Border

khatam shud

yeah sure... as soon as I get some time...

Anuradha: i`d like you to read ``Amnesia``. i think we come from the same place.

tahmedji

thank you for taking the trouble to read this a second time... appreciate that :)
and glad you enjoyed it.
I like your interpretation of it... and nasah`s too... as for what I had in mind when I wrote it... I guess it was a personal experience I was going through last year... I was trying to reach out to someone who seemed to have put up barricades around his heart and mind... it was futile... and painful...

thank you too afrasiyab.

anuradha #3 I agree that the poem can be interpreted in different ways, and not just in indo-pak terms (I guess I am too used to discussions on chowk that take the indo-pak dimension all the time).

Per your suggestion, I re-read the poem without this view. The second time I read it, it read like a metaphor for the joy of creativity on the one hand, and the fleeting nature of all human endeavor on the other, and the ultimate supremacy of mother nature over all human effort.

Did you have anything particular in mind when you wrote the poem? It is indeed a beautiful - hope you had as much as joy in writing it as the boy did in preparing and launching the kite. And who knows: it could well last a lot longer than the boy`s kite.

Very well written indeed. I especially read the last two lines over and over to get my fill.

sorry to be late in responding... I have been internet deprived ...

nasah - thank you so much for reading this, and for your appreciative comments...
temporal - yes, a sad fact of life, isn`t it! thank you.

and sridhar, ansari and memory stains, thank you so much too.

dear Anuradha --

in a way WE ALL are like --

``a paper kite entangled in a fence`` --
`` so helpless`` --
``fluttering there in the dying breeze``

``cruelly caught in barbed wire,
ripping apart into colorful bits
that floated slowly away`` --

``In the fading sun,
silently stood and watched
a tattered skeleton,
trapped in a fence of pain.``

our LIVES -- entangled in the fence of MAYA --``ripping apart into colorful bits
that floated slowly away`` --

an exquisitely sensitive beautiful poem -- bravo!

re:#6 by temporal
I remember one of Ali Safdar Jafri`s poems (first few lines, nothing more). My Pakistani friend gave me a video recording of a Mushaira sometimes ago in New York. The poem went like this:
Guftagoo bandh na ho, baath pe baath chale
subah tak sham-e-mulakaat chale
hum pe hastee hui taroon bharee raat chale....
It was beautiful. May some chowkee please furnish us the full poem.
Sridhar

something relevant perhaps...candles of hope by kuldip nayyar

Anuradha:

Welcome to chowk…

…sentiments expressed well…pls. Stick around and contribute more…

digression:

…what irony!…those who bring love, peace and understanding have to don the armours to protect themselves from brickbats, missiles and other objects hurled at them…they are brushed aside as pinkos, tree huggers and candle-holders by the hate-mongers and the intolerant and the die-hards…

…so despite them or in spite of them…all those who share a vision of peace, love and harmony…those whose heart aches at misery’s abundance in our living places…should continue at every opportunity to strike at the hate, suspicion and intolerance…one scratch, one nudge, one blow at a time….

…another digression:

..this poem also reminded me of two poems along similar theme by ali sardar jafri and gulzar

lve,

t

thoughtful and thought provoking.

Beautiful.

#2 by tahmed32

well it need not necessarily be seen in indo pak terms ;)... could be anything as the reader intreprets...

funny thing, I posted this poem last year on a writing site where almost all the readers
were americans... most of them read into it a metaphor for the loss of innocence, of purity, and of childhood, of borders between human hearts, of the impermanence of happiness, the sadness of loss and the cruelty of life... a very few saw it in literal terms as about a kite crash.

thanks for reading. hope you liked the poem itself btw, you didn`t say anything about that.

I sense a concern about rejection in response to gestures of friendship...I think 50 years of absence has made, for many people, the heart grow fonder on both sides of the border (except for the clinically sick individuals on both sides, and for the vast majority who are too busy eking out a living to worry about what is happening in the next district, let along across the border.

sorry about using this board to post this message

---

Topic: A Discussion Forum on Kashmir

Speakers:
* Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy, Professor of Physics, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan

* Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, Executive Director, Kashmiri American Council, Washington, D.C.

* Ms. Akhila Raman, Researcher on the Kashmir Conflict, Berkeley, CA

Followed by a Q&A and Discussion with audience.

When: Friday August 22, 2003: 6 p.m. - 8.30 p.m.

Where:
Namaste Hall
3rd Floor, California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS)
1453 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94103