The Rhapsody of Kashmir

By Maharaj Kaul

In The Rhapsody of Kashmir, his fifth collection of poetry, Kashmiri-American poet, Maharaj Kaul, describes Kashmir, the land of his ancestors, after the civil war of 1989. He saw the wanton destruction of human beings and homes, milieu and culture. He laments:

The clandestine evil schemes of 80s

Hatched in our neighbor country

Coalesced into one infernal insane fire in 89,

Destroying the finely woven culture of a millennia in the valley,

Disturbing the tranquility of a million years among the mountains.

A friend turned into a murderer,

A neighbor into an arsonist;

A community acquiesced to become an army.

An angelic valley became a death valley

All in the name of God and religion.

(From the poem Roots.)

In his preface to the book he writes:

The ongoing political crises in Kashmir, born in 1947, has mutilated the soul of Kashmir. The political heroes of the crises have no idea of the damage they have done to it. It will take a long time before the soul of Kashmir is healed,.

But Maharaj Kaul has a hope that one day Kashmir will be reborn:

But the idea of Kashmir is still not dead,

There is hope, in fact, a dream, that one day it will be reborn

And reconnect with its past glory.

Then we will not mourn the lost time,

But celebrate mans infinite resilience,

To forget, to forgive, to recreate, and move on.

(From the poem The Shattered Dream of Kashmir)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: May 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781482874464

Maharaj Kaul

Maharaj Kaul was born in Kashmir, India, where he spent his childhood and boyhood. He graduated from Banaras University, in India, in electrical engineering and went on to Polytechnic Institute Of New York for the master's degree. He worked as an engineer for 40 years, out of which the last 30 years with American Cyanamid (which later became Wyeth, and then Pfizer). All his life he has been interested in the foundations of the human mind in the areas of science, religion, and art. In recent years he has been involved in the study of the impact of technology on human values and happiness. Out of that immersion have come out eight books, including the present one, which includes 60 poems. He lives in Suffern, New York, USA

Book preview

Roots

Touching the ground on which I put the first shaky footsteps,

Seeing the majestic contours of the undulating skyline,

Which my eyes had never tired to range,

Back in Kashmir, I feel the echo of my genesis –

An expatriate’s answered prayers.

Buried here lie the pristine years of my childhood,

When wonder turned into thought,

Desires into dreams,

The visions was uncluttered,

And conflict took root.

Does a man owe something to the land of his birth,

Or is it his insecurity that binds him to his roots?

Or is it all an alluring angle of the architecture of emotion,

Or simply an elemental pull to gravitate to one’s origin?

If child is the father of man, then what is growing up all about?

Unblemished by the coarseness of life,

Unmarred by the waywardness of the world,

Reposed in the frozen perspective of time,

Still gleaming lie the first experiences of life:

The integrity of self,

The uniqueness of the individual and the brotherhood of mankind,

The uncomplicatedness in human relationships,

The simplicity of understanding,

The unquestioned joy of living,

The clarity of the way ahead,

Just being, not becoming.

We go back to the roots,

To replenish the vision and the spirit we have lost,

To regain our identity and reclaim our history,

To reset the balance between nature and mind,

To feel an element of the universal spacetime.

But the chilling vision shattered the trip down the childhood:

Kashmiris living the fossilized glory of their past,

Apathy their unshakable creed,

Cynicism the only energetic hope,

Living between tyranny and anarchy of political pendulum.

Walking down the desolate ruins of Srinagar’s streets,

Shapeless stretches of thoughtless construction,

Chaotic services and nightmarish traffic,

Where time has frozen in the inner city,

And darkness envelopes the winter months.

Plundered, ravaged, and defiled through ages,

By its soulless bandit rulers,

Neglected eternally by its crass inhabitants,

To wither slowly in the irreversible arrow of time,

This bounteous gift of nature, Kashmir,

Moans in pains unnameable,

Its soul heaving with curse eternal

For its unworthy sons.

The clandestine evil schemes of 80’s

Hatched in our neighbor country

Coalesced into one infernal insane fire in ’89,

Destroying the finely woven culture of a millennia in the valley,

Disturbing the tranquility of a million years among the mountains.

A friend turned into a murderer,

A neighbor into an arsonist;

A community acquiesced to become an army.

An angelic valley became a death valley –

All in the name of God and religion.

We do not know where to begin anew –

Even, if we should begin at all,

To resume God’s work,

To revive the spontaneous sparkling smile

On the faces of a thousand gloomy children,

To let the lotuses grow unperturbed.

We do not know what to do –

Our enemy’s brutality has choked our spirit,

Their hatred has tormented our soul.

In one cataclysmic insanity

They have destroyed the Kashmir built by Gods.

But Kashmir always beckons me to homecoming,

A quivering echo of a distant thunder,

A withered glow on the horizon,

Remnant of a fire kindled a long time