THE POEM: 

کر مۅکلِہ سفر

کر مۅکلِہ سفر     کر مۅکلِہ سفر ،

ووٚنۍ تاپہٕ  ونن منٛز وٲنٛس گیَم

بے وایہٕ  پکاں ،  سنگلاخ  وَتَو

نوسوٗر گوٚمُت چُھم پدۍ  آکھن

چُھم خارٕ  دماہہ  بہٕ  تِہ  چھاوٕ شُہُل

کُنِہ ژھایِہ ہلِس  میے تِہ  نیرِ  ووٚشُل

تھکٕہ بوٗنۍ  میٚے  کُنِہ  چھنہٕ  دریٖنٹھۍ گژھاں

کِنٛہۍ چُھم  نہٕ  پتہ ،  ونِہ گُنسہٕ  وَتَو

ییٚمِہ یور  تِہ کُوتاہ  کال  پییم

رنبۍ آرٕ  میٚے  ہِجرُک  پار کرُن

کِنٛہۍ چُھم  نہٕ  پتہ

کتھ مرگہٕ وتِس پیٹھ

زاگِہ بِہِتھ  چھم  مرگہٕ وُنل

پراران ہِتن

کِنٛہۍ چُھم  نہٕ  پتہ

کتھ بالہٕ تھونگِس پیٚٹھ  دوہ  لوسیم

کتِہ  شہہ سوریم ، کِنٛہۍ چھم نہٕ پتہ

وَتِہ  پکہٕ  وُن کُس

انزان  میٚے ٲخر  شاند  پِھریم

وُڈ راویم   کتھ  وٲرانس منٛز

یا  زالیم کتھ شمشانس  منٛز

بُلبل  تُلِہ  وُپھ اسمانن کُن

یتھ  پنجرٕ  شریرس کیاہ  گُدریم

کیمۍ کرِیل ژٕہن  ما  میوٗن بدن

یا   وُسخانن  ما   سوٗر گژھیم

پتہٕ سوٗر گژھیم یا  خاک بنیم

ٲخر  چُھم  خاکس  سٍتۍ  رلُن

پوز ،  میوٗن  سفر ما ڈولِہ  اتی

تا  روزے قیامت  سٲل کرُن

چُھم  چھکرِتھ  ییتھۍ  بُترٲژ   پیٹھے

کم  رُوپ  میٚے وُنِہ  بدلاونۍ   چِھم

پریتھ  ساعتٕہ  نوِس  انہارس منٛز

بٕے اوسُس میے  ییتِہ  روزُن چُھم

یتھ  ژکرٕ وہیوس   منٛز پھیرُن  چُھم

بٕے  زُو  زآژن  منٛز  پراوٕ   زنم

بٕے آبہٕ  جوین منٛز روزٕ گریزاں

بٕے  روٗدٕ  جرین منٛزروزٕ  گٚیواں

بٕے  شینہٕ کھہن منٛز روزٕ   زُواں

بٕے  ہردٕ   پنن  منٛزروزٕ ہرا ں

بٕے پوشٕہ  تھریٚن  منٛزروزٕ پھۅلاں

بٕے  گُلزارن منٛزمشک  ژھٹاں

میے  فصلہٕ کُلین منٛزروزُن  چُھم

میے  زِندٕ  زُون منٛزپھیرُن چُھم

میے  سِریِہ  تژر  چُھم  للناوُن

میے شبنم  قطرن  لول  برُن

کِنٛہۍ چھم  نٕہ  پتہٕ کر مۅکلِہ  سفر

.......  کیا ممکن چھا ؟

پھلوٲے ہوا  ووتِھہ  خشمہٕ ہوتُے

نِیِہ میانِہ   وجوٗدچ خاک  ڈُوِتھ

نِیِہ  میانِہ شرِیرُک  سوٗر  ڈُوِتھ

آکٲشۍ  فناہ کِس شُنۍ یہس کُن

کیا ممکن  چھا

فلوٲے   ہوا  نابوٗد کریم

ممکن چھا موکلن پائے بنیم

کر مۅکلِہ  سفر ،  کر مۅکلِہ سفر

TRANSLITERATION: 

