I know not since when, I was not only visible but naked to the eye,
Who so ever might have seen me must have rightly been attracted.
The robes on my body must have gradually been torn apart into tatters,
What not must have been said by them who got a chance to touch me.
Today someone from the past known to me, a lunatic from an old tribe walked down my lane.
Seeing me he walked on,
Took a few steps, stopped and turned back.
He wept loudly at the sight of me, perhaps a divine impulse drove him,
He wrenched of his rope and with a bowed head and slow steps came and wrapped me up like a child.
About the Poet
Naseem Shafaie, a teacher and poet, made history as the first Kashmiri woman writer to receive the Sahitya Akademi and Tagore Literary Award in recognition of her contributions to Kashmiri poetry.
Her second book, “Na Tschay Ti Na Aks” (Neither Shadow nor Reflection), published in 2008, earned her the distinction. Her initial collection of poems, “Dereche Metchrith” (Open Windows) published in 1999, was the first 20th-century compilation by a Kashmiri woman to be published.
Born in 1952, Shafaie grew up in Srinagar’s Guru Bazaar. She graduated in 1976 with Urdu and English literature and started writing poetry during college.