Postcards to Gaza

Post cards to Gaza by Inder Salim

Global day of action for Gaza- 13/01/2024

Performance ingredients:

Booklet containing poem-pieces since 7th Oct. 2023 to 8th Jan. 2024.

Cotton. Betadine solution. Rose Water. Shaving blades. Band-Aid. Olive fruit.

A drop of blood from audience if they want to add. Hair from the audience if they want to add.

Recital of 2014 poem ( postcard to Gaza ) in song form.

A stroke of the mixture on the first page of the booklet.

One booklet for everybody in the audience.

booklets at the performance

During event 12-15 Jan.2024 b t e @ Kolkata )

booklets at (Sahmat event 1/1/2024)

Olive at the last page of every booklet

07/10/23, Delhi

TV is on.
Ongoing wars too.
What do I see?

An eye-sized dream, opposite to the real:
I am looking at the world through
A strange new cellular growth in my eyes.

Before I woke up, I told her,
‘I have fallen in love with you.’

Literally in the middle of night,
While my U-turned penis
moved within the depths of her womb,
She turned me from top to under.
Luckily, I didn’t ejaculate.
So, I see.

I always loved to kiss,
But yesterday, on her protruding tongue,

a strange thick shining sticky layer, perhaps, transparent blood:
‘God and Substance together’, I can’t explain,
I had never experienced it before.

What do I see…?

2
10/10/23, Delhi

I dreamt:

people waiting for a longish hard rain,

after the fighter jets poured Sat-Isabgol*
Over familiar modern architecture.

War is an age-old constipation:
A struggle between the birth of a free Nation
And the status-quoist(s)

Patients consume branded USA-made,
Russia-made, Chinese-made, or even Iran-made,
And companies promise to stimulate the frozen shit.

Within every nation-state’s extra-large intestine,
There are buildings, high-rise and low-rise,
Sometimes ripped apart to move tanks.

Who’s who in Gaza right now?
On TV, I see buildings emitting black farts,
And people wailing amidst strewn debris.

Perhaps what I see is only a dream,
But every dream is a reality.
Let there be a fact: Wars never truly end,
But one can imagine peace.

*Psyllium Husk.

3

10/11/2023, Delhi

Gaza is an open-air prison.
And the world is Gaza.

Within orderly, disorderly chaos coherence,
an arbitrary point of reference prods a simultaneity
of ‘I’ and ‘we’ who depart and arrive
to inherit property, conflicts, and taboos.

The question is how to imagine
The New, and break the circuit in Gaza and beyond.

Earlier, nomads sold a raw piece of metal
to the sedentary class, who resembled us, and were
trained to make a sword and a plough.

But in the present, if we are a collective of infinite connections
on the vast surface of the earth, then what is missing in
Gaza and beyond?

The desire for a sovereign state:
A mechanical enslavement, coded subjects as nuts and bolts,
A repetitive archaic imperial order,
A profitable sale-purchase of a capture-apparatus?

4

15/10/23, Delhi

Across the metaphysical lines-no-lines,
The dead should write to the dead,
                     And not-dead-as-yet,
                     To the not-dead-as-yet.

Among not-dead-as-yet,
Let me be an exception:

                     Hi, dear Dead People, how are you?
                     I hear among you there is
                     An exception like me, too.

I am waiting.

5

17/10/2023, Delhi

Images scream even when they are dead.
If it were 1948 AD,
I would not open my letterbox now.

I used to flip every image inside out,
Its materiality,
Its re-given real to reconnect, to restore,
Its symbolism, like a bone to a dog.

Image in my eye, like a beetle, isolated from its pack,
running to
Avoid the gaze if picked up by a curious hand.

But, right now, a no-rule freestyle wrestling match is on
Between a 1400-year-old and a 2500-year-old man:
Punches are so hard that a fallen tooth
Equals the debris of a high-rise building,
And blood is dripping at multiples of 24 frames per second.
Though neither is dead, yet,
the camera insists to represent.

6

19/10/ 2023, Delhi

Amidst raining shells and mass migration,

it is likely that an infant will be born,
Probably at some desolate bus stop

or adjacent to a blasted hospital.
Second-hand garments are used to ward off

any evil eye on the newborn baby.

You don’t need to believe in that superstition,

but under the circumstances,

use whatever is readymade and nearby,

even if tattered or soaked in blood.
Life deserves a chance. Long Live Gazan kids.

Sooner or later, a Palestinian kid would ask:

What is War, akin to what is God?

There are well-established answers approved by universities,

religious bodies and the State.

But I am afraid s/he deserves a playful answer.

Kids in Palestine are trained

to collect SYMBOLS like toys elsewhere.

They play killer games programmed in a particular way only.

The REAL and the IMAGINARY over there is

a Deep-State multiplex, mirrored to multiply.

Given the political formations in

Palestine and around the world,

what future games for the kids are in store?

7

22/10/23, Delhi

History is most proud, proudest at Jerusalem:

Before the ‘Victims of Holocaust’ and ‘Palestinian Exile’,
And the ongoing war, post 7^th Oct 2023,
The eternally energetic ‘Man-Ghost-Hybrid’ demonstrates,
How Abraham’s triple sperm fertilized metaphysical eggs.

And how RUINS mysteriously invoke GHOSTS
To fuel the sequel of WARS.

So it happens that the blood running in our veins belongs to
HISTORY, making us slit our wrists without a blade.

In chess, master-players anticipate the moves,
Yet the unpredictability of the end ticks in the mind 24/7.

The political world is either pro-Palestine or pro-Israel,
But the game is more complex than it appears on the surface.

8

23/10/23, Delhi

A historical thread runs through the 450015 heads silenced

in the Crimean War

and France’s refusal to recognize Israel’s sovereignty in East Jerusalem.

A conqueror built a monument suitable for divine acoustics

in 1341 AD in Jerusalem.

Later, it was owned by the Ottoman Empire until 1856 AD,

when they gifted the property

to France for aiding them in the war against Russia.

Countless heads are silenced in the East of Jerusalem

where imbrication of a wall and a tomb or so exists.

Wailing and worshipping there--- a sound-image ritual.

Writing about the heads silenced in Gaza

transcends all the noise history and rituals make.

9

24/10/23, Delhi


I leave the utterance to its fate,
As and when a prayer comes and
Sits like a butterfly on my lips —-
Becoming a hungry toad is a swift possibility.

All I have is Art and its incomprehensibility.
The thought that Life and Art are secretly bonded
makes me shudder.

Life’s complexities are immense;
They can even trigger a WAR in a huff.

The notion that I am not there says, ‘I am there.’
What constitutes a War-Peace-Thought-Piece, I share.

10

24/10/23, Delhi


In 1948, perhaps Israel sounded better.

It could have even been Yaqub/Jacob.
It was an innovative idea to make a dam with people instead of water.

