Shrew, by Dina Natha Nadim

O, it is a weight and no mistake that a window must bear--

open it and it will complain, waking the bleary wide worlds
street by shriek, like a shrewish (you know which) sister
through marriage. It lets out a yell when you close it as well
and you'll want then you hadn't. As for me, I have mine--

for me to have to hear such music the lifelong day every day

Adapted from Kashmiri by Sonam Kachru, August-October 2011.


A minor piece by the poet extraordinaire I first came across in Trilokinath Raina's book on Dina Nath Nadim for the series Makers of Indian Literature, published by the Sahitya Academy Press. The sketch is called Vara Hajy', a small contribution, but not without bite, to an object not uncommon to literature written in Kashmir, and with a tone too rarely found in reports on the region. The window has recently again featured as the occasion for verse, though here ("Window To My City"), in an elegy after Agha Shahid Ali recently offered by the young poet Feroz Rather, the window is a witness to life, if we may call it that, in a sadly diminished key in the city that has seen so much after Nadim. As it bears on the theme of windows, and because it is quite simply refreshing to point to the resurgent talent in the city of Bridges, I include here a painting by Showkat featured as an illustration to the piece by Feroz:

For those interested in Nadim's experiments in the miniature poem (and the very short poems Nadim called fireflies, modeled on haikus), see Arvind Gigoo's translation of some of Nadim's anecdotes: Ancedotes by Dina Nath Nadim, translated by Arvind Gigoo.

I cannot refrain from offering one, as I have adapted it from Kashmiri:




                      It came to pass that time came to rest
                      On a picture: and the bold, green lines
                      Grew long, and there was a forest.
                      He who took the long road through
                      Found home--and there was breath;
                      Where is the forest? What place, mind?




***
Image 1 from a review of a calendar called "Windows of Life," featuring the windows of Old City, Srinagar, that appeared in Greater Kashmir in an article called Shahr-e Khaas Silently Losing 'Window of Life'. Each photograph carries a short note on the history of the windows and their design.


Image 2, by Mukhtar Khan, featured here.


Some heart-breaking photographs of houses by Habba Kadal (with a great view of the windows) can be seen at the blog Search Kashmir.