The refugee,
The word strikes as a bell
Tolled,
The word
The refugee,
The refugee,
Say you, who is this refugee,
Who has made him a refugee,
Say you?

Shelterless,
Without any refuge,
Lie they
Passing the nights
Under the canopy of the skies,
The refugee,
The refugee,
But who is responsible for
Their deplorable condition,
Who,
Who is it?

Driven from their own lands,
Native homes and places,
They are outsiders
In others' places,
Other than their surrounds,
In the new land found
And adopted homes,
But the memories still keep weakening
The refugee,
The refugee.

Even if you ask me to explain, I don't know as to how shall I explain? I wrote it then and I don't remember what impelled me to write it. But this much I can assure you, it is no doubt a poem of reckoning. What the others have left, I have tried to gather in and to collect, the residues of meaning. 

The Refugee as a poem reminds us of K.A. Abbas, Krishan Chunder, Khushwant Singh and Adil Jussawalla and apart from, the world refugee crisis has been dealt with. How is the word? What is its meaning! Why does one turn into a refugee? What does the word refugee mean? Was the person a refugee from his beginning?

In writing the poem, how has the mind got lifted to World Refugee Commission, World Refugee Day and in grappling to clinch with some ideas and thought to reflect upon the impending crisis! It is but a human crisis. But can a man do it, can a human being at least in such a way?

The refugee crisis is one of the major crises the world is confronted with. Now how to tackle them is a great problem for us. There is nobody to think of. 

Monstrous wars, unnecessary politics, pontifical religiosity and greed for power force the people to be driven away from their lands and homes.

It is none but us who have turned them into refugees, who have driven them out of their homes which but not good, so cruel and piteous the moment we come to know about it taking our space, confronting the mind. The blunders of history what to say it about, the blunders man does it without thinking about?

In writing the poem, The Refugee, I have just tried to think singularly, what is a refugee, what does it mean and after all who is a refugee? Why is he a refugee? What is that has gone in the making of it?

And in a muffled tone of elucidation, it is inclusive of partition trauma, the diaspora dais, political turmoil and civil war inflicting pain and trouble and so many things at a glance. The Tibetan refugees, the Kashmiri pundits, the refugees and the displaced people from the Punjab and Bengal partitioned, the Sindhis and so on. Why will they be driven? And who is it that has driven them? How dare they!

Under the given situations, with wayward thoughts making forays into, they try to start the journey of life afresh with a view to adjusting with the new situations whatsoever be. To forget the past and to begin a new beginning, this is but their life as the circumstances seem to be compelling to act at their behest. None but Satan can do it.

The crimes the world has committed, the sins that mankind has, God will not forgive it, will not pardon them.

How will the new atmosphere be? How will the new surroundings and environment be? How painful is it to be a refugee? 

But the poem lying under mentioned is a poem of a different tenor. It is a romantic view seen from the lens of man’s refugee-like life. We are really refugees, refugees of where, God knows! We are homeless, shelter less, without any refuge, is it not? Here I have liberty with the word.

The Refugee Heart in The Refugee Soul, A Refugee Am I

In my refugee heart
Is my refugee soul.

A refugee am I
Going on the pathways.

No shelter, no refuge
Have I.

Where my pathway leading unto
What?

What the journey end I know
It not?

Just a refugee, a refugee am I
Going and going on the pathways of life.