Dear Kashmir

Dear Kashmir! Kashmir!!

Full of vigour and charm
Nature’s dream it has been
Kashmir or the heaven on earth
That’s what Galib, in her, had seen

How sad, today in this heaven
Heavenly dwellers becoming demons
What they want to prove after all?
Galib was wrong, or knew nothing at all?

In this beautiful Kashmir
A valley of flower beds
Day in day out we read
Scores ‘nd scores of the dead

This very place of ‘Jannat’
Which taught us, what love is?
The seeds of enmity having grown
Making the scene distressing

I wonder, what‘ll happen of thee
Oh Queen of natural beauties
Would the DAL dry-up or GULMARG wither
In the clutches of “anti-naturalists”

My heart beats for you, Oh dear,
For the condition in which you drear
Our ‘netas’ blabbering on and on
But action on their part seems rare

Nevertheless, the optimist in me
Has helped blossom my confidence
In days to come, you‘d regain your glory
As Galib’s heaven ‘nd beauty stupendous


Satwik Joglekar
(Times of India, April 4th, 1990)