Jawa Dam, located in present-day Jordan, was constructed around 3000 BCE.
'Dams are the temples of Modern India,' said the first Prime Minister of ‘free’ India.

The formula is simple:

1. Order the people to vacate the land as soon as possible.
2. Raise the height of collected water between mountain ranges by constructing walls.
3. Control the flow of water to generate power for distant cities.

To live happily ever after.

11

25/10/23, Delhi

If stones were people,
Would they try to know their history?
And bang their heads as and when
a researcher stone reveals that
In the beginning, there was only lava.

What geological upheavals brought
River stones to rest within the chests
Of mountain ranges here in our North?
What if these round stones arrived
From another continent after the Cambrian explosion?

If stones were people,
Would they insist to return to their past?
Or believe that in spite of their different masses,
They are unaccountable to the cosmic force:
Leisurely resting here upon a mound,
Preferring not to be dragged
To the Leaning Tower of Pisa as guinea pigs?

12

27/10/23, Delhi

Sanjay, ‘Is it day or night?’

Rajan, ‘It doesn't matter anymore. Death of innocent civilians, hostage crises, bombs raining upon residential apartments and hospitals, wounded children running for help, near catastrophe. People are told to vacate their homes for safety. All this has turned every day into night and every night into hell.’

Sanjay, ‘Why does my heart go out to the beheaded Barbarik, who is witnessing the war, perhaps from Golan Heights all alone?’

Rajan, ‘The war in Gaza, beyond 18 days, is now an international maze and gaze.’

Sanjay, ‘Though you are duty-bound to tell me about what is happening between Israel and Palestine, it is indeed complex now.’

Rajan, ‘Russia has tested nuclear weapons again to warn the hegemonic NATO in Ukraine and the Middle East. China has rejected the Euro-American proposal at the UNSC. While the Arab world is confused, the demand for an immediate ceasefire is unanimous. Iran is clear about its pro-Hamas intentions.
Meanwhile, India is monkey balancing …’

(The Blind King interrupts)

Sanjay, ‘I feel my own body leaking blood from all sides. Please don’t switch on the TV today.’

13

28/10/2023, Delhi

Sura at-Taubah : (Skip - 9.5)

9.51: Quran.com:
‘Never will we be struck except by what Allah has decreed for us.
He is our protector.’

Tawakal + Infinity + Taqdeer in a laboratory flask, gently heated to emit radiation,

spiraling down to subatomic levels, returning to the beginning.
Not mere trust and destiny.

Allahu Akbar: Only God knows how He remains unaffected by

the perpetual bouncing of materiality among material things in the multiverse.

Majlis-e-Asghar: Earth is a small room for humans.

All civilizations learned to express desire for material things.

We endure hunger, injustice and pain in smaller rooms.

Al-Harb: claiming a piece of land as one's own.

Ultimately, the pursuit of material possessions is meaningless,

but we pursue materiality for peace.
Every war contains Allah, yet Allah is without war.

Allah Tallah to Azadi: God-Infinity-God:

a train speeding pell-mell

through unfolding-differences...

14

29/10/23, Delhi

Don’tGoToWar is the best weapon to win a war.
Retaliate and lose a war of wits.

America said to Israel, ‘Go, use our weapons’,
But the genocide of people in Gaza is a Hamas-made weapon.

Shooting down non-combatants is a war weapon;
Combatants deploy divinity to the weapons before use.

Tell me something new: stealing people from enemy territory
and calling for an exchange of stolen people – isn’t that a boring formula?

Dimwits clap for those who gun down unarmed civilians,
Jump on the bandwagon and join the bloodlust in future.

Political Zionism turned its back on humanity,
‘God’s chosen’ at the ‘Wailing Wall’ may dissociate explicitly.

Rabid ones exist in every beautiful mixture of stray dogs.

Hate is contagious, regardless of the community one belongs to.

15
30/10/23, Delhi

They ordered one million people to move from North to South in Gaza
And decided to demolish Ghazal-numa in Gaza.

Urban design gifted us multistorey apartments,

I call them Ghazal-numa compositions of modern ghettos like we have in Gaza.

Every building floor resembles a couplet in a ghazal,
A refrain weaves them tightly, akin to balconies here and in Gaza.

Each couplet is like an essay: a floor loaded with emotions within an apartment,
Multiple couplets in a ghazal, stacked one upon another, like in Gaza.

The sedentary lifestyle in a Ghazal-numa yearns for a new music,
But how do we reimagine the form of a ghazal after bombardment in Gaza?

When they ordered one million people to move from North to South,
I saw a deluge of uniquely shaded rivulets gushing out from Ghazal-numas in Gaza.

Broken limbs of empty Ghazal-numa apartments resisted at times,
Notice the similarities in bones; compare earlier images with the images of debris in Gaza.

People is colour; if worked out digitally, every individual is a unique shade.
Israel is Blue, Palestine is Green: the only political logic of the war in Gaza.

16
01/11/23, Delhi

For those who Google ‘History’ randomly during a war.
For example, in 1947, India and Pakistan. 1948 Israel and Palestine.
An explicitly religious nature of conflicts exists.
Meanwhile, the West, the evil epicenter of world wars,

still holds the colonial axe that grinds for sheer economic interests.

Pakistan, a Muslim country, helped Jordan to massacre Palestinians in 1970; and in 1971, the Pakistani army multiplied the horrible acts in Bangladesh; and then, at the behest of America, sponsored ‘madrasa-culture’ to breed Taliban in Afghanistan, exporting the language and design to Kashmir as ‘resistance.’
But is this all about religion?

Mohammed Amin al-Husseini persuaded Hitler to persecute Jews. Six thousand Palestinian Arabs and thirty thousand Jews joined the war against Nazi Germany. Post-war depression and 1947 civil war complexities, and the subsequent failed Partition formula between Israel and Palestine – all about the ownership of land?

Germans, who collaborated with Hitler later during the trial, said that they were doing their duty and had nothing particular against Jews. Will they hesitate to act again under similar circumstances?

‘Evil is not committed by sadistic or monstrous people but by ordinary people who don’t think morally of their actions’- Hannah Arendt.

Perhaps it is some random idea of life as an ideology that unwittingly creeps into the ordinariness of our bones, enabling us to commit crimes. Poor us.

When my ordinary physical being is gone, I imagine a peaceful world, not this terribly imperfect one. Co-existence is a possible dream.

17
02/11/23, Delhi

In Kashmir, my cousin stabbed me in the back;

now I understand the Israel-Palestine conflict better.

He died, but not before clandestinely selling my house.
His death has not halted the war between us.

What still infuriates me is that when he committed this crime,
He wasn’t facing any financial crises. I shall never forgive him.

Though we both inherited hackneyed ideas of life from our predecessors,
like a river, life moves on, as we both have.

Presently, my ancestral land and property in Kashmir is not an issue in my mind.

