Anhad ka Baaja

When we are young  They are opinions And can change effortlessly. Our meeting with others Are full of give-and-take As one grows older Less bolder The opinions calcify And we meet others And they us

Living in a blinkered present We have forgotten the past And fail to imagine the future And so instead of saying  Never Again We make the same mistakes Time and again And grandiosely call that

Hospitals take care of our health Schools, of our children’s education Even our arguments are ceded to lawyers and courts Acceding becomes a habit And so we do not protest When details of our

How does one adjudicate on  Long-ago injustices? Do two wrongs (Widely separated in time) Make a right? An umpire must be neutral But umpires are human too And so, we got third-country umpires For

Don’t stick your neck out, she says Keep your nose clean, he says But I am not doing anything, I say Look at the brazenness of the government gone rogue Look at the barefacedness of the lies Look at

As the klaxon blares Normalcy I wonder Am I the only one Who sees this as Abnormal? Who is trapped in the veil of maya? Or is Kashmir Normal and Abnormal  Simultaneously? Perhaps it takes the