Her- A Tribute to Glitter

‘Yelay’ the two notorious drug addicts referred to her as they trailed her miles towards her residence. She was panicky, fearful to remember anything else other than this reference of ‘yelay’ being made to her, Her Life has become more chaotic and less narratable, the life full of never-ending cycles that repeatedly begin and end. In the mornings everyone would grab the papers for news (greedy to see her), and then put them down in disappointment (She is absent). The road in her absence was also unfamiliar.

As humans, we seek out to please our desires. Freud’s belief of ‘Static Fulfillment’ suggests that we are keen to play the rewind button to the early stage of fusion with mother.

Likewise, Brooks says that we desire a climax, or fulfillment. There has to be an end, the plot of our lives and the plot of literary texts.
Eros recommends that pleasure, relates to metonymy, complicating and adding symbols to the complexity of ‘the middle’ before arriving at an end, Thenatos, or death.

She finally breathed respite when she loomed close to the black door of her house, she stormed inside the house and directly went to her Nani asking the meaning of ‘Yelay’, she was told that In order to save his own face in the society, the man despite making the life of a girl appalling, following her day in and night out, bullying that he would cut his nerve if she disregards his intuition, then insists that the girl threw herself upon him and so they call the women as ‘characterless.’

She is a human, Young and blossoming, upon hearing Characterless; she ingests 50 tablets, the first aid box, pales, is comatos-ed and then hurried to the hospital, She Survives.

A Wise man after many years told her, “It is not for one to wonder or evaluate if this is vulgar or revolting, elegant or deplorable.”

Lying here, in the corner of the KP Road Street, next to the busy road, she had eyed the ruthless winter, icicles hanging from the rooftops, frozen metal water pipes, the neighbourhood children giggling and smiling at each other as they slip trying to balance themselves on the frozen ice that covers the streets. She had watched spring, the sparkling sunshine melts all the ice and the mountains are set free of the hard ice that had covered them for months and the town, the town looks like an artist's colour palette with orange, peachy- pink and white flowers, and green all around. During the autumn nights, the streetlights brighten up the crimson, golden and rust colored Chinar leaves and makes them look like they're on fire. She always loved to watch the Women sing folk songs at weddings, bhandhs dance on the streets. In Ramadhan, the Sahar Khwaan beats his drum for pre-dawn calls. All this while she had been lying here in this place watching it all.

Every Dawn, the echoing Azaan woke her up. The smell of Lawasa -baked bread made her feel fresh. Then, the vegetable vendor would come with his cart, selling tomatoes, bottle-gourd, onions, peas, beans, radish – screaming: “fresh vegetables, straight from the farm to your kitchen.” She would see young women passing by. She could see old men with pots of milk, and then the day would begin with horns and noise of rushing cars.

She had spent many hectic months of fasting, and then waited for the Eid, the first day of the Islamic month – Shawaal. She eagerly awaited to see children from the locality playing and laughing and showing off their Eidi, and in the evening, the smell of barbecue calling young boys, most of who were from the same mohalla where she lived.

She came from the mountains and there is no Trotskian philosophy narrating that Plato was the dweller of mountains where Chaucer or Sigmund Freud lived, but people from her nation possess inborn capacities, they are diplomatic, they assimilate things effortlessly. She did not will to get up early in the morning and go to school. She Still is unwilling to wake up early, but her work disallows her comfort. Sleep is adorable. It takes Humans away from the painful real to a state of restfulness, In case you are not a “sub-conscious” student of psychology. Shaina rarely giggles allowing a sight of her disordered teeth, but I make her laugh to witness the sparkle.

The Kashmir Sun has something tragic about it, quite different from the tragedy of Fogs. She was in her packed room Most of the autumn evenings when the sun would disappear from the skies and it grow immensely foggy, chilled and the cold. The Chill just storms into her bones, night falls over the flawless curve of the little mountain visible from her house and there arises a sense of anguished fulfillment in her. In this gilded calamity, tragedy reaches its highest point, when two boys flock her house, her gaffe exploded for the fact that she could not see people gloomy, in despair. She smiled at him; she had no covert fondness for that boy who landed outside her house, assuming she smiled, licensing them to kiss her.  Taking refuge in tears, the conflagration was spreading all inside her, Nietzsche is outdistanced. She contrasts her calm skies and her reasons with the madness of men.

“How much contented we feel and how much satisfaction we get when we do things as we planned them...”

The venician face sat well on her string-delicate body, she had a flask bent waist and her complexion had a flawless, chorus hue. Carved to perfection, her lengthy uncolored fingernails ran through her wavy curly hair. Reels of it thrust around her picturesque face and concealed a bird’s neck, sensitive and smooth. I cherished her tenuous glowing eyes which were a-sparkle with the radiance like two beryl-green jewels melted onto snow. An artist could not have fashioned her fairy’s ears and pixie’s nose any better. Her edgy-thin eyebrows eased down gently to her black kohl eyelashes. When she busted into a smile, her mesmeric, oyster-white teeth lit up the area. It could jolt you like an electric current when that megawatt smile gave you her full attention. You pick up an eyelash, Make a wish, the un-wishable is not granted.

“Eventually everything gets replaced or renewed,” she once wrote. Her Love life is a book with countless volumes, from class 6th to her class 10th and then her class 12th and from there the college life has been an exquisite story. During this time there was an admission of ignorance, rejection and fanaticism, the limits of her opinions and the broad vision of a man, she surrendered herself, despite the loss of the artist in her, she was delighted about her success. Once more the philosophy of loss of darkness had splintered, broken away and faded over a dazzling sea of love.