It is only when my relatives or friends remind me about ‘injustice’

that I think of my loss, or is it this nasty war in the Middle East?

Conflict between siblings, bloody wars between distant relatives,

their clans and subsequent communities, and the formation of nation-states –

everything has a bloody history.

Scholars explain that civilizations and empires have emerged

because of evolutionary cycles of ‘demand for justice’.
Antigone, Antigone, everywhere, but…

The world is structured for the implementation of laws,
And as we know, laws are inherently flawed.

So, from the ongoing wars of every kind,
There are ample reasons for me to disengage and feel free—

the time when issues recoil inwardly and become silences.

18
03/11 23, Delhi

Today is yesterday.

Yesterday (War Protest 2014), the process was to download and print a few poems by Mahoumud Darwish, translated into English, and then neatly slice them into fragments to facilitate dialogue between olive fruit and the shredded poetic utterances in small transparent pouches.

On that day, the trust, called ‘Sahmat’, provided dozens of Tarbooza/Watermelons at Jantar Mantar. There, volunteer students helped me to place two or three pouches in every Tarbooza, seal them with a transparent sticker, and keep them at rest as if for fermentation. One could visualize the arranged dark-green watermelons in a row of baskets on the footpath under the streetlight.

At the time of Harkat/Performance, I arrived in a perforated school uniform with a Palestinian Keffiyeh, carrying rosewater and Betadine solution, and blasted the watermelons.

While people collected exposed pouches from the debris of Watermelons, tasted the olives and read the poem fragments, I applied the Betadine and rosewater mixture on their wrists.

Today, I will add a drop of my blood in a different composition at IHC ( Delhi ).

19
06/11/23, Delhi

House of History is a slaughterhouse:
A heap of graves upon graves upon graves.
Today is September upon October, underneath November:
Grains of sand around river boulders of shallow water.

A thisness of thinnest moisture on my hands,
Seepage in moonlight, the sound of autumn cicada insect, Harde-roush.
                                           Silence with material evidence.
Material evidence with silence.

Wars sire poets of silence.
                                The weight of a dead infant in the arms of a mother
                     In the uploaded representative image of      another.

Take a break, please; knees think, my dead mother sees.
The rice she ate went straight to her knees.
She even demonstrated how someone was laughing inside her feet.
The wooden box was empty, yet she handed over the keys,
To a smell and the emptiness of it….

20
11/11/2023, Delhi

کیا وہ نمرود کی خدائی تھی
بندگی میں مرا بھلا نہ ہوا
  — What divinity was it that Nimrod once proclaimed?
Worshipping him was no use to me; it did not compensate – (Ghalib)

On paper:
— In contrast to the God almighty, Hindus have Hiranyakashyap
  and Muslims a Nimrod.

— Vishwamitra created a Nimrod’s Tower of Babel-like linguistic, ritualistic
   architectural design to enter Indira’s Swarga/Heaven.

— God does not appreciate any unique, singular pursuit.
So, a divine seductress, Menaka,
was among the other things deployed to disrupt.

In the real:
— Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus
   Inwardly cherish the multiplicity of things that confuse.

— People have lost the language to admit but might discover it at some point.

21

11/11/2023, Delhi

Few minds like Hitler honestly live without a machine
That decodes a human scream.

Nazis truly believed in the enigma of their ‘Enigma Machine’.
But for every secret code, there’s always an Alan Turing around.

History deployed codes of all kinds to gift us
Humanism and philistinism.

In the past, the King said:
Construct my Nose, and there was a Ludwig-2
or a Shahjahan.

But a pair of lungs under the nose’s monumentality
hidden in the chest is God almighty.
In a rhythmic fashion, it sucks in and sucks out
the people, the King’s subjects?

Like —

‘it is the labour of the tailor that disappears in the coat.’
It is the very form of the sacred monument that offsets every
decoding effort.

The King never added, but exceptions can become the rule.

22

12/11/23, Delhi

مے چھم آ ش پگھچٕ
There is a tomorrow. I trust my inner voice   (Comrade DN Nadim - Kashmiri Poet)

Birds chirp, the wind blows, the sun sets,
A dark shadow steps out from the debris and announces,
‘I am the Ghost, resident of Gaza.’

Like Quantum Entanglement,
Refugees elsewhere are linked to Ghosts living in their ex-homes.
While one mourns, the other mutates into myriad shapes;

while the one looks around for water,
The other slips inside the pipes through dry taps.

Since times immemorial, there is this
TIME, the great decay-master, who changes everything,
Rotates around an axis, where at the other end,
there is this PAST waiting for the actual inhabitants to return.

In future, whoever comes to replace the Ghost
Will be possessed by a PAST
without ever letting them know how.

23

13/11/23, Delhi

Billions of details of millions of characters in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
For example:

The author of a novel in the ‘contemporary’ is in a fix,

frustrated by the inability to capture infinite valid accounts.

Therefore, they write WAR, and war happens.
(But the author died long ago?)

Earlier, it just happened that a whimsical character decided to disobey the author.

Then, in the following era, the rebellious nature of a few characters

infected more and more ordinary characters.

For example:

The author of Mahabharata would have died before the completion of his epic

if he had thought to turn his eye towards the death of ordinary men on the battlefield at Hastinapur.

Frustrated by a well-thought-out-plot,

Ved Vyasa said WAR and war happened.

24

13/11/2023, Delhi

Allah is 2000 Galactic years old.
Allahu Akbar 1400 Solar years old.

All we have: 60-70 ‘Haystacks’ by Monet,
Edward Witten’s M-theory, and
‘Eleven Stars Over Andalusia’ by Mahmoud Darwish.

So, thick layers of paint on canvas are thick layers of paint.
And a landscape and a landscape, and a landscape.

Or, ‘Mathematical Formulations’ on paper to roll the being
Upon the ‘Physical-non-Physical’, ‘Space-Time’ of ‘Superstring’?

Or in ‘here-and-there-of-Palestine’
for a ‘here-and-there-of-Palestine’?

Or should we skip this all and go to the beginning – a time
When there was no sound, no word, no meaning?

Colour, Consciousness, Free Palestine.
Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.

25

16/11/23, Delhi
We have been to Jerusalem, now Gaza.
Virgil told me. They will say to you:

Israel did it. Hamas did it. Hitler did it. Stalin did it. Prophets and Deities did it.

Mao did it. Caesar did it. Oppenheimer did it. Plato did it. Gandhi did it.

What Einstein did would have inevitably happened a couple of years later.

Europe had to be a Colonizer. Japan too. Arabs had to sit on oil wells to spoil the Americans. America had to be a mental asylum without locks. The list is long. Unwritten 10000 BC is merely a historical tip in the present. Sooner or later, humanity will shine through 10-odd billion people on Earth. Here, we inhale the stillness of terrible air:

the population of Delhi is nil.

