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DAS LITERARISCH
ISSN No: 2454 – 4647 (Print Issue) || Vol: 3, Issue 1 || Jan-June 2020
https://shaheenfoundation.102 co.in/
Book Review
                                                                                 Perveiz Ali’s Fractious Minds: Where Fault Lines Turn Lifelines

                                                                                                                       Rukhaya M.K.
                                                                                                                       Poet and Critic

Kashmir has forever been designated as a paradise on earth. Though, the picture-perfect scenario is now fit only to adorn postcards. The chinars bear witness to the injustices, the verdant meadows are blood-stained and the meandering rivers have been forever changing courses as stability seems a distant possibility in this paradise lost “turned into a land of gravestones.” It is in such a scenario, that a rising star from Kashmir, Perveiz Ali puts to paper his travails, that though individual, at times resonates with the collective consciousness of Kashmir. As Roger Brubaker asserts, diasporas have resulted from the migration of borders over people, and not from that of people over borders. These borders have cut across the consciousness of the children of Kashmir as evinced in the title of this anthology Fractious Minds.
Perveiz resorts to poetry for it is poetry for him that thaws his “piercing pain.” He flutters hard against the bars of his cage, to express himself, despite the unhealed scars on his wings as he puts it in “Dream in the Prison.” He exhibits a rare individualistic voice, one that expresses the dismay of having to live in perpetual liminality, and kowtow to the intruding forces in the region. In “Who am I,” he chalks out his persona, as he asserts that the stringent forces may arrest the life around, though they cannot halt the flow of independent thought. Lines from “Dream in the Prison”:
A bird am I in the sensuous prison of the world,
Fluttering hard against the bars of my cage
Despite the unhealed scars on my wings,
Indelibly marked by my struggle in the perilous past.
Stand to rise with no fear of falling hard
The repetitious falling dampens not my attempts
He is aware of the repercussions of thought running over the virtual barricades as he states in “Where do I Stand”: Abuse me with the epithet of 'Poet' /For putting the rotten words right!” He describes his primary purpose as a poet to express that something is rotten in the (former) state of Jammu and Kashmir. He is like a child longing for the mother as he cannot realize his vision, as he states in “Worldly Vision” as he is deterred from life with the ‘scabs of unhealed wounds.’ In “The She, Besides Me,” he moves from the concept of mother to the motherland, from umbilical ties as he longs to secure ties with the motherland. The ties with the motherland are thus rendered analogical, though invisible, and stand as inseparable.
The years fly by so fast… time awaits no man.
Soon my time here will be done.
She shall cradle me in her warm environs,
Protect my carcass from the jackals,
My Motherland!

This reverence for the mother and motherland translates into his reverence not only for statehood, but also for women as he speaks of his life-partner with a love coupled with dignity in poems like “Unseen Bridge,” “An Unflinching Vow” and “Beloved…Sleep Sound.” The only inheritances from the past generations as he brilliantly puts it in “Aspirations Inherited” are aspirations that like balloons filled with hope are destined to burst at some point. Freedom seems to be beyond the horizon as he states in “Metamorphosis”: “What sun is to the blind/ Freedom is to me.”
Divorced children are always caught between two worlds, perpetually destined to remain in the third space, as they are subject to unending hearings and never asked what they want. Similar is the plight of Kashmir caught between two parent countries, as a referendum or plebiscite is indefinitely deferred. In “Vote for truth,” as he speaks of vote banks and party politics, at the end of the poem he mentions that the vote that actually matters is forever put off.‘Words of global peace ring hollow’ as more than reaching a resolution, it aims at pacifying two nuclear powers. And rather, the parents or the protectors turn subjugators. As Perveiz puts it in “Spring Denied”:
Chocolates and sweets are tendered to us,
But in their centre lies a poisonous blend
As protector states are ridiculed on one side as subjugators, the armed forces branded as the ultimate protectors of the nation ironically end up defiling the women folk. .Perveiz devotes a poem “Justice Denied” to the Kunan Poshpora incident in which in an evocative expression towards the end, he asks: “When will the linen be washed clean?” In another poem “Eve Emancipation,” he underlines the irony as innumerable innocents are branded as terrorists:
"Terrorist" a word bandied daily in occupied land.
Terrorists label innocents as terrorists, what a shame.
Perveiz’s poetry has shone with the passing of time. He describes himself as a poet as he stands as a wordsmith “With a chisel in my hand /To carve out the blank canvas,” The canvas is a metaphor that recurs in Perveiz’s poetry in poems like “Worldly Vision,” “Where do I Stand,” and “My Dream.” He reiterates his ultimate dream in “My Dream”:
Oh blank pages! Let's join merry making hands,
To sign an accord of our wishes,
Living harmonious even in isolation,
Where I can see my life's dream
Painting a canvas free of occupational theme.
“Should I forget” is a poem one can never forget as it brings tears to the eyes and condenses the trials and tribulations of the Kashmiri people redolently in a nutshell. This poem is testimony to Perviez’s poetic abilities as it tugs at our heart’s strings, and a testimony to the genre of poetry itself that can evoke feelings that no other genre can:
Among the swaying yellow mustard flowers,
How many encounters and fake encounters happen each day,
To take the yellowness and paint it red and grey?

