Cerebration

BUTTERMILK: SHUBH MATHUR

(From: Poems of Occupation from Kashmir)

Shubh Mathur is an Indian anthropologist whose work concerns human rights, nations and borders, violence, sovereignty, immigration and cities. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the New School for Social Research. Her first book, The Everyday Life of Hindu Nationalism: An Ethnographic Report has been published by the Three Essays Collective Press. She is currently working on a collaborative ethnography with the families of the disappeared in Kashmir.

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Some day
After the Occupation
I will return
And we will visit
in the neighbourhood
sitting
by the willow trees
the stream
the ducks
and the toddlers.
And I will not need
my notebook
to write the details of a father's desperate search
for his missing son.
And I will not need my cameraphone
to take a picture
of a dead boy's face.
In my hands
I will hold
only
a glass of cool buttermilk
and say
"Thank you."

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