Kar Mokalih Safar

Kar Mokalih

Safar

Kar Mokalih

Safar, Kar Mokalih Safar,

Wowni taapah vanan manz waens gayem

Be-wayah pakaan,

sanglaakh wato

Nosoor gomut

chhum pedi aakhan

Chhum khaare damaah

bi  ti chhaav shuhul

Kunih Tchaayih halis mey

ti ner woshul

Thakih boonih

miyé kunih

chhani dareenth gatchaan

Kinh chhum nah

pata, vanih gunsah wato

Yimih yoor

ti kootah kaal

pyem

Ranbi aar mey

hijruk paar karun

Kinh chhum nah

pata

Kath margah watis

peeth

Zaagih

bihith chhum margah wunul

Praraan hithan

Kinh chhum nah

pata

Kath baalah

thongis pyeth doah losem

Kati shah soarem,

kinh chhum nah pata

Watih pakah

wun kus

Anzaan mey aekhar

shaand phirim

Woodraavem

kath waerans manz

Ya zaalim

kath shamshaans manz

Bulbul tulih

wuph aasmaanan kun

Yath panjar

shareeras kyaah gudrem

Kemi krael tchihan

maa myoon badan

Ya wuskhaanan

maa soor gatchem

Pati soor gatchem

ya khaak banim

Aekhar chhum

khaakas saeti ralun

Poz, myoon

safar maa doli ati

Taa rozé qayamat

sael karun

Chhum chhakarith

yithy butraatch pethy

Kam roop

mey wuni badlaavun chhim

Preth saati

novis anhaaras manz

Bei osus mey yithih

rozun chhum

Yath tchekri woyus

manz pherun chhum

Bei zoo zaatchan manz praavi

zanam

Bei aabi joyin manz rozé

grezaan

Bei roodé

jareen manz rozé

givaaan

Bei sheenah khahan manz rozé

zawaan

Bei hardah

panun manz rozé

haraaan

Bei poshah threen manz rozé

phoolaan

Bei gulzaaran manz

mashk zhataan

Meyi faslah koolin manz

rozun chhum

Meyi zindah zoon manz

pherun chhum

Meyi siriyah tazhar

chhum lalnaavun

Meyi shabnam qataran

lol barun

Kinh chhum nah

patah Kar Mokalih Safar

……. Kya mumkin chha?

Phulwaeyi hawa

wothi khashmah hotutey

Niyi  myani

wajoodach khaak duvith

Neeh meyanih

shareeruk soor duvith

Aakaashi

fanaah kis shuniyihas kun

Kya mumkin chha?

Phulwaeyi hawa

naabood karem

Mumkin chha

mokalun paaye banem

Kar Mokalih Safar,

Kar Mokalih Safar

TRANSLATION:

When Shall the Odyssey Come to an End

When shall the Odyssey come to an end

When shall the Odyssey come to an end
For ages I have been caught in this scorching wilderness
Wandering along this arduous ascent
The soles of my feet have turned into ulcers
I long to rest in the shade
Lest I may find solace
But I don't find a chinar
I can't say for how many aeons
I will have to tread on toxic trails
To cross the rocky river of separation
I don't know on which of these deadly paths
The fog of death has ambushed me
Looking for an excuse to devour me
I don't know on which alp
The sun will set
I know not where my last breath awaits me
I know not which unknown person
Will reposition me gently while I die
In which wilderness shall he bury me
Or in which crematorium he will incinerate me
When the nightingale flies away
What shall happen to my perforated body
Will the worms scavenge my torso
Or will my bones decompose
It will turn to ashes or dust
Finally I will mix with the earth
But my journey will not stop
Until the hour comes, I have only to wander here
I will have to change forms
Each time, a new one
I was, and I shall be here
I have to cycle through samsara
I will continue to live inside all beings
I will continue to babble in the brooks
I will continue to sing with the showers
I will continue to wander along snowy fields
I will continue to fall with the autumn leaves
I will continue to bloom with the flowers
I will continue to perfume the rose gardens
I will continue to live in the crops
I will continue to move with the living ones
I will have to bear the brunt of scorching sunbeams
I will have to love the dewdrops
I don't know when shall the Odyssey come to an end
……….Is it possible?
The crazy winds will take away the dust of my being
Ashes of my torso to the distant voids of heaven
Is it possible?
The crazy winds will annihilate me
Is it possible
That liberty will find me
When shall the Odyssey come to an end
When shall the Odyssey come to an end.

