your phirin is worn out and cold

Every night when I wear it thinking of you

Come back and sew it yourself

My eyes are losing sight

I keep losing marbles you collected

For our unborn child

I plead you in the name of my unborn child

Come back and find those marbles once more

The eyes in our mohalla are no longer friendly

Come back and make them friendly again

Doctors keep asking me,

“What is your problem?”

Come back and answer them yourself

Your mother gets angry

When she doesn’t find any signs of pain

On my face

Come back so I could show my heart on my face

Come back to take care of my widowed half

My memories are bleeding in my head

My memories are bleeding in my head

Who will find me cure?

Wise, like an alchemist,

I pour Kashmir in my cup

And drink it like a medicine

I will heal in time

But then again

I think of freedom

Thus, my memories bleed in my head

Doctors have given up on me

Who will find me cure?

Foolish, like a lover,

I pour myself into your cup

And be drank like a dew

By the morning sun

But then again

You think of freedom

And my memories bleed in your head.

Letter of a half-widow to her other half

They say you have disappeared

And winter has set in my life

But I have preserved springs in my bed

The flowers on our pillows are still young

I water them with my tears

Every night

I play with the butterflies on my bedsheet

All naked and vulnerable for you

I even blush with shame

As you set your eyes on me

And write holy verses of our love

On my deserted plain body

With the tip of your tongue

I keep reading those holy verses

Over and over again

Till I fall sleep

In the mosque of your arms

POSTMORTEM REPORT OF A KASHMIRI YOUTH

“He has bruise marks all over his head

Indicating that he was thinking about freedom

At the time of his death.”

Remember me in your dreams

If you have to remember me tonight

Remember me in your dreams

Make yourself warm

In the cold December

Don’t bother about the time

I will be there

Waiting for you

At the first horizon of your first dream

Remember me

And then when you find me

Standing in cold

Rubbing my hands

To make them warm for your hands

Hold my hands as hard as you can

And never let go

Walk with me to the end of the rainbow

And I will find you a home

Full of love

Be there and remember me, forever

I will live there always

Waiting for you to dream again

But remember one thing more

Each day

Before you fall asleep

Put me in your thoughts

Like you always do

With a sweet smile on your face

Seperation

After you were gone

I folded my heart in grief

Hanged my eyes

Outside

On the branch of a tree

In your lawn

Ironed my memories

And stored myself in your attaché

Under your bed

To be opened by you

When you come back

Belief

It’s true

And it’s false

When I say

I love you

And I love you not

You believe the true part

I will disbelieve the false one.

Order and Chaos

You hugged me

And everything that measured within me

Piece by piece

Fell in their rightful place

I was no longer a puzzle to myself

I was solved, defined in my own being

Assembled like a doll house

But then you parted

And I was again immeasurable

The unsolved puzzle

Piece by piece

Scattered all along the coastline

Of my unsettled sea

Beqarari!!!

Pehley to
Aansoun ke sard hony tak
Dil sambhal jaata tha...

Aaj na aansoo sard ho rahe hain
Aur na ye kambakth dil sambhal raha hai...

Life teaches me

Life has been a good teacher and after all these years I realized that we all look for anchors...I started my life with the first anchor of breath and my last anchor will be death and the real purpose of life is to find other anchors in between...the best one I found is LOVE - even in each moments I breathe and I die.

Aao mere khwaboon ki barishon

Aaj meri rooh pe baras jao

Mera wajood ko reza reza bigao

Mujhe apne naam se bhi aaj paak kardo

Bus aajao, jald aajao!!!

Mujhse wo rang nahi utrey ga...

Ek choti si masoom ladki

Khushboo ki dukaan se

Khushboo ki khali sheeshiyan

Haath phelaye maang rahi thi

Unhe paa kar

Kitni masoom hasraton se

Khool khool kar soong kar

Apne maeley ad nangey badan par

Kissi dulhan ki tarha mal rahi thi

Aur khil khila kar

Apni hasraton ki khushboo pa kar

Masoomiyat se khush ho rahi thi

Mai uski hansi ki khushboo mai

Der tak masroor

Khada dekh raha tha

Aur wo mujhe dekhte dekh kar

Mere paas aakar kehne lagi

“Saheb, kuch paisa do na,

Mehndi lagani hai.”

Maine apni jeeb se

Kuch sikkey nikal kar

Uskey mehndi se khaali hathoon mai

Uski mehndi ki tamana ke naam kar diye

Mujhe nahi maloom

Uski mehndi lagi ki nahi

Par uski awaaz ki khushboo

Ki mehndi ka rang

Mere wajood pe chad gaya tha

Wo rang aaj tak nahi utra hai…

Wo rang aaj tak nahi utra hai…

Social Networking

I don’t love you because you like it on facebook

I love you beyond my update status

You can’t log in to my network

You can’t google my love

Or find me just a click away

You can’t define me

With your copied brainy quotes

My love has its own Wikipedia

Neither will you find me in your chats

Or see a glimpse of me on youtube

My love has its own eyes

Its own landscape

I don’t love you

Because you can poke me

Or tweet me day and night

I might not be always linkedin

But I have myspace

In your lovely heart

Which is tagged

To my heart, forever.

Childhood

I remember my childhood

When I used to be my playground

When I used to be my game

When nothing bored me

And happiness was never to be sought

It was.

