Homeland after Eighteen Years - A 48 hour Travelogue

K L Chowdhury
15 16
Homeland after Eighteen Years
Cricket
Here in this dilapidated stadium,
young boys in white shirts and trousers,
absorbed in the game of willow,
strike a familiar secular scene,
quite different from the much feared picture
of youth brandishing grenades and guns
that one hears about Kashmir.
But was cricket just a sporting game ever
in our religiously charged atmosphere?
Were we not always at the receiving end
of the fire and fury of partisan mobs
during India- Pakistan matches here?
Were we not stoned and sworn at
if India happened to win a match,
and taunted, teased and pushed
for the ignominy of her defeat?
Were we not forced to join their revelry
when India lost,
and in their mourning
in her victory?
Did we have the right to betray or express
our opinions and sentiments freely?
Was it not in this cricket stadium,
somewhere in the nineteen eighties,
when, to the utter disbelief of the Caribbean’s,
the spectators gave them a standing ovation,
cheering every run they scored,
while hooting the Indian players down,
and rejoicing at the fall of their wickets,
in the first and only cricket international
ever played in Srinagar?
That day, the crowds ran amuck,
renting the skies with their slogans,
waving green flags with crescents,
pelting stones at the Indian fielders,
writing an epitaph for cricket here.
Verily, the boys fancied the Kalashnikov
over the famously indigenous willow.
Are we witnessing a change of heart now?
Are the boys fed up with the gun
and wanting to return to some fun?