Oh Jammu & Kashmir, what was your crime? Who did you offend that they long to punish you?
Are you not a people, old as the nations of the world, older than the straight borders of colonial maps?
Nay, nay, you are not a nation! You are land and water. Yours is a curse from the Plateau of Tibet,
Your rivers flow through the hills and mountains of a political landscape, celebrated in the books of geopolitics.
Don’t fuss though, Eastern Turkistan is dying too. She is Han Chinese now; the old language is slipping away.
Perhaps, you’ll be reincarnated; the Urdu of the Hindustani Plains is spoken by Pakistanis, this – the natural cycle of life.
Oh Kashmir, you are the last of the last of the Western Himalaya, you are a drawing on someone else’s map.
You’ve no home now. You’re trespassing on the foreign policy goals of outsiders in your homeland, you are an irony.
How you are removed from the briefing rooms of Indian and Pakistani journalists and their good deeds!
You are the national pride of India and Pakistan; her integral part; her jugular vein, this – the price of your forced fraternity.
India and Pakistan will celebrate their partition wounds, but your partition is the LOC.
Poor dispossessed souls divided, you think you matter? Oh deluded protestor, throw your stone, Pakistan will give you another.
At the United Nations she will shriek independence, criminalising it for “Azad” Kashmir, this – the noble lie.
She says “the Kashmiris must decide their future!” Alas a burden too heavy on the Pakistani conscience; “Bin Laden Abbottobad, what!?”
Pakistan thirsts for Kashmir, she has quenched the waters of Mangla; how ‘Azad’ Kashmir’s children are written out of history!
You can see them in the UK flying the Flag of Pakistan, these are Pakistan’s ambiguous patriots unaware of their past retold.
Oh Kashmir, you are out-gunned, out-numbered and outsmarted. Your myths don’t matter, India and Pakistan’s do.
From the Rivers of the Himalaya, the Indo-Gangetic Plains must be watered, Hindu Pandits must be saved on Indian TV shows.
The flags of India and Pakistan must fly supreme; you are 16 million, they are 1.5 billion, who cares about Article 370!?
The Maharaja’s hand was forced! The world looks to Kashmir, then looks to India for trade, and then Pakistan, she retreats.
It’s all one big mess, thank you Pax Britannica. You divided India through an Act of Parliament
Pakistan got her independence day, we the state subjects of Kashmir got the day after. We’ve been orphaned ever since.
Ya Allah, who do we turn to? Is there anyone to hear our plea?
Is the pen really mightier than the sword? “Peaceful protest”, they say “is the way forward, put down your arms and talk”.
We’ve nothing but supplications, proverbs and ironies! Our real crime? We’re disputed territory. They want the land, not the people!