You say, why object to independence and Republic day?
Should I answer or let my scars back and front make your day?
Oh no, let’s count the recorded rapes and leave the unnoticed unsaid.
Leave the assaults, count the unnamed graveyards on our landscape
Perveiz’s voice is the voice of Kashmir, as he himself states:” Poetry is the dialect that identifies you,/ Gives you a voice that makes you relevant too.” For him, poetry is his means to redemption as that which “heals gaping wounds and deep pain.” As he puts it in his “Verses of Life,” it is his gift to generations to come as he says “read my works each day and fantasize.” For, freedom still is beyond the horizon. He seeks liberation and reclamation in poetry with Fractious Minds in a stance where these fault lines have turned their lifelines

DAS LITERARISCH
ISSN No: 2454 – 4647 (Print Issue) || Vol: 3, Issue 1 || Jan-June 2020
https://shaheenfoundation.co.in/ 101

Kumar Yashwant
(Jamshedpur, India)

The Agony

The white coloured clouds in sky
Covering the essence of dark night,
The hush green leaves
Patting old, yellow and pale trees,
The bluish green drops
Attracted by creamy layer soils
And the light brown ones
Is waiting for the eaters of corpse.
The colours of white and green,
Show their mercy on dark and pale
To reach hidden intention of fame
Under influence of big name.
Mercy also showered on brown corpses
With lime fresh smiling faces
Captured behind high radial lenses.

DAS LITERARISCH
ISSN No: 2454 – 4647 (Print Issue) || Vol: 3, Issue 1 || Jan-June 2020
https://shaheenfoundation.co.in/ 99

Ashok Kumar Dash
(Jamshedpur, India)

Nocturnal Ordeal

Don’t wish me
in ecstatic words
“Good night, sweet dreams.”
My nights are no longer good
and dreams no longer sweet.
Dreams are but nightmares
that shatter my sleep
and nights are but
concentration camps for torture.
Sleep comes to me
but in fits and starts
and are soon after disturbed
by bizarre dreams-
I neither can recollect nor decipher.
Tick tock, tick tock
goes the wall clock
gifted by my father’s colleagues
on my wedding
some forty years ago-
a legacy of the past.
Eyes shut and
ears glued to the clock
I try to slip into
the monotony of
my uneventful past
in a futile bid to sleep.
A train of snapshots-
some sweet, some sour,
some horrific, some balmy-
flies past my mind’s eyes
in a quick succession
transporting me to a state of
constant unrest.
Faces of a child,

an adult, and an old man
grotesquely overlapped;
promises not kept,
self not actualized,
love unrequited,
responsibilities half-met,
and Time’s winged chariot
hurrying near-
violently shake me up
in an eerie wakefulness.
Though blinded by the dark
I can distinctly perceive
wolves howling,
lions roaring,
hyenas screaming
and rushing towards me
raising their venomous claws
to tear me apart…

DAS LITERARISCH
ISSN No: 2454 – 4647 (Print Issue) || Vol: 3, Issue 1 || Jan-June 2020
https://shaheenfoundation.98 co.in/

