Main ki karna
Tera harpha phad ke
Poori chithhi likhni hai

Tere naa de pehle akhar to
Mere putt da naa vi hai
Tainu nahi pata, onnu vi nahi..
Te onnu vi nahi,
Jida o putt hai..

Tere naa da kajjal pauna
te onnu rijhauna
Jaddon o meriyaan akhaan chumme,
tainu laama paina..

Khasmaan daan kanjarpan
Ik bas tan daa
Saadi Roohaan di bewafai
Na kise phadni
Na koi saza...

Inspired by a Punjabi story.

@kj and hb: (and others wanting to read this piece..)
The translation below is more literal..

What will i do?
Take a letter of the alphabet
from you
and write my whole correspondence
from it..

The first letter of your name
is also the first letter
of my son's name
You do not know it
My son does not know it
Neither does the man
who fathered that son.

i think of you as
i line my eyes with kohl
And then, i work
on charming someone else
As he kisses my eyes,
the joke's on you..

Men, can only commit adultery of one kind
- the physical one..
We, the women,
can be disloyal from the soul..
A betrayl
that no one can discover
or punish.

Read More

you were made
to impregnate the earth

i was made
to seed the clouds

Read More

ये भी होगा वो मुझे दिल से भुला देगा मगर
यूँ भी होगा ख़ुद उसी में इक खला रह जाएगा...

- चित्रा सिंह , same ghazal - Tu Nahi to...
How much we hope!! :-)

Another sher from a Chitra Singh Ghazal: (i dont know the name of the poet though)
पहले रग रग से मेरी खून निचोडा उस ने
अब ये कहता हैं के रंगत ही मेरी फीकी हैं...
does anyone remember the mukhda of this ghazal??

Read More

दर्द की सारी तहें , और सारे गुज़रे हादसे
सब धुंआ हों जायेंगे, इक फाकिया रह जाएगा...

From the song "Tu nahi to.." - Arth, sung by Chitra Singh.

I thought these lines pretty much sum up the 1984 story for me...

The next post has the other sher from this ghazal that i like a lot..

Read More

Reports on 1984 massacres - compiled

Reports, those useless things that are compiled by other people to tell everyone else what everyone already knows.. however, if you, like me, are trying to understand the pic in the kaleidoscope, here it is:
http://www.nov1984.org/who-are-the-guilty/
http://www.sikhspectrum.com/112005/1984.htm
http://www.massviolence.org/The-1984-Anti-Sikhs-pogroms-in-New-Dehli?cs=print

And 2 press reports that i bumped into while preparing for this series:
http://www.thehindu.com/fline/fl2218/stories/20050909004302600.htm
http://nitawriter.wordpress.com/2007/10/05/justice-denied-to-sikhs/

Read More

First Person Accounts of what Happened in 1984..

As you can deduce, for every day of the massacre, I am putting up a post. Just my way of reminding that justice is due yet.

One of the first accounts i read was from Mai, and its an account that chilled me to the bone.. go read it, here:
http://roadtokhalistan.blogspot.com/2007/08/our-stories-from-1984.html

And at this website, the third video is totally heartrending, though the first and the second deserve a dekko too.. go only if you really want to hear these stories from the people who went through them....
http://www.nov1984.org/
Here is the link to the third video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7316718150045451781&hl=en#

And some more relevant accounts here:
http://ibnlive.in.com/videos/54715/after-jasbir-another-84-riots-witness-surfaces.html

Caution: These accounts are disturbing. Don't go if you don't want to.

Read More

The Story that i always wanted to read..

All through these years, as I have done my own personal coping with the events of 1984( you really only see a riot when you see it as a victim), i've wondered about the other children who survived.. what happened to them? How did they cope ? Financially, Emotionally, otherwise?

Here, finally, is a photo essay that focuses on just that - children who were survivors of 1984 - and how they coped.. what happened to their lives after those 5 days? After the Earth was shaken enough, could they ever rise from the dust...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sanjayausta/sets/72157622636127218/

Do read. Its a very interesting factual story that completely cuts out the emotional crap.

Read More