Whispering Loud!

Nursing a hideous capillary burst in my left eye, I was rather struggling to monitor every activity in the examination hall when I noticed a girl fiddling with her hands in a doubtful manner. I walked toward her quietly and found a piece of crumbled paper under her answer book. Before I could ask, ‘How in the world can you read this illegible text?’ she spoke. ‘Ma’am, meri Maa mar gayi hai.’ Clenching the fist of my right hand, I wanted to knock her off and in my head I was already standing in a Bruce Lee pose. I could make at least one of her eyes look worse than my left one but an examiner is supposed to show restraint so, I didn’t punch her. Moreover, in these times, of all good deeds, self-defence is the most righteous one and therefore I decided to do myself a favour and reported the case to higher ups. However, I spent the rest of the time thinking; will we ever stop making excuses for our wrongdoings? Not in the near future, perhaps. This was Day 1 but definitely not the only ...

{Met a distressed lady recently and I wanted to sing her a song. Came home and wrote this. It is a modified version of a song 'Colours of Life', I wrote to myself last year. Modified it because, I think we all deserve a song and we should often sing it to ourselves.} You are a rainbow, don’t dress up dull Not gloomy grey, nor dark and glum. Splash some red, add a dash of blue Kiss some peach, drape a violet hue.  Be you, come rain or shine and live it bright Sway in pink chiffon and lit up the night. Be a rose a day; a tulip, another Scatter the smiles like a scent of lavender. They want you to live black and white But you are a woman, a crimson delight. You’re born a spirit of all tones and touches Break free, the heart craves velvet blushes. Your soul is not bare but decked gold Your essence is beyond price, young or old. Bear in mind, you’re the womb of life  If a shade is striped, misery be foretold A woman is when she is all her colours She will o...

Taaf yemi harduk kum pahn prazlan  Poonpirov roas chhi Bombar nazaan Hanah zard pahan yemi Bodwun yi boon’i pun Torun ti Khaam Har yi yaad paawan Syel karan zyiph gayus, wavun tulith  neu retikol Yeus sawan  laliwan oass, tem searni jigar zol Hangal, Chirr ti Kotar eass dobraan rodd Swanher ti Sabz poshun hund mondukh byol  Jodd karith zyejikh yii varasat syeen Makhmyel vaaren kuchh zaav, kongposho lidrar tsyoon Kukilyo ti Katijyo bolbosh trov, gatiryeni haba tsoong rov Tsendir ti asi rooshith beuth, asmanun  chhot rang hov Hekiah Myenith kanh seenn yi kreeth vath? Saruph ti Gonsi twopan zaagan, bathen ti baalun peth Gumun thhan, zachen tyeb dizh ti wadaan wadaan oss Zalurov zaal trov, Kashur korukh eech gaashi ros. Tsok ti tyoth tsalith, Kashir mah chi  patsh travmiz Treshi daadi dazith, nazar Das(t)gerus chus thavmiz Meyt ti gaatil iikivati watho, deen poshun manz Kasheer valov Poh pati Harich aash thavith, ...

                                                                                                                               October 21, 2016 Today, a concerned and extremely worried friend sent me a message on Facebook writing, ‘Hey, it is not over. They are searching for 40 more employees for violating service rules, please remove the posts, if any’. ‘If any?’, I wrote back. ‘There must be plenty’, I thought to myself and wrote to her too. I may not be able to answer if asked, which section of our constitution they fall in but I know the service rules and also the penalties of breaking them. However, a ‘govt. employee’ is not all I am. I am a human being, I have a p...

