Surviving Kashmir

In Kashmir
Tragedy doesn't strike you, 

It seeps inside you, like a malignant disease 

Slowly making its way to your brain,  

Disintegrating your mental faculties,  one by one. 
Taking you apart one minute at a time,  making happiness 

A sepia picture that grandfather 

Put up on the wall of the ancestral house,  

That is now just a road,  with every passing car

Raising dust over your family tree,  the room where 

You once crawled,  teeming with unruly pedestrians,  

Grounding your memories to mere dust,  walking by 

an invisible house with blue windows and tin sheeted gate.

In Kashmir, 
tragedy doesn't seek you, 
it survives you.