MY NEW POEM: 'THE PEEPAL AND THE CHINAR TREE'

 

(THE PEEPAL AND THE CHINAR TREE )

Upon my visit to Kashmir in 2005,

I went to the old  Chinar tree near my house
and asked if the rumours were true.

 “They say you came from Iran.
 You do not belong to Kashmir.
And if Rajatarangini remembers you,
then Rajatarangini must be lying.”

Its leaves trembled.

And it gave me a lengthy explanation.

 “What can I say?” it whispered.

“If I speak, they will cut me down.
They demand that I remain green
in every season.
My autumn gold must be forgotten,
washed clean from my memory.
I must deny the colours
that made me what I am.

Once, I sheltered your ancestors.
I stood beside their temples,
their courtyards and their homes.
I watched their prayers rise
through my branches.

Then came 1990.
You fled, leaving me behind.
I could not follow.
My roots held me to Kashmir;
the soil became my prison.

Now, in exile,
you have found the Peepal.
It was never a tree of your valley.
It belonged to the plains,
Yet it gave you refuge.
Its branches embraced you,
for you needed a tree
to receive the grief
your homeland could no longer hold.

You learnt to love the Peepal
because you had lost me.
I belong to your remembered home;
The Peepal  became the shelter
of your homelessness.”

Years later, in America,
I saw a maple dressed in gold.
My heart leapt.
I thought my Chinar
had crossed the oceans to find me.

But the maple whispered:

“I am not your Chinar.
My colours may resemble its autumn,
but resemblance is not belonging.
I have my own roots,
as your lost tree has its own soil.”

Suddenly ,I remembered Booen Ded , 

my grandmother,

Who died of heat stroke in Jammu .

I remembered how much she missed 

 the shady Booen of the temple she used to visit in Kashmir  .

And this innocent woman used to recite 

Lal Vaakh in her Aarti as well. 

Oh  Lal Ded ! 

her words scattered,

her memory contested,
her spiritual inheritance wounded.

Where would I find her now?

Perhaps beneath a Peepal,
in the plains where exile has carried us,
still absorbed in her eternal Sadhana,
beyond the hurts of those
who try to rob her tongue of Shaiva Darshana,

 I understand .

The Peepal is not our substitute for Kashmir's Chinar.
It was the tree we learnt to embrace,
Because Kashmir's Chinar was beyond our reach.

We did not choose exile.
We learnt to live with it.

And today, when Chinars turn to gold,
Every exile remembers his lost autumn.
And when their leaves fall,
something of him falls too.

He may embrace the Peepal,
but he cannot forget the Chinar.
For the Peepal gives him shade;
only the Chinar gives him home.

(Avtar Mota)

PS

A Chinar tree is known as Booen in Kashmiri

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\.