Today is the 38 th day of curfew in Kashmir and the Independence Day celebrations on the two sides of the line of control reinforce the seven decades old aspiration even further. We have played an audience, defiant and dynamic though, to this quirk of fate for long and are thus quite fittingly determined to rephrase our destiny. Now or never, as goes the slogan this summer. Cooped inside my house, dawdling from one website to another I came across the full text of Jawahar Lal Nehru’s ‘Tryst with Destiny’ on internet and the speech inarguably is one of the best speeches ever made in the world of politics. One cannot even think of scripting anything comparable but given that ‘independence’ is in the air, abundant and dripping, may I take the liberty of paraphrasing his ‘Tryst with Destiny’ into ours. This is not an open-letter; I abhor the culture for it has turned into an annoying trend and please, do read the original text of ‘Tryst with Destiny’. Pray the paraphrase doesn’t...

Bloody, like many in the past. Bloodiest, may be. With the midsummer blue sky as the only witness to its despair, Kashmir bleeds once again. Once again, the streets are blood-spattered and sentiments traumatized. Once again, a gruesome massacre has been carried out and the dead placed under curfew. Once again,summer smells of slaughter and, this one has been blinded too. On July 9, 2016, a leading news channel of India flashed its breaking news as, “21 die in fresh violence in Kashmir.” Eid-ul-fitr was celebrated just four days ago in the valley but that’s what the average time of peace in our ruby paradise is, if one may call it so. Weak on our knees, holding the gasps, like all the other Kashmiri families, ours too sank under shock as one of the ghastliest days of Kashmir was being relayed. Father, at his emotional high, reminiscing over the ache and agony of over 6 decades in the folds and furrows of his skin and quite annoyed by the words ‘fresh violence’, cursed Nehru...

One way or the other, Life is cruel to everyone. Few days back we had a happy dog family in our locality; a Mommy, a Daddy and 6 pretty puppies. I would notice them every evening during my post-iftar walk and it has been an absolute pleasure to watch them cuddle each other and play in each other’s embrace. I would, every day, walk with a smile on my face as I would see them dance around each other and display their love fearlessly. They made my last few evenings delightful. All of them would wag their tails fervently as the residents of the locality passed by and they would bark ferociously at the foreigners too; their kind as well as ours. I must confess that the barking sessions of parents did make me panic once or twice and I might have cursed them for making me feel uneasy. May be, I shouldn’t have. Yesterday, a car ran over the only black pup of the litter and as I stepped out for my routine walk in the evening, it was heart breaking to see them all circle around the dea...

The night does not always bring a pause. Sometimes, quite often rather, one wakes up with the residual thoughts, so clear as if the intervening night didn't exist, of the previous night’s discourse, which one might have had with self or with the like-minded. Before hitting the sack last night, I was thinking about the world famous leaders like Mandela, Gandhi and Lincoln, the bosses, the statesmen and the administrators of long-ago. While valuing the leadership qualities, the insight and the method of all these chiefs, inside my head, for a moment I wished for a life in their age. A life in the age of dignified and stately management, a life in the time in which a leader, by rectifying the mistakes of a common man, would stand as an exemplary master in front of his people. Authority, as it should be.  May be in that age my appetite for leadership would have been satiated for I would have had the best footsteps to follow. Dreams! A wish is just a wish and mostly a contrast to re...

With a few more espresso bars inaugurated this week, I wonder who these traitors are, spoiling every nook and corner of our sinless land! After all what does a Kashmiri know about a bistro or a grill? And, what pleasure can an average Kashmiri draw from reading a book on an island while he takes slow sips from his coffee mug? We aren’t that hip. We aren’t that classy. Moreover, a start- up requires courage and insight. We don’t have any, do we? So, who’s financing all these collaborators …oops! Entrepreneurs, I mean?  I am sorry all you young boys and girls, I don’t see any of you pursuing your passion or living your dream. These are such clichéd arguments. I smell rat. No, I don’t. Asides’ being torn to shreds in a decades long undeclared war between the twin nations of Nehru and Jinnah, our beloved land has mainly fallen prey to our everlasting sense of cynicism. Distrust and pessimism is an ailment that carves out flesh from the most resolute.  Since ages, we have mas...

