SONGS BENEATH A LOST SKY'( Exile and Longing )......A collection of 36 Poems in English.
Published in 2026 and released worldwide in March 2026, the book is available in India at Amazon, Flipkart, and Notion Press at the following links, respectively:-
In worldwide markets, the Book is available at Amazon
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A review of this poetic collection says this :
"Avtar Mota’s Songs Beneath a Lost Sky is not merely a collection of poems but an act of remembrance and moral testimony. Comprising thirty-six poems shaped by the displacement of Kashmiri Pandits after 1990, the book preserves lived history through restrained yet piercing lyricism. Mota does not aestheticise suffering; instead, he insists on a witness.
Comprising thirty poems shaped by exile, cultural erasure, and historical trauma, the book stands as a poetic archive of the Kashmiri Pandit experience after 1990. These poems do not attempt to aestheticise suffering or dilute its sharpness through metaphor alone. Instead, they insist on a witness. They remember what history has tried to forget and articulate what politics has rendered inconvenient. In doing so, Mota situates poetry not as ornament, but as moral testimony. Poems such as “The Night of Parting, 1990” and “The Day of Our Exile” capture history through intimate detail—an early-morning knock, hurried departures, abandoned temples. Notably, Mota avoids communal simplification; figures like Raja, the compassionate neighbour, affirm his humanism. Exile in Jammuemerges as prolonged indignity rather than a single event. Heat, deprivation, and bureaucratic neglect reveal displacement as erosion of dignity and identity. Yet cultural memory remains indestructible. Rivers, festivals, and sacred geography—especially the Vitasta—become living repositories of belonging.
At the heart of this collection lies a central wound: the forced displacement of Kashmiri Pandits from their ancestral homeland. Yet the book resists being read solely as “exile poetry” in the narrow sense. It reaches far beyond reportage or grievance. Mota’s strength lies in his ability to fuse personal memory with civilisational consciousness, turning individual loss into a collective historical lament. The poems operate on multiple registers: emotional, cultural, philosophical, and metaphysical, making Songs Beneath a Lost Sky both intimate and expansive.The title itself is emblematic. “Songs” imply continuity, voice, and survival, while the “Lost Sky” signals dispossession on a cosmic scale. This is not just the loss of land or shelter, but the loss of an entire moral and cultural horizon. The sky: symbol of protection, order, and belonging, has vanished, yet the songs persist beneath it. Poetry, in Mota’s vision, becomes what survives when everything else is taken away. The opening poem, “Tonight’s Music,” sets the tone for the collection. The silence of untuned instruments, the absence of Raag, and the dispersing audience become metaphors for cultural rupture. Music here is civilisation itself, its grammar forgotten, its listeners scattered, its masters silenced. The poem’s quiet despair announces what the reader will encounter throughout the book: not spectacle, but restraint; not shouting, but controlled grief. Mota understands that some losses are too deep for rhetoric.
The emotional range of the collection is wide. While grief and resentment dominate, there are moments of tenderness, nostalgia, and philosophical reflection. Poems like “And Then Arrived the Warm Sun”, “ The Snowfall “, and “Journey: Birth–Youth–Old Age” reveal the poet’s sensitivity to everyday life and cyclical time. These pieces remind the reader that even within histories of rupture, ordinary human emotions, love, ageing, and parental bonds continue to assert themselves.”
Some Poems From the Book.
(1)
(In Exile, Mother Missed Her Shadipora Prayag)
Mother used to say:
“When I am gone,
Take what remains of me to Shadipora Sangam,
Where the Sindhu stream joins the Vitasta River,
Where our dead have been sleeping since eternity.
That is where your father waits.”
She said,
“After this long exile,
Only there can I speak to them.
Only there can I listen.
Let me stay hidden beneath the current,
Unseen,
Unnoticed.”
After exile,
She spoke often of the cold waters of the Sindhu stream,
White with snowmelt,
Running through the Ganderbal valley,
The mere mention of which brought a visible joy
To her otherwise pensive face.
She remembered that water,
Once flowing through the taps of Rainawari.
