MY NEW POEM ," UPROOTED GODS"

                                            

(Uprooted Gods)

My ancestors were trees,  

torn from the peaceful forest,  

and planted in the city habitation.  

They survived.  

That was the first wound.

Mother;  

A chinar.  

She carried her shade along with  

Mountain trunk.  

Sky-wide branches.  

Green leaves.

And a chinar doesn't ask  

the faith of tired travellers  

who sit under its shade.  

Mother proved it right.

Men came with hunger,  

They cut her branches,  

Swept away even her fallen leaves  

And fed them to hand-held braziers  

to warm their bodies  

while her own heart went cold.

She never complained.  

She smiled.  

A Chinar tree she was,  

Shelter for birds.  

Comfort for her own people.  

And comfort for strangers too.

Inside: a secret fire.  

A fire of compassion.  

A blaze of simplicity.  

Embers of nishkama — selflessness,  

burning where no one could see.  

And she hollowed.

Truth, simplicity, compassion burn  

like quiet fire within the chest.  

Stripping away the weight we carry,  

And leaving the heart both clear and open.

Those who hold these virtues,  

do not bend.  

They rise,  

upright,  

steady,  

and tall.  

Yet at their core  

they turn to hollow,  

An empty space that holds  

no pride.

It is not absence,  

But a clearing.  

No boast,  

No swelling of the self,  

Only room to take another’s burden  

And stand unshaken in the wind.

We too felt that heat.  

Look at me.  

A scar of simplicity.  

Of empathy.  

Of truth.

My father  

A bamboo.  

Tall.  

He was already hollow inside,  

to make room for new ideas,  

to hold the weight of others without asking.

Elasticity made him unbreakable  

Even under pressure.  

He swayed with adversity,  

then stood straight again.

Hollow within, he stood tall,  

And became a flute for the stormy winds,  

What soothing music  

he created for others.  

Impervious to distraction,  

He grew towards light, not noise.

He had node structure.  

Clear principles not easily compromised.  

Knots on his spine like vows.

They used him too:  

For furniture,  

For mats.  

For staircases to go up  

and dump him on ground,  

A tool in every hand.  

A back for every burden.  

Chanakya said,  

"Straight trees are cut first."  

So they cut him.  

He made no sound.

Now;

The city needs no Chinar.  

The city needs no bamboo.  

So they went home.  

Back to the forest.  

To breathe air that asks nothing.  

To be held by cloud and wind.  

To be washed by night rain.  

To face the first sun.  

To run with birds, with animals, with life.

I am the son of a Chinar tree.  

I am the son of a bamboo tree.  

I have no friends in the city now  

No well-wisher.  

Unknown,  

Strangers,  

I confront everywhere now,  

I carry the baggage of truth,  

The baggage of empathy,  

The baggage of simplicity  

Inherited from my parents.  

In this city,  

They call it a scar on the soul.  

And scarred souls have no place to rest.  

Who will wash this scar clean?

(Avtar Mota)

PS

Critique of the poem by an English teacher from the US 

Avtar Mota’s “The Uprooted Gods” is an ecopoetic elegy that figures the parents as archetypal Kashmiri trees ; the Mother as a Chinar, embodying hospitality and unconditional shade, and the Father as Bamboo, embodying ethical resilience, hollowness as capacity, and nodal integrity. Structurally a diptych in free verse, the poem sets the organic “forest” against the extractive “habitation,” tracing diasporic uprooting as the first wound: survival through self-erasure. Allusions to Chanakya and the Bhagavad Gita politicise and spiritualise this sacrifice, while anaphora and stark, declarative lines create a liturgical rhythm of mourning. The poem culminates in the speaker’s inheritance , “Scars of simplicity. Of empathy. Of truth” , and an unanswerable question that transforms private grief into a broader lament for cultures that give shade until they are consumed, then are deemed no longer needed.

CHINAR S

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