By Santosh Bakaya

Gowhar Nazir
Gowhar Nazir Dar, an engineering student who died in forces action in HMT on Saturday evening, November 07 2015.

In this Paradise your sojourn was brief

You vanished plunging your family in grief.

From one paradise

You have travelled to another

Pack up your dreams, and your fantasies

Inhale that serene breeze.

Rest in peace, Gowhar!

Up there, you will meet tiny Burhan too

Give him a warm hug

Heavenly introductions! (Courtesy: Suhail H. Naqshbandi)
Heavenly introductions! (KL Image Courtesy: Suhail H. Naqshbandi)

One huge one to Aylan too

And many more tiny tots

Who were caught in vicious eddies

And left behind their satchels and teddies.

Goodbye, Gowhar!

You will be better off in that paradise

Is our surmise.

Not lashed by winds of hate,

Or gales of malevolence

But touched by a peaceful radiance of tolerance.

We know, the lakes, the rivers, the flowers

And gardens and bowers

Will miss you.

Your family will miss you too.

But, you will be better off in that paradise

Sleep well, Gowhar.

Come, Gowhar, forget and forgive.

Forget your dreams

Forget your mother’s screams

Forget that teargas shell

Which ruptured your dreams.

Forget this earth’s cacophony shrill

Of hate, rancour and ill-will.

Forgive us, Gowhar, we could not save you

But, let me tell you,

We have been unable to save ourselves too!

Satosh Bakaya
Satosh Bakaya

A novelist-poet, Dr Santosh Bakaya stays in Jaipur with her husband, Lalit Magazine and college going daughter. She is from Kashmir. She recently won the Reuel International award for her long poem “OH HARK!” which is now part of “THE SIGNIFICANT ANTHOLOGY”.

Her e-book: FLIGHTS FROM MY TERRACE in Smashwords has been criticallly acclaimed and recently Vitasta Publishers released her new ‘poetic biography’ of M K Ghandhi: “BALLAD OF BAPU”.

3 COMMENTS

  1. Dear friends , my soul is bleeding…… I couldn’t stop myself from writing these words….
    Oh My ‘sympathetic’ killer
    I have been waiting for centuries
    For that “healing touch”
    For that glorious morning
    When the sun of my dreams would rise
    While I lay my life for my land.
    I never, and will never hope for your
    Generosity in words and deeds
    For you have only the tool to give
    ‘Peeling touch’ to my sacrificial body
    And want to peel off my identity
    And bruise my conscience
    And put on me a million dollar make-up.
    That won’t stop my organic growth
    I will grow again and again
    Till I am destroyed to nought
    I cannot be defeated by fraud and guile.
    I will rise again and again
    Till my last drop of blood
    Stains your peaceful dagger.
    I am consoled now by my groans and cries
    They pat me,they gather me together
    They beckon me to my path of freedom.
    I pity you O brute oppressor
    I have already attained my goal
    I could see your defeat in your fiery eyes
    I could feel that in your enraged self
    You are now afraid of just our voice
    Choke it but you can’t stop it.
    The voice has spread and now,
    Its echo has made you tremble
    And your rank can’t shield you from it
    My dream will haunt you wherever you go
    Awake or asleep.
    My conscience glues my straps of my lynched body.
    The body is mine, the blood is mine.
    Your every endeavour to wither me will be defeated
    By me and my every other self
    Today,tomorrow or till your time…

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