Choose your own title

 

View from shikara. May-June 1981. A long ago and far away Kashmir.

All night long I dozed fitfully

dreamt of elephants crossing the Alps,

of Carthage and Rome. Deep furrows of salt.

And oaks and pines, higher than gothic spires

made into Viking masts sailing cold seas.

The children kept waking, fretting, calling.

Mother. Father. What’s that? Is that shelling?

Why does the horizon glow so eerie red?

What is that horrible smell on the breeze?

I quietened them, wrapped them in my steeled arms

inches from where my heart was racing against theirs

sang them lullabies my grandmothers once crooned.

Go to sleep, the light of my eyes,

horizons get eerie just before sunrise,

thunder carries in the stillness before dawn,

they’re somewhere far over the mountains,

somewhere far from home.

 

Grandmothers used to say that everything

that you were destined for, or that was destined

for you, had your name written clear on it –

grains, cups, ganga jom’na paar, scars, bullets.

They were women gnarled by hardships, moulded

by wars, collaterally damaged inside

and out. Fault lines, frontlines and famines grew

them to formidable heights and shapes, staunch,

unflinching as fortresses. They had the right

lullabies to soothe children to sleep

during battles and in peacetimes. They could

slice fruits translucently thin and feed hundreds

from one handful of rice and two fishes.

They knew how to stare down famines, disease,

unknown, eerie red horizons. Burnt paddies

wafting in on the breeze. They rarely slept

through the night. Dreaming wasn’t an option.

 

The dawn comes in overcast. No more sound.

No birdsong, nor call to prayer, not even

the faintest shelling, nothing but the clouds

emptied of the death threats. The horizon

innocent of flashes and our senses

suspicious of this explosive silence.

The street’s pockmarked with thumbprints of conflict.

The news comes later, trickles in through phones

on grapevines of fear. There’s a ceasefire.

Is it over? Father? Shall we go back

to school? May I go fishing now, Mother?

An army vehicle clatters down the street

checking for last evacuees. I scoop up

my grandmother’s old hand knitted blanket.

She’d knitted my name in it. We step out

and I notice, as if for the first time –

the door has my name carved on it as well.

Title 1) Mother's Day 2025

Title 2) Carved names

Title 3) Ceasefire

Title 4) Compose your own

Please let me know your choice in the comments. The title is the hardest part.

I'm glad there's a ceasefire. Anything that brings peace closer is to be welcomed. Not sure it will lead to anything lasting though. And I'm gutted at the way it has come about. 

Once upon a time our PMs used to refuse to be pressurised, to let other countries, no matter how mighty their global standing, meddle in our business. We didn't have a top ten economy, but we had a spine and some respect out in the world. Now we meekly let another nation broker ceasefires and decide our tariff policies without a cheep. What can I say? I miss the sagacity, the statesmanship, the reverence for country over party, the commitment to democratic values and the political acumen of my previous leaders. 

Once you've lived in a country led by towering personalities, it is awful hard to live with petty, braggadocious, incompetent politicians who don't have a shred of self respect or give a @#*& about the very people who've elected them to the position they hold.

I hope your week has gone peacefully and that you're nowhere near any situation that requires a ceasefire to be brokered.