(087) Lone In The Dark Lanes Poem by premji premji

Yesterday, I had been to a
Carpet shop in Broadway.
He showed me those thin
Carpets and explained, 'Kashmiri.'
Don't know what prevented from buying
and back home, your letter waiting.
The same simple joys and your great anxieties:
I am afraid of those huge blacks who kill
even for a pair of shoes and dark goggles...
Not peaceful even here yaar...
No piece...No sleep...'

Dear, remember the place where we met
For the first time,
under those lovely mayflowers…
Those days, in the city of palaces*(Mysore)
and lovely gardens, how wonderful!
Same classroom, same room in hostel we shared...
Those apples and walnuts, you brought from
Srinagar at the end of vacations...
Those days of exams, lousy labs...
Waiting for response from those oscilloscopes...
Those small gossips, walks through lone lanes...
And your Dad's love: a valley in my mind,
greener and greener and greener...

Those violent days of early nineties,
days of abductions and abscondings,
how silent you were, dear then....
Not even reading the headlines of news papers,
not listening to TV news...

Remember, you running away from
watching `Roja.., '*(a movie on terrorism)
And that dreaded day we roamed a lot...
Back at night, unclear heard your Dad's name
in the news headlines.
Then someone came in search of you
and a phone call, yes you knew it...
That night- the darkest of all-
unconscious you took rest on my lap.
Did I cry? No... tears may wake you...
When you left, dried up my glands.


We all waited for your comeback,
praying for his soul rest in peace.
You came when exams approached,
nothing did me say...yes you knew...
what I intended to say...

Deedi- your elder sister, a doctor herself-
unveiled that episode later:
in that morning, he was leaving for office,
someone came- hardly twenty- and
shot at point blank...
Our driver betrayed, otherwise
he would have lost his family...
Anyway they came in time...
When brought to medical college,
they asked: 'Hindu or Muslim
and who shot? '

'Hindu, terrorists...' I said,
Twenty doctors vanished,
only me, not in consciousness...
He left without any medical care,
those three bullets could fail his heart...
Helpless I was...
Yes you can cut others...
but not your dearests...
See the fire in my son's eyes
who saw him shooting...
It will never extinguish...
We lost everything and now
hiding in the city of graves*...
Who knows, when do they
pump bullets again?

One day, from a deep silence,
you told, “He was my class-mate.'

Now Kashmir: hell on earth...
Bullet fire: their country song…
Their Carpets: dyed with blood...

Every national holiday
makes me frightened...
Republic day... twenty-three pundits shot...

August fifteen...
Our independence day
How many more souls will be free,
any idea, dear Punditji*?


15.07.98
Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru. former prime minister of India

It was a real experience of my beloved friend Leena from Calicut. I wrote this on her perspective