Meghdoot

Kalidas lived in the 4th Century AD and is considered the greatest Sanskrit poet and dramatist. He wrote prolifically and influenced later sub-continental culture and thinking in an unprecedented way.
Sanskrit remains a religious language but is not a living language per se, perhaps with the exception of the relatively newly formed Indian state of Uttarkhand where it is listed as a state language.
Sanskrit produced major writers whose translations and references can be found in South Asian literatures across languages that are derived from or related to Sanskrit.
Poems like Gaitri Mantar or the work of Bhartari Hari are found in Iqbal’s verse. In more contemporary terms, besides his translations into Urdu, you find references to Kalidas in the poetry of people like Ahmed Faraz.
Meghdoot is one of Kalidas’s seminal works, a poem of 111 stanzas recounting the experience of a Yaksha when he is exiled by the god of wealth. Yaksha is someone who falls between a man and a deity, as it were, and is in touch with the hidden treasures offered by nature.
In his place of exile, he convinces a passing cloud to become his messenger and relate his longing and love to his beloved wife. Meghdoot means the cloud messenger.
Siachen is one of the largest non-polar glaciers in the world in the north-east of the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir between India and Pakistan. The Operation Meghdoot, named after Kalidas’s cloud messenger, was launched by the Indian Army in 1984. Ironic as the original Meghdoot was a divine cloud messenger of love.
But remember the nuclear detonation was termed ‘Laughing Buddha’. Indians claimed later that the operation was launched to pre-empt a possible Pakistani military advance on Siachen glacier.
Pakistan maintains that it was already a part of Pakistani territory and Indians transgressed and captured a thousand square miles of land that was ours.
It is interesting to note that even in the 1972 Simla Agreement, glaciers were not considered as a point of possible discord by Indian and Pakistani negotiators. Besides, the UN officials had presumed until the time it happened that nobody would ever think of fighting over a land as cold and barren as Siachen.
But South Asians, who like few else are unusually capable of astonishing the rest of humanity, successfully created the highest and the coldest battleground on the face of earth, 20000 feet above the sea level with temperature plummeting to minus 70 Celsius during winters.
The estimated amount of money the two countries spend on maintaining their military posts is US$300 million for India and US$200 million for Pakistan. Since then, thousands have perished or are maimed by frostbites and accidents. Indians lost no less lives.
The last avalanche on Saturday, April 7, 2012, struck at 6 a.m. in the morning trapping 124 soldiers and 11 civilians present in the Giyari base of Pakistan Army under 70-feet of snow. These young men were in the line of duty.
My heart goes out to their families and friends. Many of them may have volunteered to serve the interests of their country but the decision to create a battleground in Siachen was not theirs.
In the name of the downtrodden and the dispossessed of South Asia, the brave soldiers who come from the struggling classes of these countries, and the poor fisher folk who can’t figure out national boundaries on turbulent sea waves and languish in each other’s jails for years, the two countries must disperse the cloud messenger of fire and return to the shade of the cloud messenger of love.

The writer is an Islamabad-based poet and author. Email: harris.khalique@gmail.com