For her, this Sindhu stream water was Amrita,
Not because it promised immortality,
But because she had drunk it
As a baby,
As a young girl,
As a married woman,
As a housewife.
It lived in her blood.
It was her first belonging.
She died far from that remembering,
At sixty-six,
Her body thinning quickly after the 1990s,
In the heat and dust of exile,
Through the daily humiliations of water scarcity in Jammu,
Through the long feeling of being rendered irrelevant.
She lost her voice,
Then her authority,
Then even the weight of her own name.
We could not take her to Shadipora Sangam.
The confluence had learned the language of terror.
The waters had learned blood.
It had become a playground for those who perfected cruelty upon
innocents.
So we carried her elsewhere.
Her ashes touched the Chanderbhaga at Akhnoor,
The Askini River of the Vedas,
A living archive of India’s spiritual and historical journey,
Ice-cold,
Authentic,
Sparkling,
Yet, alien to her.
The river received her
Without question.
She must have wept
Inside that water.
She must have called us traitors.
But I know this:
My father rose from his waiting at Shadipora Prayag.
The ancestors, too, gathered their silences
And went to Trimmu Sangam in Jhang
To meet the new arrival,
Their own Bentathi,
Kaki to some,
Bhabi to others.
Trimmu, the sangam where the Vitasta River
Meets the Chanderbhaga River,
Where rivers forget partitions,
Where ashes do not know borders,
Where ashes cannot read maps of hatred.
Where every banishment is undone.
(Avtar Mota)
(2)
(A Day of June 1990 in the Tented Colony of The Exiled Pandits)
In the sweltering heat of Jammu's June,
Bansi Lal sleeps inside his tent without a fan,
Sweating yet snoring,
While the world outside is busy and engaged.
Perhaps he has nothing to do;
His bank accounts have not been transferred yet,
His children have no school to go to,
The water tanker from PHE didn't arrive today.
No salary,
No office,
Nothing in the bank,
Sleep comes without effort.
Lakshmi Nath died yesterday from heatstroke,
Rupawati died after being stung by a deadly snake,
Death has rituals,
The dead need space to mourn them,
And rituals don't know harsh weather.
Pinkoo is shivering with a high fever,
His mother doesn't know what Malaria is.
The sun rains fireballs from the sky
As some politician comes in a Jeep,
He distributes pamphlets, and the speaker blares:
"Desh ke gadhaaron ko
Jail mein bhejo saaron ko"
And tents don't have windows,
The residents just listen to this noise,
And stay inside.
Unafraid of heatstroke,
The greedy brokers from Kashmir
Move through the tented colony
With deceit and treacherous intentions,
Seeking power of attorney from the exiled
And hapless victims to grab their properties for peanuts.
Greed is a chameleon;
It visits its victims with gifts that they miss,
A bunch of nadru and some green leafy haak,
With enough of saam, daam,dhand and bhed.
Tarsem, the vegetable seller, drags his cart
Through the rugged and rough path inside the colony.
He cries," kadam, nadru, haak’
He knows he will sell everything in one round.
The vegetables that the hapless consume
Don’t need special soil, seasons or manure to grow.
The Relief Tehsildar and his Naib move through the tented colony,
They talk to some young women,
Making promises of green pastures.
The women look disdainfully at both,
And spit at them in anger as they go back inside their tents.
The Katha Upanishad says,
"Suffering puts you on the path of Sat-karma (righteous deeds) ",
And wolves don't always succeed.
Forgetting their Shiva,
Every day, the exiled now pray to the Vedic gods;
Indira for early Rain,
Surya for relief from the blazing sun,
Vayu for some cool breeze,
Varuna for shelter and refuge,
Mitra for being kind and just,
And Ushas for dispelling darkness.
(Avtar Mota)
(3)
( To Albert Einstein )
If you are a gem born of eternity,
I am the dust that remembers the feet that walked over it.
If you are a mountain carrying the sky,
I am the trembling pebble at your feet.
My smallness cannot climb your vastness,
Cannot touch your towering mind,
Not by distance,
Not by language,
Not by any measure this world allows.
