there’s rules for everything.
when I was a kid,
I was taught to say
‘please and thank you’,
say ‘Ji’ instead of ‘what’,
but not to sound like a ****.
I never liked speaking at all
whether it was in English
or in strained Mirpuri.

my lips tripped,
stuck,
tongue stripped
of ability
to make anything but
pathetic mumbling,
a few sounds trapped
in the space
where everyone seemed to
unconsciously congregate.

I remember the first day of primary school,
in an all-white neighbourhood,
hearing boys say ‘what’, so
I told them you had to say ‘Ji’.
I remember the first day of high school,
hearing people speaking their dialect without strain,
but that space didn’t belong to me.

Now I’m up to my second 1st day of sixth form
and still I haven’t met anyone
stuck in the gap between ‘Ji’ and ‘what’.

Walking under the quite Chinar trees,
Suddenly a leaf of it hit my forehead,
As I grabbed it in my hands, let's my mind freeze,
I remembered that day when I was going to bed.

The time felt so familiar,
I was a little kid,
Playing with kids all so similar,
The weather was peaceful.

Next day the riots break,
People shooting others like a freak,
The war was not among angel and demons,
It was among religions.
This led to our families heartbreak,
And we left Kashmir,
As in our mind was a crack.

I bought a young Chinar plant,
But was too young to understand,
That the plants need a perfect weather to implant.
Those small little leaves withered,
And all I did was shattered.

The only desire I'm my young mind
Was to have my own house.
With a yellow Chinar in my home
In winters, and myself sitting
Inside that tree in blanket
Like a mouse.

Didn't i do right by pretending 'alright'?
Didn't i hold a sea of tears?
Shouldn't you appreciate this art of mine?
Haven't I averted a stormy flood?

Am not i hiding the wounds grave?
Don't i smile amid extreme pain?
Haven't i grown very skillful?
shouldn't you really applause for me?

Isn't it better to bear all alone?
Shouldn't i request them not to bother?
Am not i averting the mockery of my heart?
Don't i recognize the fake sympathies?

Don't my blames hit me straight back?
Didn't i let people spoil it all?
Isn't it maddening to regret all the time?
Haven't i waited for the doubts to grow?

Sound of sea gull
Diving into the dal

The sound of fisherman
Shouting greetings to one another
      
 The smell of lotus
The sight of blue sky,
The feel of hot sun
   Searches None!!!
The sparrows saunter   Everything looks Canvas of painter
The Cuckoo Ready to call
  Wakeup it's Time for all

why do men die for other men ?
what compels them to give up their lives for the lives of their fellow men ?

is it love ? is it duty ? or is it just plain madness ? is it that bond of blood ? or a promise to be better ? or is it simply what being a human is ?


the same men capable of destroying a million lives in pursuit of their own ideology ? the same men who for the purpose of their own greed and need can ignore the very definitions of civility and liberty and justice.


can we still call them men ?


what is happening at this hour in this nation, a nation which is thousands of years old and in making; isn't different from what has happened in the past and unfortunately that is going to happen in the unsuspecting future.

people are turning to an ideology that not only imprisons the free bird in the sky, but also retaliates if it so chooses to lay on a different branch.

diversity isn't celebrated anymore, but rather is frowned upon by the masses, who believe that past holds no relevance over the future.

acceptance, and the very creed upon which the great men who came before us, and made us who we are today - their legacy and wisdom is being demolished, like cards in the winds; and just like the structures of the ancient, for they no longer are painted with the colours we are familiar with today.


sheep and wolves alike, are being chased by the blood hounds, cornering every whisper with words of the system, a system that has been diseased from the inside, infecting the very veins of this great nation that has stood the test of age and it's many a poisons for millennia and more.


bit by bit the great walls of knowledge and of the enlightened spirits are being razed down by a mere fool in different costumes, performing in a circus build upon the ashes of the innocent and the innocence of the communities that now long for blood.


the very nature of this great and grave divide, is unnatural, passed down by the same set of hands that once pulled the chains and carried with them - forcefully, a plight of millions, suppressed and then set aside fanatically, all in the name of a devotional creed.

lizards in boxes pretending to be voices of the free and humane, casting their spells on the fragile and a blind audience, numb by all the back and forth between the gods, and as always, only the peasant suffers.


how many more homes must vanish before we realise there's no magic in the disappearing of colours, and the despairing remains of the one's gone, painted across the streets in black and white, begging for somebody to give them their proper funeral.

it is men who take life, animals don't **** for their sins, they never have, for they don't know what it's like to be tamed by fire.

they'd rather burn, than become more like us.

maybe that tells it all, and maybe that is why, the devil may have horns and hoofs, but it never haunts and hunts the wild.


we are what we love, but we become who we hate, always - in the end, until something worse comes around to make things better.

Now I can breath in the valley air,
Sans the fear and despair,
Though I have never been to
the scrumptious valley fair.

Stories of the turmoils,
Bloodshed and the toils,
Now I can see the sun
rising from horizon of scare.

Lofty and lushly I hear,
Chinar trees sear,
Blood red, mauve, yellow leaves,
allegorical, the bruise heal.

Insurgence has met its expiration,
Reverent, stands the nation,
And now after the tremulous affair
Let's breath in the valley air.

Bostful, the national pride,
Paradoxical waft shall end,
And as a nation, we stand,
To breath in the valley air.