Is this a human dwelling?
This place I call home?
Where my life grates on, day by day
Where all I see
are mindless animals,
and humans are scarce,
like trees in a desert.
This place,
which trust has renounced,
and love has long since forsaken;
where the vain control resources,
and the merciless play at justice;
where friendship lacks all charm,
and blood relations are just as dull;
where children are
their fathers’ enemies;
where the savior kills,
the bully leads,
the godman trades,
selling his edicts
to the highest bidder;
where the houses of God
are unsafe for His creation;
where cold-blooded murderers
call dibs on heaven,
for killing His people;
This can’t be a human dwelling,
This place I call home.
Has a plague visited this land,
this kaleidoscope of color,
this bright rainbow of diversity?
Yes, there has been a plague,
a vicious swarm of locusts,
eating away all our shining shades,
our dappled hues,
save one,
which is now the color of everything.
And so,
black is white,
so is blue,
and red too.
The animals are white,
in their ignorant bliss,
and so am I,
can’t refute this.
And so must be anyone
who dreams of life,
like I once did,
as a mesh of color.
His spirit is to be broken,
his thinking set right,
he must be brought to heel,
and bathed in that insipid,
colorless,
puritanical
white!
While I,
I keep asking myself,
is this the realization of my dreams,
this dwelling of humans,
this place I call home
where I can’t even recognize myself
anymore,
and my life grates on, day by day?
Loosely translated from the Seraiki of Zafar Jatoi's timeless verse "pata nai ay kay jhaeen wasti hay?", on the recommendations of a friend. The only video link of Jatoi sahib reciting this poem that I could find is below:
