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.