Khushwant Kaur
(Jamshedpur, India)

Death is Eternal Bliss

Life’ joy and sorrow, Death, its dramatic end.
Life is in goals, Death, it’s finale.
Life is painful, Death soothes.
Life is diseases, Death’ its cure.
Life is about possessing, Death’ about renunciation.
Life is love, Death’ truth.
Life is complex, Death’ simple.
Life is dreams, Death dissolves.
Life is in solving, Death resolves.
Life is lyrical, Death stills.
Life is in journeys, Death, its destination.
Life is in learning, Death, in its conclusion.
Life is illusions, Death’ reality.
Life is laughter, Death’ its rattle.
Life is desires, Death is fulfillment.
Life is activity, Death is stillness.
Life is vigour, Death’ ennui.
Life is beautiful, Death’ ethereal.
Life is chaos, Death’ eternal calm.
Life’ bitter-sweet, Death’ Eternal Bliss.

DAS LITERARISCH
ISSN No: 2454 – 4647 (Print Issue) || Vol: 3, Issue 1 || Jan-June 2020
https://shaheenfoundation.co.in/ 97

The Knowledge Pool

We are a Company of Professors
Packages are available with us
In keeping with every class
Economy and Deluxe
Whatever suits your purse.
You can pay online
Or transfer money to the firm’s account
For class notes, neatly analyzed texts
Guide books, grade-upgrade-techniques
We provide you the best
In the flood of trash.
We don’t accept cash
We are a non-profit organization
We don’t ask you anything
But a small contribution
To maintain a big knowledge pool.

DAS LITERARISCH
ISSN No: 2454 – 4647 (Print Issue) || Vol: 3, Issue 1 || Jan-June 2020
https://shaheenfoundation.94 co.in/

Sarfaraz Nawaz
(Azamgarh, India)

Grand Father
It was a daily occurrence
As children we were witness
And saw it happening even as young men.
The quarrels between father and grandfather
Grew frequent and never stopped
Over many issues, over numerous things
The timetable of sleeping and waking
The kind of company the boys were to keep
The manner in which they were to speak.
Housewives had clear instructions
To see to the comfort of men
They could enjoy their cooking
Doing the dishes and beds
Better they walked with bowed heads
Out of respect, not fear.
Cellphones were to be abhorred
Specially in case of girls
In the name of safety they made them more unsafe;
They were supposed to wear twigs in earlobes
Not costly pearls
The city was always full of criminals.
Boys were not expected in the night very late
They were the guardians of the family’s grace
They were not to sleep in their separate rooms
In the name of privacy they lured children
To occupy the sinful space
Elders’ duty was to keep a watchful eye
And the foulest offence was to lie.

He preferred small stores
For buying things which we don’t remember he ever did
Shopping malls were an indulgence to him
Inside one he had never been.
He knew one brand for shoes
And declared with pride his allegiance
To the great Bata that made real great boots
We never saw him wearing one
Most of the time bare feet he run
‘Touch with earth was man’s essence’
A bucket of water was enough to take bath
And to rub his clothes clean
He disapproved of a washing machine.
Life insurance, medical policies
Were sheer waste of money
Visits to theatre, art galleries
Were akin to promoting nonsense
Every art lay between the earth and the sky
Only men need to have eyes.
He refused to go
For routine check up
And mock us-the weakly-measly new generation
With no marrow in bones
Just water
Whose half the life is passed
Running around a doctor;
It was really silly to visit one
For a mere hiccup.
He would call us mere saplings
Not the sturdy young men of old
Who never knew sloth or heard of fatigue
Who moved mountains
Who tore the belly of earth to sow seeds

