Poem: Kashmir on Cards
Photo: rediff.com
By Bilal Yousuf
I carry the identity card,
A pack of cards rather –
Aadhar card,
Election card,
College card,
Some more cards.
That a card is a card no more.
It is a part, integral.
Indispensable.
Like brain and bladder.
You forget spleen at home?
Ever?
Liver in the cupboard?
Or bowels in the bedroom?
I once did. Lost a limb.
The election limb.
There, though, persisted
as a phantom card
In my pocket, a phobia,
Invisible to Him – the cardless.
I was sentenced for blasphemy.
But could a piece of plastic,
With a typo-ed name
A scratchy picture
And a lie for birth date,
Accommodate the nuance,
The essence,
Of my vast but fluid identity?
I am not a flat, inflexible,
rectangular piece of laminated
paper or plastic!
Has my grandma lied about
My glorious ancestry?
A shared history of millenia?
Habba, Lalla, the Kashyapa?
And a saint from Hamdan?
Frisk me for my card.
I may produce a scrap of paper,
And it will bore you.
Ask me of my identity.
I will tear the heart open,
You will die in deluge!
Note: The poem is an answer to “Card kahan hai?” posed by security personnel. It highlights the intimate relation the Kashmiris have developed with identity cards, carrying it through decades.
Bio:
Bilal Yousuf is a second professional MBBS student at Govt. Medical College, Srinagar. He has published a few poems in online magazines such as India Resists and Kashmir Lit.
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One Response to “Poem: Kashmir on Cards”
Beautiful Poem! Sums up the harrowing experience of Kashmiris and in a rather funny way presents the absurdity of checking cards in the Indian Occupied Kashmir.