ANALYTICAL STUDY: 

There are poems that describe suffering, and there are poems that make suffering itself speak. Bashir Dada’s “When Shall the Odyssey Come to End” belongs to the latter category. It begins apparently as a poem of exhaustion, wandering and separation, but as it unfolds, its geography expands from a scorched wilderness to the whole universe, and its temporal scale expands from a human lifetime to “eons” and the endless cycle of samsara. What initially appears to be the lament of a displaced individual slowly becomes the lament of a civilisation, a people, a body, a soul and, ultimately, existence itself.

The repeated question “When shall the Odyssey come to end” is therefore not merely a question about the end of a journey. It is a question about whether there is ever an end to wandering, separation, memory, suffering and existence. That is where the poem acquires its extraordinary multiplicity.

The title itself is significant. An odyssey is not simply a journey; it is a prolonged journey marked by obstacles, separation, uncertainty and the desire to return. By choosing “Odyssey” rather than simply “journey,” Bashir Dada gives his poem an archetypal dimension. His traveller is not one particular man. He is every displaced person, every exile, every survivor, every human being who has spent a lifetime looking for a home that may exist more vividly in memory than in physical geography.

The poem opens with an intensely physical image:

“For ages I am caught in this scorching wilderness”

The wilderness may be read literally, psychologically, historically and spiritually. It is the landscape of an individual who has lost the familiar shade of belonging. It is also the landscape of a community uprooted from its emotional geography. The most evocative line in this context is:

“But I don’t find a chinar”

The chinar is not merely a tree. In the Kashmiri imagination, it carries the weight of landscape, memory, shade, season, childhood and civilisational continuity. Therefore, the absence of the chinar becomes the absence of home itself. The speaker is not simply looking for a tree under which to rest. He is looking for the lost landscape of familiarity.

And this is where the poem can be read against the tragic separation between Kashmiri Muslims and Kashmiri Pandits. The poem does not need to name a community, a year, an event or a political circumstance. Its language is more profound because it remains human. The “separation” can encompass the Pandit who left Kashmir, the Muslim who remained but experienced a transformed homeland, the family divided by history, and every Kashmiri who discovered that a geographical home can survive while its emotional meaning is fractured.

The poem consequently avoids becoming a conventional political poem. It does not point a finger. It mourns a wound. The phrase “to cross the rocky river of separation” is among the central metaphors of the poem.

Separation is imagined as a river, but not a gentle river. It is rocky, dangerous and difficult to cross. The image recalls the ancient literary tradition in which a river separates two worlds: life and death, homeland and exile, memory and reality, the known and the unknown.

In the Kashmiri context, that river can carry the memory of a divided social world. Neighbourhoods once shared, friendships once taken for granted, festivals, languages, streets, springs, shrines, schools and ordinary relationships become submerged beneath the river of historical rupture.