And brought home real grains
That wives ground on a slab of stone.
‘Are these men, to every illness prone?
In the name of men just women’
He would say
Caring a fig for a feminist uproar
Or lawless children who called him a real bore.
Many of his views father did share
But there were many he preferred not to know
He would rather avoid to comment
And listen with a puckered brow.
Neighbors would call him a senile old man
He laughed and said
They were jealous of his happiness
He believed like many men of age
His life was not in a mess
He always enjoyed hot chapattis
And won’t take bread
Fast food was a strict no
He didn’t take a rickshaw
And preferred to walk
He knew many herbs, wild plants and leaves
For any disease;
He would even set disjointed bones
And for this he was well known.
He was hale and hearty he declared
But the reports said otherwise
He said he knew best about himself, not doctors
And refused to take allopathic medicines.
My father could only plead
But he would turn a deaf ear

My father’s only regret
Still clings
Over the years
Howsoever much he may have cried
The day he asked him to shut up
My grandfather died.
The Knowledge Pool
We are a Company of Professors
Packages are available with us
In keeping with every class
Economy and Deluxe
Whatever suits your purse.
You can pay online
Or transfer money to the firm’s account
For class notes, neatly analyzed texts
Guide books, grade-upgrade-techniques
We provide you the best
In the flood of trash.
We don’t accept cash
We are a non-profit organization
We don’t ask you anything
But a small contribution
To maintain a big knowledge pool.

DAS LITERARISCH
ISSN No: 2454 – 4647 (Print Issue) || Vol: 3, Issue 1 || Jan-June 2020
https://shaheenfoundation.co.in/ 93

Nakshatra Singh
(Jodhpur, India)

The River
Oh the great river,
Flow on, through the crevices of life.
Take along should a rose fall upon you,
With your might O great one,
Try not to uproot a rosebush.
It sprang up in the soil you watered,
Think not now to kill it away,
Just flow on, keep watering it,
I can see some blooming on it,
I can smell what comes now,
A humble splash on your heart,
Soon will you get your rose.

©Shubham Kumar Pati, India, Amateur Photographer

DAS LITERARISCH
ISSN No: 2454 – 4647 (Print Issue) || Vol: 3, Issue 1 || Jan-June 2020
https://shaheenfoundation.92 co.in/

Benalin. C.R
(Varanasi, India)

Sun Rise: Reality or Maya
I went to the seashore to see the sun rise
And was happy to see that gruesome moon setting
The days marked by that moon were cruel
Each day was like being moulded in crucible.
Sorrow when I looked around
Misfortune when I looked within
Crying and hopelessness was the mood outside
Pessimism and betrayal was what I experienced.
In those dark days too did I see some brightness
I could sharper my mighty sword
I could see the things beyond maya and see reality
I saw my Lord Jesus standing by me at every difficult moment.
Now as I see the sun gushing out of waters
I visualize rays of hope
The sun shines bright and beautiful
This makes me optimistic about 2018.
As the sun slowly moves upward
My mind is full of great expectations.
I have to wait and see if the optimism given by the sun
Will be real or end up as another maya episode.

DAS LITERARISCH
ISSN No: 2454 – 4647 (Print Issue) || Vol: 3, Issue 1 || Jan-June 2020
https://shaheenfoundation.co.in/ 91

Wani Nazir
(Kashmir, India)

Ghazalesque 1

Why do moon beams sear my dream? Ask me not! Why do panting flames of love scream? Ask me not!
Insane I am, insane you are, sane other are Why can't the whole world ream? Ask me not!
Drenching the summer, the sun plunged into the Nile, Why won't the moon too shun her esteem? Ask me not!
The candle going to shed its last dregs of life, Will we question about its lost gleam? Ask me not!
The boat of death will ferry me beyond the horizon, Will ever I doubt the divine scheme? Ask me not!
Old photos, grandfather’s clock, and few relics, Should I deify them all or(and) blaspheme? Ask me not!

Ghazalesque 2

This city chokes my heart beat, let's leave In this rat's alley, lost bones do greet, let's leave
Searing air, smouldering blood and chilled wishes The obfuscating sight, my eyes meet, let's leave
Hung on her sable eyelashes is her heart in shards Waiting are the caninely beasts in every street, let's leave
Seeing my reflection in your face to complete my being The mirror is under the urchins’ feet, let's leave
Shrieks, screams, tears, wails and woes in air, The arrows pierce through my heart petite, let's leave
The stout gales of time's wind have risen up so vehemently Can you withstand it, Nazir, so effete? let's leave