"Tumhe ab bhi pyaar hai mujhse?"

Mai ghar pohancha to

Ghar ki saari cheezain

Khamoosh thi

Sivai aek kurse key

Jiss pe tumne aakhri baar

Baith kar

Apni nam ankhon aur

Umeed se pur aawaaz mai

Mujhse poocha tha

Tumhe ab bhi pyaar hai mujhse?

I have been cheating sadness long enough

I have been cheating sadness long enough
With all the tricks and manipulations
That life taught me
On the sharp edges of immanent experiences
Now I am done
Exhausted of all my cleverness, my love
Do come back
To cheat sadness forever.

“Mad: Needs guidance at home.”

Fill in the blanks
Was the only line I could read
Written on the paper
In the last exam I wrote
All my blanks filled by you
I filled in all the blanks
With your name, my love
That was the only word
I could remember
Later, I wasn’t surprised
When my progress report card said,
“Mad: Needs guidance at home.”

What clock read is not time.

The clock on my empty wall
Is as restless and anxious
As I am
It keeps meticulous records
Of all the moments
Of all the minutes
Of all the hours
That you spend away from me
I wish it stops someday soon, forever!

Gandhi Jayanti

Bapu, you are no more real
You used to walk real
With blood and flesh
On this kind earth
Your name was real
Your words were real
But now we have come
Far away from you
You are a real illusion
In the deserts of democracy
This country has grown
Bigger than you
It is shining
Better than the coins
Where your image is engraved
By a destitute
Who lost his mind
Because of choiceless starvation
And not because of satyagarh
Your country has produced
Innumerable Gandhis
Whose fast of poverty
Never ends
And whose charkha of enforced starvation
Never stops.
Long back we handed you over
To the silent resonating eternity
Your echoes are still haunting
This country of poor
And only poor
In their endless pains.
I hope you finally learned
The lessons from your monkeys
You don’t listen
You don’t see
Your don’t say
I hope you live
In the bliss of ignorance
Of the country you dedicated yourself to
Bapu, I wish you Happy Birthday!

“You have enforced me to disappear”

They say you have disappeared
An enforced one

But why do I find you everywhere?
I find you every morning
When I open my eyes
In the intense smell
Of that pungent oil
Which you always wore
With rural arrogance

I find you in your cold room
Near your desk
In your hasty scribbled notes
You used to make
While staring at the black and white picture
Of my mother when she was in prime

I find you in the lawn
Among the whispering flowers
You used to tender
And stubborn weeds
You used to gently weed out

I find you in my mother’s eyes
When she tries to hide
Her real tears
With the tears coiling down her dry cheeks
While cutting onions for our dinner
Which doesn’t taste same
As it used to when you were here

I find you in that ancient field
Where a Chinar stands even now
Like a testimony of your presence
Under whose shade
You and your friends
Used to smoke
The smoke is still entangled
Between its labyrinth branches

I find you in those folklores
Which you used to narrate to me
Every night
In which moon was my personal football
And the enormous vastness of space
My playground
You gifted to me

I find you in the long pauses
And ominous sighs of my sister
When your disappeared name echoes
Suddenly, in the ancient tales
Of my grandmother

I find you ominously omnipresent
Everywhere
I don’t believe that you have disappeared
In fact, they should look for me
I am lost somewhere, everywhere
With your presence everywhere
I am enforced to disappear.

ODE TO THE MASS GRAVES

Why do you mourn us
Don’t you see
We are united now
Unlike you.

I, for one, in life
Could never unite with my father
Whose kindness meant freedom to me
Or with my brother
With whom I had shared
All my games and playgrounds
Or my neighbor
With whom smile was my only exchange
Or that strangely odd looking boy
Who shared same feeling as mine
For my beloved.

I could never imagine unity
When I was alive.
But we are united now
In our death and in a grave
On one side
I am merging into my brother
Ribs crushing into ribs
On the other side
The strangely odd looking boy
Is fusing into my heart
And my skull is snuggled
Into my father’s hollow rib cage
My feet are though
Somewhere lost in the ground
For if find them
I would come out of my grave
To tell you
You should mourn yourselves
Not us anymore.

You live in the living grave of your world
Of disunity
We live our life in death
Of unity
In body and in spirit.

Metamorphosis

How do I make sense of world

When you are not around

Everything is strange

Nothing works in its proper way

Morning doesn’t come on time

Night falls asleep

Breathing becomes endless

Dreams become rare

Life becomes a foolish habit

Living become a bad joke

Sitting, standing and all overt gestures

All become mundane

When I speak to the world

Words become banal

Truth becomes a fiction

Fiction becomes a prosaic art

Love become a passion

Need becomes its face

Hope, its guardian

Destiny endless wait

In your absence, my love

Nothing remains same

I become a stranger

To my own name

I find myself all alone

I find myself all alone

In your sweet reminiscences

I keep looking at my empty room

Devoid of all the pictures

Of nature and people

That could have been there

Had you chose them

For my forlorn walls

Then I look at my furniture

Which is so uninteresting

Devoid of any marks of wearing

That would have been there

Had you sit on them so long

Then I look at my whimpering mobile

It used to whine again and again

Like my heart beat

My heart has not been beating

From so many ages now

The only thing I am left with

Is my failing past

Which is like an old temple or a mosque

Deserted in the middle of dense jungle

I visit it quite often

To find my God there!