Remember, there was a major difference of opinion in the room when Partition 1947 was debated, but people say Jinnah did it. Those who vehemently oppose mysteriously offer an invisible pedestal to launch the Evil in a different context, sometimes even good.

When we say the bird disseminates Tristerix seeds to relish the flowery sap in the summer, we forget how cactus opens its skin at night to ingest CO2 and allow the seed to penetrate and sprout. Symbiosis in nature is fathoms deep, and at its best, we throw cryptic messages from below.

When we sit in a room together for a discussion, I have witnessed the hungry ghost, a transparent bat on the ceiling, menacingly looking at the head of a unique person who somehow compresses a few thoughts floated around, who subsequently deploys a managerial schema.

Languages happily donate, but obdurate claimants bang their heads about meanings.
The translation is real, but where is the original?

The Communist Manifesto was hurriedly edited and unleashed.

Marx and Engels knew the source of misery was not only the lack of bread.
Forgetfulness is a positive force, remember what Nietzsche said?

26
14/11/23, Delhi

Enter Sigmund Freud.

That was the girl who spurned me.
An intimate recalculation of our previous accounts suddenly culminated in a true embrace. As if an unedited camera work, the scene shifted from the corner where I was still in the vicinity of her fragrant hair to a few security guards who were beating a boy with sticks at the Degree College Anantnag, Kashmir.

The scene shifted to a garden of autumn Chinars, where the boy and the garden were set ablaze by faceless people. It was a higher plane as if paradise; his burning body was thrown down on earth like a wooden log. I remember the sound. Students were warned not to use mobile phones.

However, a student captured a small fragment at my insistence.

Exit Sigmund Freud.

The war in the Middle East is a real nightmare.

27
18/11/23, Delhi

In the Postpo-stmodern Shakespearean Glob(e)al,
The plot is lost, though characters are cast.
Altogether, here, there and everywhere,
We are in the middle, in the beginning, in the last.

Amid thunder and lightning in 1948,
Witches convened in Jerusalem and blew the fate
Of local inhabitants. —-----------------------------Wait!

Hamlet is Hamas, the motherfucker,
And King Claudius is the Zionist usurper,
Of mother(land) of other.

Sword tips are poisoned; all will die.
The audience, Horatio, will cry.

There are stories to begin with, but the storyteller
Will invent one, and the image-seller
Will design a frame suitable for the exhibition dweller.

Meanwhile, ‘to be or not to be’, the line in a loop,
Sounds as to-being-or-not-to-being in a single swoop.

28
19/11/23, Delhi

‘The lone and level sands stretch far away.’*
Without the rhythm of the line above,
‘Ozymandias’ wouldn’t stand and speak of life’s ephemerality.

Beneath deserts, dense and deep and dark,
Infinite columns dance to a tune, unheard before.

The metaphysical realm leaves nothing outside:
Affect, architecture, God, material, and languages.

Beyond all possible thoughts,

Aurora at Antarctic, can come to the Gaza Strip and undress
The blazing horizon to make the unhappy happy.

* last line of ‘Ozymandias’ by PB Shelley.

29

20/11/23, Delhi

Problem:
We are in the garden of bloody rocks, not roses.
Hitler translated the Jew into a rock-solid Jew, the Communist into a Communist,
And the rest of the Germans into rock-solid Aryans.

Later, the rock-solid Jews translated Muslims into Muslims, Jews themselves into Jews,

and Rock-solid Muslims, historically skilled as others,

transformed themselves and others into rock-solid entities.

Solution:
Imagine within a cycle of synonyms, a Jew translates into a Muslim, a Christian into a Jew,

a Sikh into a Muslim, a Hindu into a Jew….

God Almighty, the great facilitator, would object

only if people halt extending the radius of this circle

after the toxicity of identity politics wanes.

Consider if the original retains the hierarchy over the translated and the untranslated–
It becomes a spongy mountain of mass and volume, higher and steeper than Mount Everest.

A veritable pilgrimage for enduring peace and love.

30

23/11/23, Delhi

Once,
‘A swarm of Ababil birds smote the army of elephants with stones of baked clay.’

(105: 1-5 Quran.com).

During wars, bits and bobs of river mud burn, burn beaks and wings too.

There is no way to secure a niche for a nest or those lucid vocabularies

that dwell with delicious dead insects.

Loving parents who used to relish feeding on the excreta of their own newborns

now turn to ash and dust upon some remote rubble.

For 22 million years, despite wars, high drama in the sky and the earth has been on.
‘You must go on. I can’t go on. I will go on.’ (Derrida)

I was bound to witness a ‘Katij-e-ole’ (Swallow Nest)

on the wooden ceiling of my room every year during my years in Kashmir.

This Postcard to Gaza is bound to become an Ababil-a-Katij-a-Swallow,

as the Art of Writing and God arrived on earth simultaneously.

31
24/11/23, Delhi

When Nathuram was waiting for Gandhi,
Gandhi was also waiting for Nathuram.

The outcome of their meeting was indeed a breathtaking picture called

Red and White Butterfly, dated January 30, 1948.

Though categorized as an ‘Old Classic’, one can still see

a Red and White butterfly hovering in the atmosphere.

In the same room, on display, is the rectangular metallic hairless brush

that drew red pigment from a breathing tube.

In the contemporary Indian political scenario, both have their admirers and critics.

Gandhi extended his deep sympathies to German Jews.
Gandhi unconditionally supported Free Palestine.
Nathuram observed similarities between a dynamic German Swastika and a static Indian Swastika.
Gandhi detested the idea of violence, let alone a full-scale war.
Gandhi left defenseless German Jews to their own fate.
Gandhi would abhor seeing a terrorist group like Hamas freeing Palestine from Israeli Military Occupation.

While I’m toying with the uselessness of Gandhi, a Nathuram mentality in any part of the world is more of a nuisance than any meaningful opposition to the idea of Non-violence.

32
25/11/23, Delhi

Is there a method in the madness of wars,
Or, we let silence speak?

Ceasefire, Now and Then…
Ceasefire Now, and Then…
Ceasefire Now and Then…

In a jar, a still life of three thorny flower twigs,
Different but the same species.

Art students study still life. Still!
The re-evaluation of differences is still the horny-thorny guy’s giggle.

Still, the desire to be collectively free from the devilish smile
Of the big ‘Other’. Still, ‘the little object of desire’ stares
Into the eye like a butterfly on the brow of a river crocodile.

It must be frustrating for all, but that is the fire.

Then, in a dream, a pure layer of slow gushing water,
Samadhi of my primordial ancestor, calm on a stone
inscribed with a language I knew not, and I was not alone.

33

26/11/23, Delhi

I am both near and far from the Israel-Palestine conflict
As much as I am near and far from Foucault-Derrida disagreements.

