CAN YOU DEFINE MY "GAON"
by 13 year old Sugandhi Thusso desperate to find her roots

Link - http://thusoosugandhi.blogspot.com/ Kindly comment on the blog

"All of us wait eagerly for our vacations just because of two major reasons.Firstly we get a little relief from studies, secondly we get time to visit our village.I came to Chandigarh ten years before and joined my school when vacations were very near.My friends inquired from me where my Gaon was.I was speechless just because I never knew what the word Gaon meant?But as they told me the definition of Gaon meant where all your relatives live and where you go to spend your holidays.That very night i asked my parents and they told me, we don't have a Gaon,we hail from a city.On asking,they told me it is in Kashmir known as Srinagar,"Shall we go there?"was my instant reaction.They said nothing as they thought I would forget after some days but I didn't.Whenever my father used to listen to any news about Kashmir, I used to be dragged happily, towards the news as my Gaon's name came on TV.But as the days passed, months and years went by, I grew up and understood the real ground situation of my Gaon. I felt sad and helpless. My Gaon had become a place of massacres,firings and bomb explosions killing thousands of innocent people including old,young and small babies whose actual crime is still unknown to me..Many left their homes and hearths for good,and never looked back.I am one of the children of those uprooted people who have become displaced in their own country. Like me their children don't know their roots and the motherland of their parents/grandparents. So the Gaon for me is just my imagination.Today, I'm mature enough to define many things but I still don't know the definition of my Gaon.Can you define my "Gaon"?

Tarak & Yambarzal : A Poetic Tale

By Shailendra Aima

In the early morning quiet,
When even the stars glimmered,
he heard it whistle.

In fact, during the night before
When Taraknath had put out the lamp,
And the dogs had stopped howling,
And the petrified lambs had stopped bleating,
he did hear it whistle.

Taraknath didn’t know
Whether to step out in the first light
Or to cling to his hovel.
Or to wait for Yambarzal
in a stupor - dazed, perplexed, baffled.

He didn’t dare to throw a glance
To draw respite, some fortitude,
at Zagat Amba, the mother
who long back, had forsaken the fetish.

How else could the misery descend,
Like a swarm of locusts,
Like the wolves on a hunt,
Like the plague, he had only heard of?

He boggled, blubbered, boohooed
"Maeji! Maeji! Maeji!"
as he had done, when the raiders
had swarmed Sangrama,
where Zagat Amba the deity
had presided the life,
the destiny, the form and the essense
of all incumbents – his world, her cosmos.

Where Yambarzal would snatch his Takhti
And he chased her tumbling down the hill.
That groove of almonds, just above.
The saffron fields, and the gurgling brook.
And the holy spring, the abode of the Mother.

Masterji liked him, and he adored him.
Taraknath – a fatherless child
Sat at his feet – a devout pupil to
The great educator. And learned and
earned the trust, the adulation, and also
Yambarzal, his only daughter.

Raiders had shot his father
And shot his neigbours, too.
But Masterji survived –
as the only man who had scurried
to a college, to the city,
far away from Sangrama.

And so the foursome,
Masterji, Tarak, Yambarzal and Zagat Amba
Had carried on the fun, the drudgery, the poise
And the ecstasy of belonging, labour, prayer
and of a life divine.

What’s there to tell thee
Of the hills, the brooks, the streams
and the snows;
Of the grand Chinars, the mighty walnuts,
The weeping willows, and the
squeaking birches.
Of the Phullaiy – or the blossoms,
the spring on the trees.
Of the cherries, the plums, the apples
and of the apricots.
The lotuses and the roses, the daffodils
and the hyacinths.
They would go as offerings to the Zagat Amba
from Yambarzal, who with great care
And painstakingly made garland after garland,
Bouquet after bouquet.
And climbed up every dawn and dusk
To bedeck the abode and to adorn the deity.

Blessed they were
When Amba descended
And came toddling into Yambar’s lap
But left them Masterji, to his eternal rest
From down the plains in Jammu’s west
Where hostilities had broken
Between the neigbours two,
inflicting death, Destruction, artillery fires, air raids,
and a stray burst wiped the life
Out of Masterji’s kind, benign
and handsome frame.

And now this strife again,
A different neighbour, nay thy known fraternity
A friend’s son, a friend in fact,
an acquaintance too.
All shades of folks, from the cleric to the butcher
From the hawker to the teacher.
In fact that vegetable vendor, even the milkman.

