Coffins Don’t Permit Debates | Reflection in the Wake of Pahalgam

“Kya qayamat hai Khatir kushta e shab bhi thay hum

Subhu jab aayi tau mujrim hum hi gardanay gayay”

—Khatir Gaznavi

(What tragedy is this Khatir

the tentacles of tyrannous night were wound around us

Yet as the morning dawned clear

On the charge of being felons, the noose was tied around us)

News trickles in: a shooting, a ritual; no, an aberration, a calamity, disbelief, fear and the heart sinks. When the bulleted strings of the heart turn mute, no melody takes root—the cloudbursts of fear and grief wash away the highway of amnesic routine. The traffic of emotions is suspended as landslides of shock and spectacle come rushing down the cursed hills of blasted memories. Each visual is a splinter of horror, each letter in the live update a congealed knot in the chest, each statistic a relived scream, each conversation a secretive refusal to believe the inevitable—the condemnations will pour in, the tourists will pour out, the anger will swell, accusations and counter-accusations will animate the television decibels.

But what do the dead care now? What to the dead the fabled charms of Spring, what to them the riot of colours in the scenic valleys? What to them the eloquently worded condolences and the curated condemnations? What to them the hurried meetings, and what to them the meticulous vows of revenge? Coffins don’t permit debates to wake the dead, nor does fixing the real responsibility assuage the blind mouths of death. Someone in a foreign land has plastered this suggestion on his social media wall: If the living are indeed sorry for the untimely death of the dead, let them earmark land to create a memorial where the names of the dead will be etched on shiny granite, and bold inscriptions that detail their names, and a promise that the breezes of the nation pass on their respects.

But what to the dead, the respects of personified breezes? The sky didn’t change colour today—as usual, the sky brooded over the whims of the living with a cloud cover as the day wore on. My grandmother of dear departed memory used to insist the sky weeps tears of red blood when innocent blood is shed. In the morning today, I stared intently into the bald patch of blue sky that looms large over the poplar tree opposite my house. The usual blue melancholy, the sporadic white of empty clouds, the indifferent desolation of green bloom on the poplar tree, and the oft-trodden shadows drenched in the mild spring sun. Nothing seemed out of place even as the living mourned and mourned with the ever-returning Spring the perfume strong of well-rehearsed death.

What to the dead the uncaring outlet song of death? The news announces the song: Every infidel heart was impaled with rabid spears of misled doctrine. Witnesses testify that inquiries were made: Why are daggers waved in their faces? Except a film-instilled love of a typecast paradise, they preach no doctrines. All statistics quoted in the well-circulated newspapers have assured us that songs flow through this fabled city. The Dal feeds fresh colour to flowers, and the tottering fort atop the sprawling graveyard guards the sweet scent of lisping lilies. Whose blood do you intend to spill, for we caption our selfies—From Kashmir with love—nor goad anyone to kill? What will the poets enjoy in this city when words are hunted down into extinction, when lyric and lyre are slain as an abomination, when grieving poems migrate from persecution, when melody is executed by bitter poison, when unrelenting famine devours all sane conversation, when nothing remains save the ruins of the past and mere destruction? Who will you stone then? You will recoil in dismay when the silhouetted mirror serves you your own withered reflection.

What happens when the ponies trek up those massacred meadows with the post offices of stately pines where only barren stones—lonely since many a century, are transacted? These are lands where only cruel seasons befall in nostalgic postcards, and a flood of inflamed ache is the only measure of a routine life. When the mountains are petals of jasmine in bloom, flint fragments, and spotless milky soft bodies, what happens when hard coarse blackish hearts of misfortune wound them by the snowy rays and swift winds? Do they fall from the stones and frantically search for the maps of life in the soil under their own bloodied feet?

Perhaps the pastoral vale is in reality a mere pile of dirty utensils, which is the subject of a frenetic search everywhere by toils drenched in the sweat of listless life. Or perhaps it is a migrant darkness, which halts and hops over the clogged city on the banks of those streams that fall from the blasted mountains, and has now become mere smoke billowing from the pyres of some broken hearts. The streams are still sparkling, but so is the smoke. The measure of life: the tide of ache in the priceless current of longing waters and cold sweat will be tried by the murderers of consciences. Then the black stones in the hearts will melt.

The air reeks now of stale kisses and cracked mirrors of surrendered dreams bleed in our eyes. Mined sapphires of dried-up tears belt the isles of tattered hearts, as a trickle of sorrow spurts through the parched veins. The seeds of sorrow will continue to fall, and people will perpetually be separated. These are not new sorrows, neither are the seasons of union and separation. However, hearsay announces that new-fangled sorrows are bent upon haggling with old sorrows, and sutured lips will sport a new shade of bloated blue. New seeds of apathy have been ploughed into the heart, while the television channels crackle with whispers of enemy planes. The slums of sly stars overhead lie torched, and only dark shadows flicker on the radar of empty eyes. We are mad from the fragrance of death and drift in the black lakes of destruction crouched inside the shikaras of red hope. From one shore of the Dal to the other hangs a pall of congealed black smoke. Kashmir, where is the much-vaunted magic of your fragrance? What is it that you regret? It answers:

Now there is only one regret:

We needed no metaphors, no similes of pomegranate to

liken the wounds of our songs to.

We needed no turn on the unending road to slog on to prove

the futility of our journey nor we had even the confiscated

dust to offer and lose.

Our loss was not a row

of apple trees, blossom fingers pointing towards the direction

of our loss, nor a grove of almond trees that wept over

young cosmopolitan madness at the local hospital.

To the rain that fell on the stranger라이브 바카라 roof, what could

we do but stab it with the icicles of our misfortune

four times over—one each for the failed revolutions

after the guns were gunned down; end at the trail

where we began

long years ago.

Whether the sky ends or not,

we will blow off our lamps

and not wait for the moon to cry after hiding our shadows.

We will not slog on the road, any longer

tensed like cocked gun waiting to wipe the scriptures of

farewell from our face. Our steps are stray bullets. Where could

we be a moment ago but here not there?

So what do you say?

I say:

Now there is only one regret:

We needed no metaphors, no poets to mourn.

(Views expressed are personal)

Huzaifa Pandit is an aspiring academic from Kashmir

This article is part of 바카라라이브 바카라 May 11, 2025 issue, covering the Pahalgam terror attack and the old wounds it has reopened. It appeared in print as '‘What Is It That You Regret?’.