Warmer Still Is My Native Womb Poem by Aniruddha Pathak

There was this plateau land on the lee side
Of world's tallest and frozen mountain,
Oldest but not uninhabited, decried,
Looking at the Central Asian plane
With rain-shadowed south-west monsoon, most bare,
A bone dry harsh desert, wetted by little rains,
Not but sturdiest grass ever thrived there—
Some tubers, carrots, radish, hardy grains.

And yet, the land, much like a colony of ants,
Thrives, and thrives well on whatever life grants,
Gathering whatso victual that it makes,
Girls drying dung-made cakes,
Men folk chopping dry wood
To keep the winter warm and somewhat good,
Searching for an unknown faint reason
To live life in a twain of season:
Six months endeavouring to ensure,
That the rest of six months they would endure.

September comes, crops are just right to greet,
And every house digs up a garden pit—
To thaw the roots enough in summer heat—
Tubers, carrots, and odds to eat,
Sealing it with some dried up straw,
Insulating with winter's snow—
An insurance against the frozen vows
What wonder these subterranean silos,
In snow the Zojilla pass shall when seal,
The hardest of Nature's harshest of ill,
The power plants would pause when in cold unease,
All streams when suffer wintry freeze.

But life triumphs as ever to rise tall
When providence casts her ugliest pall,
The locals survive when ingenious to be,
Water may when cease (stiff in pipes)to flow,
They heat pipes to keep them drippy,
And getting water by melting the snow,
Ah survival knows how to live,
When all birds beckon them to leave,
Migrating to warm, calibrated climes,
Breeding in alien lands awaiting better times.

People subsist still on meagre ration—
Not in hellish human hibernation—
For there is work to do,
Unpaid though, for incomes get frozen too:
‘We have to keep stored water warm,
‘And shovel snow from frozen roof,
‘Cooking, cleaning, washing beside,
‘And study when there's time aside',
Life does demand a perennial proof,
They scarce can hibernate even when storm
Passes; if people passive should lie,
They sure would get frozen soon to die.

Never for planes, they're made for this harsh land,
To nowhere would they e'er wish to migrate,
Be it paradise on earth, Pearly Gate,
And harsher gets their life sturdier do they stand.
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This poem dwells on life in Drass in Ladakh, the part of
India's Jammu & Kashmir.
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Happenings | 14.09.12 |