 “Cover Your head, Do not go to tuitions,” Shaina had been asked to, she bent down to “love” and then, The fleshy magic leaves of majestic Chinar were changing  from green through crimson to yellow with the onset of Autumn in Kashmir. Autumn in Kashmir is the predecessor to a dark, cold winter. Far away from her, she was preparing for class 12th exams; she could smell the Fallen Chinar leaves being burnt to make charcoal, the burning leaves a smell spread to vast expanse.  As the morning and evening chill Grew, She wearing a woolen black sweater that her Nani had made for her looked as nothing had moved here, quite literally. She breathed the crisp, clear morning air of autumn, saw it’s benign, soothing sun, and mountain streams full of trout beckoning anglers. Then she heard, the noise of trampling feet, the wails of death, the blood of men, it was 2010, when another Romeo of her hacked the Facebook and the Facebook chemistry was too much chemical-ic, the preacher turned out to be plummet to heaven and her soul was washed- serene as the ocean’s calm, Helen’s beauty. Once again the scarf fell down like the dreadful walls of the modern city that fall to deliver.

Her mother, her Aunt were discussing something while she was pretending to be asleep, It was perhaps to send her out of the state to a warm place, Shaina was in class 1 by then. Her mother and aunt somehow felt that the environment in Kashmir wasn’t good for her. So they were sending her to a new place, far from the woods and delightful seasons.

She was left barren on a new planet, she was to come home and she lapped herself n the lap of the tree, her Naani and told her she had been assaulted for chocolates and toffees by her Cousin. She wept oceans of tears that day and promised to never return back to the hot noisy planet, barren and unproductive,

Some years later, the blue skirt of her was torn with the barbed wires that surrounded the army bunkers in her school. While they were leaving the school gate to board the bus, Shaina looked into the bunker closely where she saw two men standing at the two windows holding guns. The faces were barely visible. Only the eyes and guns could be seen. She wondered, how they manage to stay inside, it’s so dark in there!

It was smoke all over the class on the wintery morning as her grey and blue mates with a knot of blue and red sat around the fire stove trying to warm their frozen bodies, She was an Army girl back then when a small kid sat beside her and expressed his love for her; she was fascinated by the thought of loving someone and being loved by someone. She accepted, rejected, patched up, broke up eventually, creating circles like those children who know not, circles start and end at the same point. She was amazed, then baffled, then learnt, met after years, she had changed. It is a talk of winter she was in her graduation school when she with a secret intention of being close to her boy planned to move to Jammu for her tuitions. She did not adore travelling, but she did it for her love, she travelled, reached to be abused, heckled. “Everyone in the town knows who Shaina is”.

The Historical Spirit and the artist both want to remake the world. All those who are struggling for Freedom today are ultimately fighting for beauty, for a broader vision, a more peaceful world and the end of conflicts inside human hearts, souls and minds. She fought the demons that cornered her outside and engulfed her inside. Forced to leave the house, her Nani was the tree she found shadow in. The Love was murdered that night as she thought - All is lost. Then she heard a distant noise and she timelined that she hated backstabbers...She wished for them to perish, she had broken up with what she loved.

The Driving force behind her change was gone and the flame that burnt passionately was reduced to ashes, she could not initially cope up with and dropped pearls down on her pillow, razor-ed her arm, Three years indeed was a long time, still bereft, she found herself resting near her shade at a brunch next to a friend of her sister who tried to extol benefits of the pearls she dropped. Years later, she thought the idea of sharing intimate details of her life with strangers sounded like hitting rock bottom.

“After every second life keeps changing.”

She looked down at her hands. “My Nails, they grew back,” She touched her face with her hands, “My Face, what is become of my face.” She burst into tears, remorseful, wept till her eyes burnt, she wept oceans, it was hotter in Jammu that year, she did not know anyone anymore, she knew her scars, she held her body still and cold, scarred and disfigured, she thought it was something to do with love, but it was the harsh winter back home, the frostbites. She looked at the mirror, “You do not know me anymore, not without my wounds.” She deserted the place to never return.

She knew now, People who survive in staunch struggles are portrayed as legends!!!......A single ray of hope will still keep things going!! It is always the tough times that point out who are real and who are fake!!

There was this time in her life she had never thought of, “Where everything was black, everything was going against her and then she disappeared, leaving behind her childhood.

I passed by the streets, to me the streets complained, she had not picked up her scatter, she had not picked up the ashes from the bustling KP Road, and the lanes miss her murmur, her dulcet voice, the mirth, the glitter of her glorious eyes. The Streets still remembers how Shaina crouched on the floor like a wounded bird, men around dotted their eyes, gazed down at her, like the Ghost as if all of light was condensed in her. The roads had known her luminous, heavenly-white teeth (disordered) flashed as she pawed her black bag with her film star nails. Her hair was a glorious tumble of star a dark perfect night, sleep and her eyes set anyone’s heart a-thump. Her oxbow lips positively drooled with goodness. They knew the sound of her feet, the smell of her body, the sweat of her brow, the jingle of her laughter and remembered how her honesty and innocence had been bladed on these streets, how she had spread pearls all over them, roads.  I consoled them saying Albert Camus had said,

“Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.”

 My intuition always told me she was alive after all the years I had seen her through the window of a small class on a riverside building in our town. I am interested in little people. The little, great people, is how I would put it, because suffering expands people. In my stories these people mostly tell their own, little histories, and the bigger history is told along the way.

This was a war I had never heard of a woman’s war. It wasn’t about heroes. It was about a woman fighting the world. This person had just been smiling, giggling – and now she’s gone. Disappearance is what women talked about most, how quickly everything can turn into nothing during war, the human being and human time.

I Found her

She had lost her house, away from her parents and everything went down the drain for her. But she had bounced back, every single time. And she’s still alive today as I write this, probably more than she ever was before. There are miles to walk before I sleep, there is more to write before I finish.