Apor Lal Chowk — A Poem by Mubashir Karim
Passing through this Kashmiri “Age of Big Construction”, Mubashir Karim’s poem takes us back to the shared experience of those who know what it is to ride on a bus or a matador. Seated in the present, these verses－and the poetic voice that shapes them－adopt the gaze of a passenger-flâneur who moves
Apor Lal Chowk[1]
A disenchanted Maratab Ali[2]
mourns lyrically for his beloved.
A teenage conductor swanks
his counterfeit jacket.
His yells pose as adversaries
to the singer while
guiding passengers to the bustling,
nevertheless seatie-khalie[3] bus.
Meanwhile, woustie[4] keeps
a close eye in the side-mirror
on sadah trunamath[5] inching closer.
The handwritten board at the front
reeks of human agency.
Random couplets in graceful Urdu
adorn the side panels.
Just below, hastily, is written
laddias[6] seat with an arrow
that hints at nowhere in particular.
Woustie's gunj baanie[7] rests in between
some grease-ridden cloth and Castrol bottles.
My dull memory,
of the Tata bus,
of the Mazda bus,
grazes past
the historicity
of your Smart Bus.
Notes
[1] Literally ‘across Lal Chowk’. This was one among many rallying cries of bus conductors in Kashmir. The phrase specifically refers to the area that is Maharaj Bazar and Jahangir Chowk connected by Amira Kadal Bridge.
[2] Pakistani singer famous throughout the 1990s primarily for his melancholic voice imbued with painful lyrics. 1990s was the era of cassettes in Kashmir and buses were fitted with tape recorders that played music via speakers throughout the journey.
[3] Literally ‘empty seats’. A common expression used by bus conductors in general stating to the passengers that the seats are empty, even if that was not the case.
[4] The driver.
[5] Kashmiri for ‘1793’. Drivers and conductors usually referred to other buses via their vehicle number.
[6] Ladies Seat: Most of the times the English words (not a native language) were misspelled.
[7] Driver’s tiffin or lunchbox.