And yet I have to say this to you;
Across centuries and silences,
One wound beats the same in us both.
You were torn from the soil that named you,
Driven from the home that shaped your breath.
I, too, walk with a homeland folded like a scar inside my chest.
But exile is the same cold night whether it falls on a giant or on the
smallest soul.
So, I speak to you not as an equal,
But as one broken compass to another,
Both of us still pointing, endlessly,
Towards a home that no longer exists.
(Avtar Mota)
(4)
( And Then Arrived the warm Sun )
Some skilful washerman
Cleansed the sky to its purest blue.
When the sun’s rays kissed the earth,
Life stirred and warmed once more.
Our heavy lunch made us languid,
And here I lie in the warmth,
A siesta under the gentle sun.
……..…….And then arrived the warm sun.
Snow from tin roofs
Slid down with the thawing warmth.
The courtyard overflowed with water,
The fallen snow stacks blocked the lane.
Should I dry the Kangri charcoal now?
Perhaps it will give warmth afterwards.
‘What use is exercise if all turns to ash at the end?’
“Tip Tip ” fell tiny, melting drops from the roof,
And this “Joff Joff” of wading through the water,
A night-long “Dhroff Dhroff ” of snow crashing from roofs,
Shaking the houses all around.
Behold! Here comes the dried vegetable seller,
The smoked fish seller,
The Harissa (mutton steamed to pulp with herbs) seller, and
The Shikar (flying bird) seller.
“Come, Pandit Ji,
Yes, I am late this time.
Come, Khwaja Sahib,
Buy a Seer for your family.”
……... ……And then arrived the warm sun.
What a glorious sunshine today!
See! There plies a Tonga as well.
Who crosses the nearby bridge?
What?
What?
Ah! My beloved father.
There he comes to my doorstep,
Driven by his love for Saiba,
Here he is.
Alas! My in-laws,
Just strangers, it seems.
What a life!
Always busy in the kitchen,
Cooking, washing, cleaning,
Forsaking the comfort of sleep,
What did I gain from all this?
A heart heavy with unspoken grief,
Lampoons and sharp words from my mother-in-law,
The fury of my sister-in-law.
Was marriage only about this?
…………………………. And then arrived the warm sun.
My loving father,
Again at my doorstep;
I shall hide my tears,
Veil my suffering,
What else can I do?
Will he step inside my in-laws’ house?
Will he climb the stairs?
A new Pheran for Saiba he brought,
A new suit for me as well,
And yet, oh how my heart aches to see him,
Wearing torn shoes.
What can I offer him in return?
Let his love guard me through all time!
Let him live long for my dear mother!
O Lord, hear this small prayer.
Placing his hand gently on my head,
He comforts me softly, saying:
“Come, someday, that way,
Visit your parental home too.
Let truth and simplicity be your companions,
My love,
My darling daughter.
These days will change for the better,
Do not worry,
Your dreams and desires
Will surely take shape.
May this little Saiba live long!
To bring comfort and joy to your life.”
…………………….. And then arrived the warm sun.
(Avtar Mota )
(5)
( Homeland )
When I was young,
Father once said this to me,
“Son, remember this truth of life:
A child's growth, like a flower, needs
The nourishment of mother's tender love alone.
A young man's dreams, ambitious, and free,
Require the fuel of money's golden might.
And when life's autumn leaves begin to fall,
A person needs a hand that will not let go.
A companion's presence is the heart's last light at that time.
Unlucky, indeed, are those who miss these precious gifts,
At life's appointed time.”
I believed him,
Until 1990 arrived.
Until my homeland was torn from my arms
And we were driven into the heat and dust of distant plains,
Where memories burned hotter than the sun,
And exile settled deep in our bones.
Then I learned what father never knew.
A child needs a homeland
Before he knows his mother’s name.
A man needs a homeland
Before he learns the value of money.
And in old age,
When strength fades,
When faces blur,
When even companionship grows silent,
One needs nothing
But the soil that remembers his footsteps.
For homeland is the first lullaby,
The last prayer,
The breath between birth and death.
(Avtar Mota)
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\.
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