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Table of Contents
  Index
  About the Poetess
  My Father's Country
  Azadi: 1989-1995
  The Yellow River
  Father
  Summer Rain
  Anantnag
  Mother's Day USA
  Mahtab
  Bride in Red
  Seasons
  Priya
  Refugee
  My Dream
  The City of Dread
  Kashmir Today
  Sukeshi has a Dream
  Autumn Rain
  The Story of Ganesha
  Washer Woman
  The Ever New Poet
  The Yogi
  The Rishi
  My Death
  Self Spectre
  Autumn Song
  Book in pdf format

Koshur Music

An Introduction to Spoken Kashmiri

Panun Kashmir

Milchar

Symbol of Unity

 
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Priya

White nights have leafy
darknesses: inscrutable.
Pathways of her mind
stay silent like streets
during curfew hours.
Grief stricken avenues
shriek, become quite.

Priya watches people
cross a distant bridge.
She cannot hear voices,
only shadows pass.
Of daughters, wives,
grandmothers in green,
red and blue sarees.

Some wear black 
burkhas, white cotton,
or reddish brown silk,
holding hands of small
children, bringing home
fresh fish and fruit.

They are the living.
She is in hell, watching
a pageant which had
place for her not so long
ago; she too had a home.

She is chained to stone.
In a nightmare words form,
lips are too dry to speak.
They bleed her tongue red.

If Priya were to jump,
people will watch her fall,
wearing a white salwar.
Her hair elongated eerily
like that of a sinful witch.

Someone will, no doubt,
go mad, screaming loud.
A crowd will gather
near the mosque, where
a fruit vendor arranges
apricots, cherries, plums
in high rise pyramids.
She might shatter them.

[© Lalita Pandit, April 27, 1997].

 

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