'History is a game played by all the periods of all the times'.
A political map of the world is available to one instant gaze.
Deeper economic interests and hegemonic styles perpetually render,
The territorial lines into a haze, potent enough to trigger wars:
With myself in it and endless debates on social media elsewhere.

Enter the concept ‘Différance’ and ‘there is no outside-the-text.’
Yet we experience sunrise every morning,

meaning text-meaning, invariably fornicate,

providing us with the actual link to reality.
Copernicus actually did the opposite and yet retained our reality.

As in ‘Guernica’, the war apparatus literally removes

the horse’s vocal cords, lest its neigh inhibits it, triggering its fall.
Silence of silenced voices may have discovered mediums to
Explain an overwhelming reality within silence.

34

27/11/23, Delhi

In the present,

the erect penis, resembles a burning candle which
Failed again to illuminate the dark depths between Laila’s thighs.
Qais's lust is the luminescent glare of Arab wilderness. No regrets. *

In the present,

a stunning ruthlessness is the stratagem.
To heal, a methodology teaches how to rub
Salt in the wounds of the other and yet appear pious.

Is there any future?

We went for a picnic in the forest and forgot to cover
Sodium metal in the rain. Now we wonder why this smoke and ash.
(sodium + water = fire).

In the future,

like earthworms, children will split a mobile phone into two
To obtain two fully functional devices. There are always some rewards.
One can sit by a particular window and see only that way.

*A couplet by Ghalib

35

28/11/23, Delhi

Then, the Brothers Karamazov arrived in Jerusalem,
Metamorphosed into cartographers of a kind,
Determined to redraw and rename their
Organs and bones as genuine ‘Products of History’.

‘Israeli Political map looks like my liver’, said one,
‘Gaza Strip is like my gallbladder’, said the other.
‘Your gallbladder is full of stones, hence useless’,
said the third one, next to the fourth one, who was
Silently measuring the diameter of the Dead Sea,
Believing it akin to his own intestines.

Either flattened by a time to two-dimensionality, or suffering
from scoliosis, or frustrated by their penis’s perpetual contraction
and swelling, or, some strange surreal-psychological
disorder that paralyses the body’s horizontal half.

All of them unsure about their future destinations.

36

29/11/23, Delhi

After we waged thousands of big and small wars to control
the material resources, we gifted ourselves a thing called the ‘Cloud Capital’.

To test it, my friend knocked on the door of ‘Cloud Capital’.
‘Here it is, similar to there it is.’ Responded, the ‘Cloud-Capital’

Finally, we are safe in the hands of the Digital Feudal Lords.

As before, there is a choice to buy and sell, but via the ‘Cloud Capital’?

The sum total of our individual ideas of living are now archived.

In pixels, we happily upload ourselves and others on the ‘Cloud Capital’.

Amazon, Facebook, Uber and other digital giants are Masters,
And the rest of us are slaves of a thing called the ‘Cloud Capital’?

Still, instinctual demarcations guide the individual to take a position.
But how will the tortoise run the race with the rabbit called the ‘Cloud Capital’?

37
30/11/2023, Delhi

There are ways to enter and re-enter,

then disappear within the maze of architecture,

painting, music, poetry, dance, cinema, storytelling, etc...

Even staying outside is a way of entering…

Cycles of disappearing and reappearing in life

are like crests and troughs on the surface of a lake.

Even as a spectator at the bank, the watery character of life engulfs.

In Gaza,
Architecture, poetry, cinema, storytelling, dance,

and painting are underneath a vast rubble.
In Gaza, even a bird’s feather on ruins can measure the pain,

anger and demand for justice.

Unlike ancient ruins, sites in Gaza won’t let you stay dry.

38

01/12/ 2023, Delhi

At the bend of a busy road in Srinagar, a little boy
Was troubling his mother like a mad elephant.
‘What is wrong with this little boy?’
Enquired a soldier on duty, smilingly.
‘He wants a gun’, replied the Kashmiri mother.
‘Why don’t you buy one (toy gun)? He is weeping', suggested the soldier gently.
The mother replied in a flash,
‘He is demanding the gun which you have.’

By Akhter Mohiuddin (1928-2001).
Kashmiri novelist, playwright, and short story writer.
Recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award -1958.

Without reading such a fictional account,
Sometimes, grown-up boys pick up guns
In Kashmir, Palestine, or elsewhere.
Sometimes, they write, paint, sing, or go elsewhere.
During the war, while the text goes to text, the people who
Are physically engaged in the fight resemble all those who
Attempt to resolve the issues physically.

‘There is a thin transparent layer between it (Ulysses)
and madness.’ James Joyce.

39
02/12/23, Delhi

Perhaps 8 odd billion blades of grass have their roots interwoven
like the entire human population of our earth around billion hermaphrodite worms.

The ground upon which we played cricket with a wooden ball
under the Chinar trees at
Bijbehara Kashmir's Dara Shikoh garden must be thinking
of the beauty of those crushed blades of grass under our feet,
but particularly more about the spots where the wooden ball
landed before it would hit the bat, the legs, the hands, or the wickets
made up of random stones supported from behind by school bags.

What the garden thinks, it thinks.

I remember that bluish-dead blood under the skin on my knee.
It is beautiful now, a mountain flower; then, it was quite painful.

Perhaps, after death, one becomes a huge garden-substance
that re-thinks of the beautiful world.

I have never been to a place like Gaza.
But the world, at any given moment,
retains all the nuances of all the places of all the pasts.

‘Death is the mother of beauty’ — Wallace Stevens.

40

03/12/23, Delhi

A conceptual body, vertically sliced into two:
Inder as Hindu and Salim as Muslim.
A mountain in Srinagar horizontally sliced into:
Koh-i-Maran and Hari Parbat.

Materials and ghosts extracted, processed, pigmented:
Violet. Red. Black. Grey.
At eye level, four squares are in a single frame on the wall.

Titled ‘K’, this enigmatic composition, like Mona Lisa
on canvas, shows a million cracks on its surface,
but a dedicated mass of people take care
and ensure the proper display of this masterwork.

If people are anxious to double the mystery of it, then
A parallel master collaborative work from Israel and Palestine
should be exhibited beside ‘K’ in a single room.

The curator may paste a one-liner on the door:
PLEASE ENTER TO SEE; IT CAN BE BORING AFTER A WHILE.

41

04/12/23, Delhi

Like the ‘Acknowledgements’ section at the end of a book,
My friend on his deathbed expressed heartfelt gratitude.
More than words, his eyes conveyed love
and the precious time and resources
That people around him devoted selflessly.

But that is only the little snow accumulated
on the back of a tilted tree, which we often see.

In the Book of Life, we often hear from elders:
It is the cellular growth of elements and experiences
That matters in the end.

How do I express it any further?

Yet, I sometimes wonder about places like Palestine,
Where libraries are full of abruptly ended books.