Yet the poem does something important: it does not declare the river uncrossable. The speaker continues walking. That persistence is crucial. The poem is therefore not only about displacement; it is about the human impulse to cross separation. Perhaps the most visceral image occurs here:

“My sole bruises have turned into ulcers”

The journey has become so prolonged that ordinary wounds have become permanent injuries. The feet are particularly meaningful. Feet belong to the traveller. They carry the body through geography. When the feet become ulcerated, the journey itself has entered the body. Thus, history is no longer outside the speaker. History has become flesh. This is one of the poem’s most powerful achievements. It transforms an abstract idea such as exile into something physical: bruised feet, ulcers, scorching sun, toxic trails, perforated flesh, bones, ashes and dust. The poem consequently moves continuously between the landscape and the body. The wilderness wounds the traveller, but eventually the traveller himself becomes part of the wilderness. The speaker says:

“I cherish to rest in the shade
Lest I may find solace
But I don’t find a chinar”

There is profound irony here. The traveller does not ask for wealth, triumph or even a destination. He asks only for shade.

That modest desire makes the poem more tragic. Shade is temporary shelter. The chinar is rootedness. To lose the chinar is therefore to lose both shelter and rootedness. The poem can be read here as a meditation on what displacement actually means. Exile is not merely changing one's address. It is losing the possibility of resting beneath something that belongs simultaneously to oneself and to one's ancestors.

The chinar becomes a symbol of a Kashmir that exists not merely as territory but as shared memory.

The poem then moves towards mortality:

“I don’t know where on these deadly paths
the fog of death has ambushed”

Death is not located at the end of the road. It is hidden somewhere along it. This is an important philosophical reversal. The traveller does not know whether he will reach the destination before death reaches him. The uncertainty creates an existential anxiety that transcends the historical dimension of the poem.

Then come questions of extraordinary starkness:

“I know not where my last breath awaits me”

                      and

“I know not which unknown person
Will reposition me gently while I Die”

The capitalisation of “Die” intensifies the moment. The speaker cannot even imagine who will perform the final human gesture for him. The unknown person becomes significant. At the moment of death, all communal identities become fragile. The person who finally touches the dead body may be a stranger. The one who performs the last act of care may belong to a world outside the categories that divided the living.

The poem thereby quietly suggests that death may restore a human intimacy that history denied to life. The following lines are especially important:

“In which wilderness shall he burry me
Or in which crematorium he will incinerate me”

The alternatives of burial and cremation carry an unmistakable cultural and religious resonance. Yet the poem does not privilege one over the other. Instead, it places both before the same mystery. Whether the body is buried or cremated, the physical form eventually returns to nature. This is one of the points at which the poem moves beyond the Muslim–Pandit binary. The very distinctions that are so powerful during life become less consequential before mortality.

The body returns to earth. The religiously marked body becomes an elemental body. The expression “perforated body” introduces another layer. The body is not merely dead; it is damaged, wounded and penetrated by the violence of existence. The question: “Will the worms scavenge my torso” is deliberately unsettling. Dada refuses to beautify death.

There is no romantic corpse here. There is decomposition, worms, bones, ashes and dust. The poem confronts the material reality that poetry often tries to escape. But paradoxically, this confrontation with physical decay becomes the doorway to metaphysics. The body will disappear. The journey will not. The poem reaches its philosophical turning point when the speaker says:

“But my journey will not stop”

and then:

“I have to cycle through samsara”

This is where the poem transcends the conventional language of exile. Samsara transforms the linear journey into a circular one. The traveller had imagined that eventually the odyssey might end. But if existence is governed by cycles of birth, death and rebirth, then death is not necessarily the conclusion. It is another passage. The poem consequently creates a fascinating tension between two desires:

the desire to continue living and the desire to become free from the cycle of existence. The speaker wants to survive, but he also longs for liberation. This contradiction lies at the heart of the poem. After death, the “I” does not disappear. Instead, it disperses into creation:

“I will continue to live inside all beings”

This is perhaps the most beautiful philosophical proposition in the poem. The individual self becomes plural. The “I” becomes the “all.” The speaker will-

“babble in the brooks”
“sing with the showers”
“wander along snowy fields”
“shed with the autumn leaves”
“bloom with the flowers”

Suddenly the poem that began with a lonely human traveller becomes a poem of cosmic interconnectedness. The speaker no longer belongs exclusively to a community, religion, family or even human species. He belongs to existence.The poem's natural imagery deserves particular attention. Brooks, showers, snow, autumn leaves, flowers, rose gardens and crops are not decorative elements. They constitute a second body for the speaker.  The physical body will die, but another body will continue through nature. This is close to an ecological philosophy in which the individual is not separate from the natural world. Human beings are temporary forms of the same matter and energy that move through water, soil, vegetation, crops and living organisms.

Thus, when the speaker says: “I will continue to live in crops”, the line carries a profound meaning. The dead are not necessarily absent. They return as matter. They return as nourishment. They return as landscape. They return as life.  The poem's natural imagery becomes particularly poignant when read through Kashmir. Snowy fields, autumn leaves, chinar, brooks, showers and rose gardens evoke a recognisable Kashmiri landscape. But this landscape is not merely picturesque.

It functions as an archive of memory. The displaced person may lose a house, a street or a village, but the landscape continues to carry traces of belonging. The chinar becomes memory. The snow becomes memory. The autumn leaf becomes memory. The brook becomes memory. In that sense, the speaker's eventual transformation into nature may be understood as a poetic reconciliation with the homeland. If the human traveller cannot permanently return to Kashmir, perhaps the self can return through the elements. The Muslim–Pandit dimension should therefore be read carefully. The poem does not appear to be a documentary account of the Pandit exodus or a direct historical narrative. Its language is deliberately universal. Yet its imagery of wandering, separation, lost shade, uncertain burial, unknown destination and the longing for a return makes it particularly receptive to the history of Kashmiri displacement.

For Kashmiri Pandits, the poem may evoke the pain of leaving an ancestral homeland and wondering whether return is possible.

For Kashmiri Muslims, it can evoke another form of loss: the transformation of a shared social world and the emotional consequences of witnessing neighbours, friends and members of an older composite society disappear from everyday life.  For both, the poem can become an elegy for a relationship with Kashmir that was fractured by history. That is precisely why the poem should not be appropriated exclusively by one side. Its “I” is deliberately large enough to contain multiple memories. There is another subtle dimension. The speaker begins as an individual. Then he becomes a dead body. Then bones. Then ashes and dust. Then earth. Then crops. Then animals and living beings.

Then rain, streams, snow and flowers. In other words, the poem progressively strips away identity. First, the speaker loses his home. Then his body. Then his individuality. Finally, he becomes part of existence itself. This resembles a philosophical journey from ego to dissolution. The speaker begins by asking, 

“Where am I going?”

He eventually reaches a point where the question of “where” becomes meaningless because he is everywhere. Yet the poem does not settle comfortably into spiritual consolation. The speaker repeatedly asks: “Is it possible?” This is an extraordinarily important question. Even after imagining his dissolution into the cosmos, he is not certain that liberation will occur. He asks whether the “crazy winds” will take away:

“the dirt of my being”

and carry:

“Ashes of my torso to 

distant voids of heaven”

   Then again:

“Is it possible?”

And finally:

“that liberty will find me”

This “liberty” is perhaps the poem's most ambiguous word. Liberty can mean freedom from displacement. It can mean freedom from historical suffering. It can mean freedom from memory. It can mean freedom from the body. It can mean freedom from the cycle of samsara. It can even mean freedom from the self. Thus, the poem never defines liberation. It leaves it as a question. And perhaps that uncertainty is the poem's philosophical truth. There is an apparent contradiction at the centre of the poem. The speaker says:

“my journey will not stop”

but simultaneously asks:

“When shall the Odyssey come to end”

The contradiction is deliberate. The journey of the body may end. The journey of memory may not. The journey of the soul may not. The journey of matter may not. The journey of history may not. And perhaps suffering itself survives the death of the individual. Therefore, the end of the odyssey cannot simply mean death. Death may merely change the traveller. The real end would be liberation. And the poem remains uncertain whether liberation is possible.

