Kargil

Ten years on, I came searching for war signs of the past expecting remnants — magazine debris, unexploded shells, shrapnel that mark bomb wounds. I came looking for ghosts — people past, skeletons charred, abandoned brick-wood-cement that once housed them. I could only find whispers — whispers among the clamour of a small town outpost in full throttle — everyday chores sketching outward signs of normality and life. In that bustle I spot war-lines of a decade ago, though the storylines are kept buried, wrapped in old newsprint. There is order amid uneasiness — the muezzin’s cry, the monk’s chant — baritones merging in their separateness. At the bus station black coughs of exhaust smoke-screens everything. The roads meet and after the crossroad ritual diverge, skating along the undotted lines of control. A porous garland with cracked beads adorns Tiger Hill. Beyond the mountains are dark memories, and beyond them no one knows, and beyond them no one wants to know. Even the flight of birds that wing over their crests don’t know which feathers to down. Chameleon-like they fly, tracing perfect parabolas. I look up and calculate their exact arc and find instead,                                     a flawed theorem.