42

04/12/23, Delhi

تو شاہیں ہے*
The aerial view is great.
Wait, wait, wait.

This Israel-Palestine landscape
Is a mere four-kilo buffalo bone,
Lift, drag and thrust.
Your aerodynamics and eye
Shall drop it from another sky.

Acids in your stomach will dissolve
Its outer and marrow.
Act then; it can be just now or tomorrow.

‘There are more things in heaven and earth.’
Interpret the ongoing beastly games on the ground.

See, but don’t see.
You are both sound and no sound.

*( Tu Shaheen Hai by Iqbal )

43

05/12/23, Delhi

The Balfour Declaration,
Or the rebirth of Siamese twins?

Part 1

Though poor, they were happy in their village.
Healthy xiphopagous twins, born in Thailand with Chinese ancestry,
Two of the nineteenth century’s most studied human beings.

‘Strange animal’ was the first impression when
A Scottish tourist in a boat in Menam River spotted them in 1824.
But he saw economic opportunity in them.

They gained popularity in America and Europe as ‘freak shows’.
They became slave traders with two different identities,
Two different households, and scores of children.
Eng died hours after Chang in 1912.
An autopsy revealed that their livers were fused
in the ligament connecting their sternums.

(Consider the limited medical sciences of those times)

Part 2

The ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict.

Scientific reasoning can do wonders. No?

44

07/12/23, Delhi

ون سا د لیلا (Vansa Dalilah: a Kashmiri expression)
Tell me a story, fact or fiction.

A time when God appointed Samson, the first-ever judge

(as if a fact)

A time when there was a lion in ancient Israel.
(as if there was one in the first place)

A time when Samson killed the lion, flouting all rules.
(as if inside a proscenium-like place)

A time when the secret of his powers was not known to all.
(as if his long hair was some special extra limb)

A time when Dalilah seduced Samson to be captured.
A time when Samson was blinded for looking into Dalilah’s eyes.
(as if, by a rule, the organ that sinned is the main culprit)

A time when Philistines cut his hair

(as if a phallus)

A time when Samson’s hair grew slowly to take revenge.
(as if there was no other purpose in his life)

A time when Samson found a dead ass’s jawbone

(as if a great weapon)

A time when everybody died in the end.
(as if there was no other way to end the story)

A time when people abandon the contested spaces.
A time when the remaining ruins turn into dust.
A time when a new, strange set of people arrive from distant lands.
A time when new conflicts trigger another war.

A time when this too passes into a time.

45

08/12/23, Delhi

During my daily exercise to dump the kitchen garbage, I saw a man
Suddenly shot dead in front of me. Just like that — I was in Gaza.

Earlier, I was in the bus, casually looking through the window.
A series of bombs fell on the buildings. Just like that — I was in Gaza.

A moment earlier, I was recollecting the tragedies, not in tranquility.
I heard fighter jets over my head. Just like that — I was in Gaza.

A moment ago, I heard bombs fell on the poet Refaat Alareer.
I saw a dust-heap, and then I heard screams. Just like that —- I was in Gaza.

WANN: (We Are Not Numbers) organization, telling stories of victims.
I am going to read. I am reading. Just like that —- I was in Gaza.

46

09/12/23, Delhi

How can a country without land walk on its feet
And enter the room, sit on a chair, face to face,
and negotiate peace?

All countries have set a rule for every other country
To become a dog, piss on an outline, call it a territory,
And defend it, eternally.

How can a dog teach another dog that if there are two dogs
face to face, then the dog who drinks the other dog’s piss is not entitled to piss?

‘Piss Games’ deserve modification from time to time.
But what if the hairy tail of every nation-state hides the cool divine sun between its legs, then?

47

09/12/23, Delhi

Lose a joule or so, willingly;
Read a reference in proper context.
For example, Quran 8.12:
It must be about then, not now.

Muhammad, Ram, Christ, Moses,
And figures create a people.
Every mythological figure is half a king,
And every King is God almighty.

Metamorphosed, reincarnated, resurrected,
Everybody is here, we all are here.
‘King Climate Change’ is the latest addition.
It is the sole global occupier of our Earth.

Someone lost in the crowd like me is
Obviously not the creator of a people.
It becomes necessary to be an individual
And resist servitude, intolerance, and shame.

In crises, people often invoke the Creator,
And if He, in turn, looks indifferent, then the feeling
that we merely drift in a river still gives us
A chance to swim against the current, and be…

48

10/12/23, Delhi

Why imagine? There are wailing cats in
Every modern and ancient ruin.

Please do something.

This is non-divinity; drive this bad omen away from our vicinity.

                     Mothers, in particular, despise
                     Their heart-wrenching cries.

But a cat naturally responds to her own scent.
                     Its grammar is unlike our lament.

                     Yet, my rationale today didn’t work:
A wailing cat performs like a clever artwork.

Why so? I ask myself. There are wailing mothers in
          Gaza and other situations, both thick and thin.

It is soothing to move the hand over a cat’s fur
                                and listen to her sweet purr.

To reimagine bodies buried under the rubble
          and bodies pulled out from the rubble.
                     Bloody blood all around.
Helplessness, blank eyes, devastated background.

Surely, what wailing cats anticipate,
          Wailing mothers hate.

11/12/23, Delhi

That strange one,
Who inevitably ends up talking to self,
Halts at no mirage
Yet witnesses the evaporative nature of the real
And explains in shapes, languages, types,
and gestures.

And beyond the wonderment
Of the term ‘Nothing is Outside’,
Is there a thisness of 'total immanence'
And a little something that languishes outside,
As if duty-bound to explain ‘Time’ itself?

Fighter planes over Gaza,
Over buildings, food, debris,
Blood, UNO, winter sunlight, squirrel tail,
Bottlebrush tree, water, rose petals, earthworms,
Stones at sacred sites, colour, clear sky,
Labia folds in cement dust, fluids, and scents,
Hairline crack in the femur bone, gun, air, smoke,
Dissolved finger pieces in dead river, virus,
Love poems, screams, moon-sonata, TV news,
Corner of a hospital bed, typing pad, silences…

Together + infinities = all at once?

13/12/ 23, Delhi

I understand, but I don’t understand
How and why the daily business of the world is
War in Gaza and The World.

I understand, but I don’t understand how,
During sleep, numerous pores of my skin open to
Bring my ‘Primal Fears’ face to face with ‘Erotic Waves’?
The business of the world inevitably comes in the way
And sharpens the chiaroscuro of a nightmare.

I understand, but I don’t understand how,

during my performance,

a perforated black garment
Called ‘Pheran’ plays the role of a translator
Between ‘The World’ and ‘My Body’.

Let me close my eyes, feel the inward,
and wear ‘The Last Pheran’.
I understand, but I don’t understand how
Immensities, effects and future possibilities will pass
Through my stilled body with all prints of
‘Postcards to Gaza’, which I composed since October 7^th, 2023.