The repeated question “When shall the Odyssey come to end” gives the poem a circular architecture. It appears at the beginning. It returns near the end. And it finally returns again. This repetition resembles a refrain, but philosophically it also resembles samsara: the question comes back because the journey comes back. The poem therefore enacts its own subject. It asks whether the journey can end, while structurally refusing to let the poem end easily. The traveller keeps walking. The question keeps returning. Perhaps the deepest irony of the poem is that the speaker wants an end to the journey, yet imagines immortality everywhere. He wants to disappear, yet says:

“I will continue to live inside all beings”

He wants freedom, yet accepts rebirth. He fears death, yet embraces transformation. He longs for rest, yet imagines perpetual movement. He wants to end his odyssey, yet becomes an eternal wanderer. This contradiction gives the poem its philosophical vitality. The speaker is simultaneously an exile seeking home, a human being seeking death, a soul seeking liberation, and a particle of nature seeking transformation.

The fact that this poem was sung by the noted Kashmiri singer Vijay Malla, and that the rendition became his last song, adds another poignant layer to its reception. The relationship between the poem and that final rendition is almost unbearably suggestive. A poem asking when the journey will end was given a musical life by a singer whose own artistic journey subsequently came to an end. This should not, however, be turned merely into a sentimental coincidence. It changes the way the poem is heard.

On the page, “I know not where my last breath awaits me” is a poetic meditation on mortality. When heard through the voice of a singer whose rendition became his last song, the same line acquires an additional retrospective resonance.

The voice itself becomes part of the poem's meditation on disappearance. A singer's voice is, after all, a temporary physical phenomenon. It exists in breath, vibration and memory. Once the singer is gone, the voice survives through recordings and through those who remember it. That parallels the poem's central proposition: the form may perish, but the journey of what that form created may continue.

Vijay Malla's rendition therefore becomes more than an interpretation of the poem. In retrospect, it becomes part of its emotional afterlife. The poet speaks of becoming brooks, showers, snow, leaves and flowers. The singer, too, becomes part of the poem's continuing existence. The body ends. The voice continues.

Ultimately, “When Shall the Odyssey Come to End” should not be confined within the category of a “displacement poem.” It is a poem of exile, certainly. It is a poem of Kashmir, deeply. It can be read as a poem of Muslim–Pandit separation and the wound of a fractured shared homeland. But it is also a poem of death. It is a poem of memory. It is a poem of ecological belonging. It is a poem about the body and its decomposition. It is a poem about the dissolution of individual identity. It is a poem about rebirth and samsara. It is a poem about the possibility or impossibility of liberation. And at its deepest level, it is a poem about the ancient human question: How does one come home when one does not know where home is?

Perhaps the answer offered by Bashir Dada is not geographical at all. The traveller searches for a chinar and finds none. He searches for shade and finds none. He searches for an end and finds another beginning. He searches for himself and ultimately discovers himself in brooks, rain, snow, flowers, crops, leaves and living beings. The home he was searching for may have been within existence itself. And yet, the final question remains unanswered:

“When shall the Odyssey come to end?”

Perhaps it never does. Perhaps the human condition is itself an odyssey. Perhaps Kashmir's history is an unfinished odyssey. Perhaps memory is an odyssey. Perhaps the soul is an odyssey.

Or perhaps the true freedom the poet seeks is the moment when the traveller no longer needs to ask where the journey ends. That is why the final “Is it possible?” is more powerful than an answer could have been. The poem does not give us liberation. It gives us the longing for liberation. And sometimes, in great poetry, the longing itself is the destination.

(Nisar Azam is a well-known Kashmiri poet, writer, and translator. He is the author of Patti Lejill Zoon Daras and translator of significant literary works, he has contributed to bringing diverse voices across languages. A recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar (2011), he has also worked in cinema as a dialogue writer and director.)