'Thrones For Murderers, The Oppressed Await The Gallows' -- Why Kashmiri Poets Are Feeling Helpless And Choked

Kashmir’s  poets have been silenced by a siege—many of them are writing, but keeping it to themselves. As the otherwise vibrant local newspapers stopped writing editorials, columns, even news stories in the last one year, Kashmiri poets grieved silently. On August 5, 2019, upon hearing about Article 370, Kashmir’s legendary poet, playwright and songwriter Bashir Dada, who writes in Urdu and Kashmiri, says he felt helpless and choked. “I thought it’s all over…what’s the use of my poetry now? I felt humiliated. I didn’t write for long. And when I started writing and posted it on social media after a partial lifting of the communication ban, some friends from Delhi called me saying you should write some light stuff. What light stuff do they expect from us?” he asks. Instead, he wrote: Haatam na yahan koi, aadil na yahaan koi / Hai takht nasheen qaatil, sooli pe sawaali hai (Haatim is long gone! The just kings are dead / Thrones for murderers, the oppressed await the gallows).

Young Kashmiri poet Nighat Sahiba des­paired too: she didn’t write for six months. After August 5, 2019, she and her mother would walk 15 km from their home to reach the Achabal police station to call her brother. They couldn’t, in spite of going for 15 days straight. “That queue, the securitymen, those helpless people waiting silently, the many failed attempts to connect, hearing the voice after a long time…I will never be able to erase that from my mind,” she says. “The dust of that police station blurred my vision. The barbed wires wounded my soul.” Later, she put pen on paper…. Tse wucchut myon poshe wann / Yiman khoanan, human kocchan / Ghali ghali ccha sarhadi / Ghali ghali wujarghi (You found my blossoming flowers / Bloom in laps here and grips there / Each lane is a boundary now / Each lane forsaken).

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Poets don’t live in another world. The heavily militarised post-1989 Kashmir was their too. Seen those images of children looking for their books in the deb­ris of their houses? Well, on March 15, 2018, Madhosh Balhami, a 56-year Kashmiri language poet, was looking for his poetry in the ashes. He was sitting in his courtyard when three militants, one of them injured, rushed into his house. The chilling SOP followed in a blur: security siege, his family esc­aping out, house coming down, militants killed…and his poetry collection of three decades reduced to dust. Next day, he was hunting for any stray page that might have survived.

Balhami has lived through the worst times. Between 1993 and 2000, he was ­arrested thrice under PSA. His poetry flowed in prison—it was in those years that he wrote most of his life’s work, now gone. “The fear is deep,” he says. “People are ­writing but keeping it to themselves. The priority is to save one’s life.” Lately, he wrote: Kas baawe panun haal, me kus neize saneomut / Maarun te marun myani ­shahruk deen baneyomut (Who should I tell what spear has pierced my heart? Dying and killing is the new custom of my city).

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Novelist Mirza Waheed says Kashmir since the 1990s has been “like mini-Sarajevos in every locality, except that snipers weren’t shooting dead ordinary Kashmiris”. Poets have responded in different ways to this political reality, he says. “In 2010, an ‘eminent‘ poet wrote that poets must remain rooted in their aesthetic considerations, and not dabble in politics…that political issues must be left to reporters! A decade later, I still can’t make sense of that assertion,” says Waheed. “But from Agha Shahid onwards, younger poets from Kashmir have shown that engagement with one’s milieu does not translate into an abandonment of poe­tic ideals.” Yes, there will be poetry…about the dark times.

Baagh myon, bulbul myon, bahaar myon te ghul myeane / Cchawaan phulay kus taam wopar, haay ghulami! / Sadpaare gacchaan jighar myon, haay ghulami!

(Garden mine, songbird mine, the spring mine, flowers mine / But this slavery! Another harvests this flourishing bloom / My heart shatters into pieces, Oh! this slavery)

—Madhhosh Balhami

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