14/12/23, Delhi

In Gaza, a wounded petite butterfly
in the middle of an uninterrupted triangulation of
‘The imaginary’, ‘the symbolic’, and ‘the real’.

At the helm, the dimwit Big Brother
Denies access to what people actually desire.

True, people’s desires are endless,
But aren’t we sitting over a surplus of desire?

Tell the dimwit, let people chase freedom
Even if they return disillusioned.
Yes, madness, but be it so.
Tell him, go, relieve yourself.

People need time to reorganize,
To heal the unattended, the broken, the orphaned,
The lonely, and the hungry.

Tell this dimwit that we all live with a void,
And how can a void replace another void.

Tell him that we all are feathery substances;

We better go slow, not 'drink the air',

but inhale whatever is available out there

and elevate,

and from high skies, witness
the falling of a feathery togetherness.

15/12/23, Delhi

WAR demolishes every metaphor.

Total history is like this:
A Sun in the atmosphere,
Revolving around a solitary beautiful home on a mound
From morning till evening like a loop.

The walls, the windows and a few rooms
of the petite architectural design tend to forget
the summertime when the Sun rapes it at will,
But fondly remember the clear wintry days,
When the same Sun steps in gently
And warms the life from the inside.

Nights are meant for sweet dreams or nightmares.
It depends on multiple factors in the primordial past and
whatever happened during the day.

Today, a good morning Sun, waiting like a lover outside my house,
arrived in, the moment I lifted the curtain and opened the window.

I instantly rolled towards it like an egg in the womb.
And felt fertilized, ready to metamorphose into a dream baby.

16/12/23, Delhi

The dot does not think.

On a two-dimensional plane,
In two eyes, ‘Karuna’ and ‘Rahim’,
What converges on the mental screen,
In the third dimension, is an equal
‘Distribution of the Sensible’.

The line chiseled on the back of every human head reads:
کس کے گھر جا ئے گا سیلا ب بلا میرے بعد –
(Ghalib)
(After me, whose home will this tide of violence inundate?)

All the worldly winds that blow
The unequal 'distribution of the sensible'
knows how to distinguish
The equal from the unequal?

Time is the fourth dimension.
Time may intervene.
Time is a great healer.

19/12/23, Delhi

Imagine Gaza Strip: a plot of land,

measuring approximately 360 square meters.
And the only visible person on it is a Gazan.

There are two poems face to face,
Like two mirrors looking into each other endlessly.

One, a poem not in words,
But in his ways of resistance
to retain the plot at any cost.

Second, a poem of losses, of dreams, of desires, and mysteries,

which we all sing in our respective languages.

20/12/2024. Delhi

Ariel has left from here to there,

But who is still here?

It’s not the common Kashmiri Tas-Rupdar,
neither a costumed version of ten-headed demon,
Nor a dissenting Jinn from Shams al-Ma’arif

In fact, none of all those
who bear a name and fame.

It is a war ghost.

It possesses the War Machine
And simultaneously gnaws at the bones
of languages across the globe.

During wars,
all the international and indigenous ghosts
who love to bless one and all,
irrespective of who is who,
compress themselves into dots
like some metaphysical zip files in the multiverse.

23/12/23, Delhi

Let me stand in sync with the voice that concludes:
‘ARTS IN GENERAL KNOW THAT WAR LISTENS TO NONE.’

I remember, as a kid, once I had to walk all alone through.
a graveyard during night, and how suddenly my vocal cords vented out a rhythm,

and I stopped, then I hummed again.

No research will tell us the actual nature of the link between
The child’s first scream at birth and the dark-matter-dark-energy.

We won’t notice, but in the caesura of the ‘total immanence’,
Every artist, poet, saint, prophet, and people in general
scream in some style or the other:

‘Musk lies in the musk deer’s own navel,
But roam in the forest he does – it to seek.’ (Kabir 1398–1518 CE)

24/12/23, Delhi

Not just we,
but everybody lost autonomy to be:
the muzzle, the hammer, the spring, the finger,

the trigger, the gunpowder
lost it too.

A strange, new vicious force appropriated our freedom;
an evil eye puts us an in uninterrupted collective use.
For a just utilitarian casualness,
It never lets our components disintegrate.

Are we all nostalgic about the past?
Nomads had sciences. Someone knew how to extract metals
from the earth, make a sword and a plough.
Someone knew the pairing.

Intuitive nomadic wisdom in Leonardo da Vinci’s fighting vehicle,
Mikhail Kalashnikov, always dreamt of becoming a poet.
A German Jewish-born Nobel winner killed millions and saved billions,
But that’s incidental. Fritz Haber was primarily a scientist.
We are all innocent:
Cold nuts and bolts of a gun,
Flesh and bones in the winter sun.

58

25/12/23, Delhi

In the image:
From the thicket of a Mango tree,
An aggressive crow is chasing the cuckoo;
Her nest is under attack.

From the thicket of an Ashoka tree,
An aggressive dove is chasing the crow;
Her nest is under attack.

In the present image, an OLIVE tree flashes
instead of a Mango tree, an Ashoka tree.

Delhi to Gaza, and back to :-

The scientific classification for
A Dove, a Cuckoo, a Crow, a Human:
Domain: Eukaryote,
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata.

Again, in the present image:
Class-Aves means birds fly.

And in the ‘sanctuary of sorrows, ’
Humans have wings but are heavy with tears.

27/12/2023

It was a thirsty monkey’s mouth in the water

that witnessed the descending of
The wind’s countless phalluses
On the calm Surface-Tension of a river.

All I saw was his bending back, his hair,
His red buttocks from behind,
A clear atmosphere at best.
I wish my mouth had eyes to tell.

Beyond the spectacle, it is the pleasured water o

n a geographical tilt, that is
drifting to fornicate the horizon.

Be it pure or impure, the wind
Descends upon pure or impure water.
To keep giving its surface a beautiful tension,
unconditionally.

Their loving act motivates arid, toxic, stolen,
Free or occupied, actually, all kinds of lands
To stand in praise.
Though the wind’s style and speed changes at the sea,
Like true lovers, they never cease to surprise the mouth.

28/12/23, Delhi

Go, go, once again,
You both, ‘Guf’ and ‘Gu’,
Sit face to face, with a table ‘Ta’ in between
And hurl words at each other.

The taciturnity of ‘Ta’ between ‘Guf’ and ‘Gu’
during wars engulfs the entire stage.
Audiences turn to whisper,
become multiples of GufTaGus.

The mouth-job of GufTaGu
In every room is to keep blowing
The issue at hand.

Go, it is a war between Guftagu makers
and Guftagu demolishers.

29/12/23, Delhi

Water that cooled the first poet’s feet at the Cave’s mouth,
Dry leaf that fell from the tree above,
Paradise bird who flicked whatever fell from above,
Sound that the beak made after a single dip in the brook below.