All exulting in a fervour, in a rage,
in a frenzy, of a Great Revolution,
Of the mission so dear - Iconoclasm,
Purgation, from Morocco to Malysia.
Of Ummah, of Jehad, of terror of blasts.

Yambarzal had set out to Muran,
To meet Amba and her sweet new born.
Tarak kept back for Zagat Amba,
The mother divine, and to bedeck her abode
As the rest of his ilk, kept disappearing
In a quiet, silent, stream of migrants, exiles.

"Rah, ta, ta", the staccato from the AKs
Silenced the melody of the aarti
And quiet went the screeching loudspeakers.
All dumb, all quiet, silence, a deathly hush.

Zagat Amba departed, went
far away to some undisclosed destination.
Tarak was clinging to the fetish,
To a stone blasted into smithereens.
And his lips, his stomach,
His entire viscera, his blood, his tissues, his cells
His entire antahkaran kept blubbering, boohooing,
"Maeji! Maeji!, Maeji."

His red dripping into the vermilion,
The grand finale of his execution
was his return back
to the womb of his Mother.
His beloved Zagat Amba.

Yambarzal envied him to her last,
Fretting and fuming in the exile
of a Migrant camp to the West of Jammu,
where the two neighbours
were shaking hands
and simpering over the redundant Borders.

Shop Owner of Baramoola - A poem by Kusum Ansal

the poem is taken from 'Here And Now:
An anthology of contemporary poetry of Delhi'.
(I am thankful to Ms. Manjul Bajaj for forwarding such a poignant canvas of rootlessness and homelessness).

Near the crumbling wall
he was standing.
In his weak frame
he looked like a ghost
the once proud shop owner of Baramoola.

I asked him “what are you doing here?”
He could not hear me.
because the wrong medicine
prescribed by the quack doctor
in charge of the camp had burnt his eardrums.
His body was not a body
It was almost a skeleton
In his painful, trembling voice
He asked me.

‘Have you experienced
the suffering of a fish out of water?
The pain of a shattered past
the suspense of an unknown future
the agony of burnt ancestral roots
the vacuum of lost values
the insults disgraces and deceits,
inflicted by your near and dear ones?

Near the crumbling wall
he was standing
in his own frail frame
looking like a ghost
The proud shopowner of Baramoola.

Lost in some vacuum
without my asking
he said ‘In my eyes
I no more see the yellow lotuses of Nagin Lake
or the life saving water of the chashme shahi
and hasn’t the Lidder lost its forceful flow?’

‘Don't you feel” he said
'the green vadi, the heaven on earth
is transformed into a desert,
a desert of human sighs.
Without the colourful reflections of
shikaras Dal Lake looks barren
submerged in her own tears
lamenting her lost romance.’

In the dingy room of the camp
lying quietly on his tattered bedspread
experiencing an un-ending nostalgia
he said, ‘I no more hear the santoor
my ears are deprived of the
melodious songs of Habba Khatoon.

May be I am waiting
for another fake medicine
which will burn my dreamless eyes
submerging me forever
into fathomless darkness
as I know, nobody will come
with a lamp, a lamp of light
which can illuminate our future.’

Near the crumbling wall
he was standing
the shopowner of Baramoola
but he was not there
there was only a shadow form
merging into formlessness.
something disappearing into nowhere.

OCEAN - II

A Poem By Shailendra Aima

The blue kissing the gloomy mate

ruffles her locks - the black clouds.

And throws her in an ecstasy.

The waves come dancing

like the fingers on a piano,

The melody echoes,

Thru all the hues.

First aquamarine, then azure, then peacock

then green and a splendid splash of the milky white.

Gently, it crawls over the beach,

It whirls around and enthralls.

Aeon, nay eternity - an infinite splendour.

Its a ceilidh, a boogie, a huge hug

the profound enlightenment.

Ocean - I

A Poem By Shailendra Aima
I saw him desperate
Throwing his wrinkled fingers
(he is aged for he has hoary hair)
clasping to drag away the stony rock.
What a misery!
A little scratching of a handful sand.
Watch the perseverance.
A never ending struggle.
A stubborn long wait.
Return of the mighty wind
The surge of the tide.
Where is the sand, the rock, the entire front.
Its gone, its gone, its gone.