12 February 2013, 07:23 PM IST
Was the delayed delivery of the speed post sent by the Tihar Jail superintendent to Afzal Guru's family in Sopore, a violation of his wife's right to know the status of her plea for clemency? Jammu and Kashmir Chief minister Omar Abdullah has criticized the fact that the letter reached the family two days after the execution. "If in this day and age, we are relying on speed post to inform a family that their loved one is going to be executed, there is something seriously wrong," he has been quoted as saying.
The point is still being debated, but there is an uncanny link in our minds it seems, to Kashmir and post offices. As news broke out of the late delivery of the letter, it brought memories of a brilliant poem written by Kashmiri-American poet Agha Shahid Ali titled, "The Country Without A Post Office". Written in 1990, this silently-powerful poem draws its central image from 1990 when relentless violence in Kashmir saw the closure of all post offices in the Valley for seven long months. Shahid tugs at our heartstrings through a refreshing matrix of rhyme that speaks of pain and longing for one's home. Here are a few lines that speak of his gift to see the fantastic in the ordinary:
Again I've returned to this country
where a minaret has been entombed.
Someone soaks the wicks of clay lamps
in mustard oil, each night climbs its steps
to read messages scratched on planets.
His fingerprints cancel blank stamps
in that archive for letters with doomed
addresses, each house buried or empty.
Empty? Because so many fled, ran away,
and became refugees there, in the plains,
where they must now will a final dewfall
to turn the mountains to glass. They'll see
us through them-see us frantically bury
houses to save them from fire that, like a wall,
caves in. The soldiers light it, hone the flames,
burn our world to sudden papier-mâché
inlaid with gold, then ash.
Shahid's concern encompasses the loss of the culture of Kashmiri Pandits as well. In a moving tribute to the poet, writer Amitav Ghosh has recalled how Shahid would speak of a "recurrent dream, in which all the Pandits had vanished from the valley of Kashmir and their food had become extinct." In "Farewell", Shahid paints this grim image:
In this country we step out with doors in our arms
Children run out with windows in their arms.
You drag it behind you in lit corridors.
if the switch is pulled you will be torn from everything.
Agha Shahid Ali died in 2001 at the age of 52, but his verses ring with the pensive hum of the ghazal. They are all about memories, messages, maps, post cards, history and melancholy… But among the stronger feelings are the ones evoked of a Kashmir that is politically fragile.
The wounds still remain. Afzal Guru's hanging has become the subject of a new controversy in the valley. And the speed post episode is seen as one that was highly avoidable. In matters sensitive, the medium is as important as the message. At every step, the thought must be: you can't unring a bell.
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