Danish Husain

Coffee in Times of War…

Just the other day a friend asked
Have you ever tried war poetry?
War, I said, I haven’t seen one.
I was only born in seventy-one.
I’ve often seen pictures –
Oh why pictures! Even a painting
in a restaurant once –
of a Sikh General
making the Pakistanis
sign the surrender.
And then I grew up
reading lessons, history
about World War One and World War Two,
Plassey, Panipat, Waterloo,
War & Peace, The Day of Armistice,
the ancient tales of the Mahabharata,
the Muharram majlises, Karbala.
But then who needs textbooks?
Television brings live – Beirut.
And if this isn’t enough there are movies –
A Bridge Too Far, Platoon, Killing Fields.
But no, I have never seen a war.
I don’t know what it means
to sit through blackouts, power outages,
to hold my breath and wait
for a bomb to detonate.
I don’t know what it means
to have splinters of plastic and tin
pierce through my clothes, skin.
I don’t know what it means
to lose an eye, to lose a limb.
I haven’t seen my child without her head.
I don’t know what it means
when a mother grieves for her dead.
The closest I have seen a man’s guts
split wide open was from a scene
in a movie called Saving Private Ryan.
I don’t know what it means
to run from desk to desk
in a dank office corridor
asking for compensation
for a son dead in a war.
I don’t know…
My words trailed in the wispy heat
of Delhi’s August afternoon street.
I am afraid I am not qualified
to consider myself a war poet.
My friend cursed himself
for bringing this topic up,
dunked his biscuit in his coffee,
as I waved to the waiter,
May we have more of these, please!

Peace & Its Discontents

(A tribute to Edward Said)

Here! Right here!
Let’s draw a line
and reach an understanding
albeit hesitant
that we will not
step across it.

But then who is to decide
what is righteous?
The loose ends, the cul-de-sacs
in the labyrinth in our heads
often spill on to the other side;
barbed spaces
where our tolerance resides.
And then the discontent,
fermenting underneath with gnomic intent,
like Azaan at the crack of dawn
will pierce through this uneasy peace,
shattering it
long after stillness has settled
in our clattering teeth.

Fuel

Two hundred years from
The first aerial bombing
We would have burnt
All the earth’s gasoline
And yet our thirst
Be unquenchable.
We may then slake it with blood
Flavored with our own hate-fables.