(In Exile, Mother Missed Her Shadipora Prayag)
Mother used to say:
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)
PS
The Sindhu stream is not to be
confused with the mighty Indus River (also known as Sindh), which originates
from Mansarovar in the Tibetan Plateau and flows through Ladakh before moving
into Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan. The Indus River is over 2,000 miles long,
flowing through Tibet, India, and Pakistan. The Indus Valley Civilisation, one
of the oldest known, thrived along the river’s fertile floodplains. However,
Kashmir’s Sindhu stream originates from the Machoi Glacier in Drass and travels
about 110 km through the Kashmir Valley before merging with the Vitasta, or
Jhelum River, near Shadipora, close to Ganderbal town in Kashmir. About the
sacred confluence of the Sindhu stream and the Vitasta River at Shadipora, the
Nilamata Purana writes:
“The wise say that by bathing in the
confluence of Sindhu and Vitasta, especially on the full moon day of the month
of Prausthapada, one obtains the merit of the performance of the Ashvamedha.”
Kashmiri Pandits believe that the
Vitasta River at Shadipora is filled with holy water brought from all the
mountains, lakes, glaciers, streams, and springs of the Kashmir Valley. This
blending of holy waters from all the lakes, streams, ponds, and springs of
Kashmir at Shadipora imparts great sanctity to this ancient Teertha. Kashmiri
Pandits call it Prayag. They used to consign the ashes of their dearest and
loved ones to the holy waters of Prayag at Shadipora. Kashmiri Pandits consider
the Sindhu stream as sacred Ganga and the Vitasta as another name for the river
Yamuna. This belief is also supported by verses 305–306–307 appearing in the
Nilamata Purana. I quote:
“Bound by affection, Tapana’s
daughter, the goddess Ganga, due to great respect and devotion for the sage,
augmented with her own part the Vitasta, the best of rivers, the destroyer of
all sins. The Sindhu should be regarded as the Ganga, and the Vitasta should be
regarded as the Yamuna. The place where these two confluence should be regarded
as equal to Prayaga.”
There is a Chinar tree that stands on
a small island exactly at the confluence spot. This Chinar tree is surrounded
by water on all sides. One has to reach this Chinar tree by boat and climb a
few steps to have a commanding view of the confluence. The Shiva Linga lying
under the shade of this Chinar tree, since ancient times is also worshipped. The
Prayag Chinar tree is considered mystical and sacred by Kashmiri Pandits. Even
when the river is in flood, this tree never sinks. It is said that with any
rise in water level around it, the Chinar tree mysteriously rises in height. Kashmiris
call it Prayagitch Boen.
This poem appears in the book" Songs Beneath A Lost Sky ", available worldwide on Amazon
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.
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