Dance that followed over the feather of his mate:
All that, and the wind beyond the cliff,
I beg in the language of my heart:

Take me to the song’s edge –
I want to moisten my lips.
Take me to that memory of water.

All I have is this – this poor, lawyerly articulation
As if files to refer to. As if shelves high above,
As if policed alleys, and machines to smog.

Amidst this, a child half buried, half pulled by the staff,
I couldn’t bear to watch this footage from Gaza.

There is nothing I can do.

There is everything I can do.
Take me to the song’s edge.
Take me…

04/01 2024, Delhi

Yesterday night in a dream:
a bunch of drops of light, programmed to jump perpetually,
here and there through a projector on the floor.
Silent audience in a small, dark room.

Strange music.
Water dripping from above, a young artist
I have never met before, performed through space.
I was him.

Tonight, again, he turned on his bed to insert a pause
into the sound “Dar-ling” while making love to his wife.
As he turned, their little boy, who insisted
on playing between his parents on the bed, was delayed.
Tonight, as she turned to tickle the chin of her son,
a bomb pierced through their ceiling.

Mother and child survived; husband is dead.
I was him.

Tonight, I could only utter “Dar…”

5th Jan 2024. Delhi

War-Wolf is one, poised to depart.
A pack of wolves ( Earthforce ) shall arrive
And reset the dialogue for
Deterritorialisation, Reterritorialisation.

Meanwhile, in Gaza,
The dead and not-dead-as-yet
continue to read 'A Thousand Plateaus'.

In an instant, somewhere, someone gestured,
Hey, God Almighty is saying something; listen, listen:

At best, I am a fragrance.
Words on the pages of a book, half slumberous,
half delirious, falsely promise to hold me forever.
Banish me, and I will arrive at my own sweet will.
The Nexus of this word-to-the-word thing, among other things,
leads to an extension as other non-wordy things do.
If doubly articulated, there are no things but strata,
assemblages, and planes of consistencies.
God is fragrance, is substance.
God is the creator, is ignorance.

Devil is Shaitan, is Asura.
God is Allah, is Ishwara.
The difference is obscura.

07/01/24, Delhi

(Un)translatability of the wounds on the battlefield asked:
Do 'Postcards to Gaza' have an outside?
Is 'Postcard to Gaza' a Pharmakon?
Is 'Postcard to Gaza' a written object?

Drug/Drug: who/what heals/kills.
Scapegoats are in line to save the world.
The practice is half as old as time.

There is no ‘meanwhile’.
Are all the written words extensions of the oral?

Are other communicative tools that curve inwardly and nourish/infect the non-written realms simultaneously?

This 'Postcard to Gaza' stares blankly...

Disseminated dust particles from the lands addicted to bombs,

bullets, rockets and missiles hover around the eyelashes of 'Postcards to Gaza'.

This 'Postcard to Gaza' is the ancient predecessor of King Oedipus,

born 10000 BCE and the mother of all Postcards

8/01/2024, Delhi

آم پن سد رس نا و چھس لمان

(Lal Ded. 1320-1392. Kashmiri poetess)
Towards the end, at the sea,
we were found towing the boat of the collective unconscious
with the thread of unwritten history.

Earlier, when we drifted along with the watery flow,
The river bottom and the mountain stayed behind.

All those who stay behind have a reason or so:
The river bottom yearned to climb the mountain
and enjoy the sun like a sea lion.
And the mountain dreamt to fly like a migratory bird
and see the place where it halted for so long from above.

But something else always happens.

‘Kyah kyah vanai, ai dost che, kam kam sitam masherav mei,
kus zahre gam kor nosh mei, kam neze chokh vetraiv mei’.
(Kashmiri popular Radio song)
How to tell you my friend, a mountain of suffering fell on me,
I had no choice but to drink the poison of grief,
I was wounded but I had to be calm

16/01/2024. Delhi

Be it a sacred, a toilet, a house or a high-rise.

A material, a labour, a skill, an idea and a mathematical calculation

goes into every architectural design.

Perhaps, a little ghost occupies every building, but
a few develop limbs, go crazy and hit each other.

People do intervene, in both good and bad sense.
But such buildings love to clash to generate ash.

After a long, failed argument as above:
A will to the spiritual elongated my neck,
And I saw:
Winged buildings - like a spectacle of some bird species in the sky:

they were sacred sites of all the religions.
With eyes fixed on higher planes.

There is enough fuel in the air to sustain them there,
eternally.

The buildings on ground unsettled me too.

I have other plans. No arguments.

'bai -daro deewar sa ik ghar banaya chahiye' - Ghalib.

I yearn to make a home for myself, doorless, without a wall even.

17/01/2024

“Literature is not innocent “Bataille.

Words are-

Words, pulled from a disciplined shelf to make bombs.
Words, arranged with numbers to make fighter planes.
Words, arranged to make cruel sentences.
Words, comprehended to design torture chambers
Words, silenced by a verdict in words.
Words, composed to disguise the pain underneath.
Words, in the hands of lawyer to manipulate facts
Words, in the hands to lawyer to extract a good judgement.
Words, uttered in a rush to invite trouble.
Words, swallowed back by the hesitant speaker.
Words, factory byproduct of unconscious.
Words, as acoustics to shape a prayer.
Words, recollected in tranquility, printed for reader of all kinds.
Words, doubly innocent to narrate dreams.
Words, in detail to describe: love, love letter and a landscape.
Words, uttered during sex evaporate, but echo later.
Words, they are on the tree. Tree dies, but the word ‘tree’ lives,
Petals wither, but the word ‘petals and word ‘wither’ lives on, and so on.
Words are free from any sticky substances, but they stalk
And chase you to death.

29th Feb. 2024. Delhi.

Dear Palestinian people,

I am writing after a while.

Sometimes I prefer silence.

Your demand for justice demands my attention,

and I try to supply it in the right proportion.

I discovered recently that silences are heavily loaded with meaningful statements.

I don't utter, but I hate the entire political world.

Actually I have been dealing with myriad situations inherited at my birth till date.

If that is how freedom looks, then what can I offer?

Today i switched on TV and knew a few facts about Sudanese crises.

And obviously I turn my attention to them as well.

That may lessen my significance in your eyes?

The list of crises is quite long you know.

I stand fragmented, so once again a big silence.

Yours affectionately.

IS. Delhi

IS: 28^th March 2024, Delhi

Did you hear anything?
Did you hear anything?
I heard the sound of my own word,
Or was it someone in the distance?
Or, my own auditory hallucinations?

Right now, do you hear
deafening sounds from War-fields?
I hear words, I see a silent people.

There can be a Trigonometry of angles
that connects my eye, my mouth and my ear.

But how to calculate the Hypotenuse
of sounds buried alive at a distance, if right now,
You and me is Right Angle of a Triangle.

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