MY POEM, '"THE NIGHT OF PARTING,1990"

                                                                         

 

( The Night Of Parting )

It was four-thirty in the morning,
Kashmir asleep,
Buried under ice and fear.
January held its breath.
The sky was pitch dark,
As if even dawn was afraid to arrive.

Not loud,

A feeble knock at the door,
As if sound itself could betray us.
The taxi driver did not call our names.
He did not need to.
We had been awake since three,
Listening to time drip like water from a cracked roof.

 

This was not a journey.
This was an ending.

We left behind
Our names,
Our addresses,
Our temples,
The walls that knew our laughter,
The thresholds that had learned our footsteps.
We left behind
Gods wrapped in fear
And memories too heavy to carry.

“Leave Kashmir, ” they said.
“Leave if you want to live.”

Our names hung
On the list outside the mosque,
Like verdicts,
Like graves dug in advance.

My brother worked for BSNL.
They said we owned a wireless set for prying.
They said we were Indian agents,
Spies, informers,
Enemies of faith,

Enemies of land.

We were none of those things.
We were only Pandits.

Mother stepped out first,
Her shawl trembling in the cold,
Her eyes searching the dark
For a future that had no shape.

Then came Raja,
Our neighbour,
Mohammad Sidiq’s wife,
Sondhar Ded’s daughter-in-law,
My mother’s third daughter
After Suneeta and Lalita.

She held my mother
As if holding a dying homeland.
She sobbed, not loudly,
“Bhabi,” she said,
“My parental home is dead now.”

She kissed my mother’s hand,
Pressed it to her forehead,
And called her daughters close.

“Afroza, hug Bhabi.
Sarah, come—hug Bhabi.”

Her voice cracked
Like frozen earth.

“You leave.
Leave now and save your lives.
Wherever you go,
May Allah keep you safe.”

She paused,
Then whispered like a confession:

“For me, Bhabi,
You were the cool shade
Of a majestic Chinar tree.
I will miss you.”

Fear returned to her eyes.

“Go, go before this rascal Mohammad Sidiq wakes up.
He follows the Mujahids.
He says Pandits should go to hell.
He says no connection with you people.”

She pushed us gently
Towards the waiting taxi,
As if pushing us
Across a border of blood.

“Leave me to Allah’s care,” she cried.
“May Allah ruin the families
Of those who drove you from your home.
I wish I could be born again
To repay your kindness.”

Her voice chased us
As we walked away.

“Leave, Bhabi…
Leave… leave… leave…”

The taxi driver lifted our two bags,
All that remained of a lifetime.
He spoke in whispers:

“Come quickly.
Do not speak outside.
People will go to the mosque soon.
I will be noticed.”

Fear sat beside us
As the taxi moved.

Across Pampore’s saffron fields,
Once purple with fragrance,
We saw convoys of pain:
Trucks, taxis, families,
Pandits packed with silence,
Moving towards Jammu,
Toward exile,
Toward the unknown.

Highways flooded with sorrow.
Faces hollow,
Eyes asking roads
Where they were being taken.

We were not travelling.
We were being uprooted.

That morning,
We did not knock on doors anymore.
We knocked on
Misery.
Suffering.
Pain.

And they opened.

 ( Avtar Mota)

PS

BSNL stands for Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, the public sector telecommunication giant of yesteryears. 

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.