It is his birthday tomorrow and today we had a pre-birthday father-daughter rendezvous. I and my father spent the first half of the day talking about Agha Shahid Ali and the second half in a hospital. We spotted miseries and we debated miracles; all with the same interest. I prize such days spent with him and like so many of them in the past, our today’s tête-à-tête is still running inside my head. In spite of being blessed with same age- same crazy friends for life, father still continues to be my best conversationalist buddy and the poise with which he balances his intellect with humour remains matchless. He has a profound insight of everyday life and an unparalleled art of crafting theatre out of ordinary.  Father had his bone scan today. For the past few days he has been playing week and timid, a trick to gain sympathy and thus avoid any hospice appointment.  Actually, he didn’t like the details of the scan given to him and thus he tried his best to escape it. He...

Work begins at 9 nowadays and it’s April! Every day one awakens to a gloomy morning, wondering whether the clouds intend on romancing the sky only or they wish to make some love to earth also. Blame it on the beautiful colours of beloved Earth; the clouds quite often betray the sky! Breakfast is a trivial meal as the more important task, every morning, is to decide what to wear? Oh, believe me; it takes an Einsteinian intellect to make such decisions. To be in spring and to have to choose between the woollens and the not-so-woollens is a predicament for a woman.  And, as sacrilegious as it could be, even after many reviews, we all end up in the layers of woollies. Sigh!  As if all of it isn’t enough to ruin a lady’s day, there are potholes on which we drive, vehicles, the drivers of which very seriously consider these potholes as roads and then, O Lord, there are people, the sons of Adam, the crown of the Creation...people like this man, I could have butchered today ...

There are days when you wish; you were out of work and without a roof over your head. Because, there are days when it is spring and it rains too. On such days, I am starry-eyed. And, on such days I wish to be on a hillock, wandering like a mystic. No people, no noise. I and the desolate blossoms. I and the virgin breeze. In addition, a few sips from my coffee mug and my tattered Anna Karenina in my lap should be enough. With these bare necessities, amid the spring serenity, life surely will be something like what they call ‘forever’.   There is more to this romanticism. I hurt myself last evening. During my evening walk I bumped into a guy who was so busy on his phone, probably with his beloved, that he couldn’t care less about the other mortals around him. I tripped, quite ridiculously fell on my fours and hurt my left knee. It’s bad and now, I can’t walk. So, basically, I am such a waste right now that all I can pull off is being dreamy. I can’t wa...

Symbolism. Bags of it! Like all you gorgeous ladies out there, I too woke up to many sugary sweet posts on social forum, today. A few blush-worthy messages in my inbox would have made it a divine morning if only the water-tank of my house had chosen some other day for its drying up ritual. O, yes, of all the days, today, we had no water supply in the morning and there I knew it’s my God telling me; We have scarcity of things ,theoretically as well as figuratively, so, don’t expect much from the day, Darling!   I didn’t. I never do. It is rather chic to speak and write all first-rate stuff on public forums and every dumb head has a word or two to add to join the fashion band. No harm in being good but Illusionary righteousness is sickening because the moment you step out of your house, the paradox begins to mock at you. Our reality is ugly. No skin of sham civility can change it. I was at a gov’t office today. Not a good place to be at, if you want to celebrate but, w...

Spring it is! Bouncy and crisp. Sunshine, cheerful and sparkling. The almond blossoms, as pretty as pink, Why mustn’t Cinderella dance again! Out of bed from one more winter, Her bosom rises to the sinless breeze. Pensive yet lavish like a dream, A born Eden, she fancies one more ball. The tales of oppression are no fable Her rags are real and sorrow acute. Beset with a curse, dyed in her own blood Every spring, she wakens to live some more. It is time! Tulips bejewel her emerald frock, And the falls frame glass slippers on her feet. A snug shikara is her golden carriage, And the depths of the Lake, her loyal coachmen. Ah! She dances like she has never danced before For, who knows, how distant the next spring is! Her summers are timid and autumns cold Thus, she dances like she has never danced before. Her moves in meadows, firm and tireless, Cinderella waltzes like a Queen of resilience. Her pace through Boulevard , smooth and ...