The sufi and the grieving mother

Somedays I strive to find myself, and somedays I know not why??? The "why" days have been coming one after the other and that prompts me to post this beautiful poem from the book Conference of the birds by Farid-ud-Din Attar.

Beside her daughter's grave a mother grieved.
A sufi said, " This woman has perceived
The nature of her loss; her heart knows why
She comes to mourn, for whom she has to cry-
She grieves but knowledge makes her fortunate;
Consider now a sufi's wretched state!
What daily, nightly vigils I must keep
And never know for whom it is I weep;
I mourn in lonely darkness,unaware
Whose absence is the cause of my despair.
Since she knows what has caused her agony,
She is a thousand times more blessed than me-
I have no notion of what makes me weep,
What prompts the painful vigils I must keep.
My heart is lost, and here I cannot find
The rope by which men live, the rational mind_
The key to thought is lost; to reach this far
Means to despair of who and what you are.
And yet it is to see within the soul-
And at a stroke- the meaning of the Whole."

The house that built me...

This brought so many memories back to me...

Aes chhe kasher

Aes che kasher ( We are Kashmiris!!). How proud does that make us feel? Are we proud?? Every single day we go through this dilemma of what we are? Are we kashmiris, Indian, hindu, muslim.. We keep flitting between these worlds and fumbling for answers.

It was this predicament that made me a part of ACK. I wanted to be able to define who I am. ACK gave me a platform to know just that. I got in touch with my roots, people; made friends who I cherish and amazingly learnt so much about my homeland which had escaped my eyes all those years that I grew up there.