In his second book of poetry, out of the six he has written, Maharaj continues to rejuvenate our spirits. His poetry explores the crushing emptiness of modern life and the appalling disconnect between our flesh and soul. With every page, Maharaj invites his readers to go beyond their preconceived views about life and explore the depths of their being. Each verse was masterfully interwoven into a poignant piece that evokes deep-seated emotions and unspoken truths about life.
The author laments how technology and modern living have gradually affected our inner peace and genuine happiness. He believes that man is born with natural freedom, joy, grace, and grandeur. But, as we grow up, the existing culture gradually corrupts us and prevents our original nature to grow. By creating and living in the present culture of materialism, the author also wants to put a spotlight on the precious things we tend to overlook in our fleeting moment in this world.
Maharaj did an excellent job in speaking the language of love for freedom and human service. His writing reminds us of what it really means to be alive in this complicated world. He believes that life is a short journey meant to be a celestial dance over the worldly abyss. Humans are here to help the unfortunate and offer respect to nature.
His style comfortably navigates through the mystical terrain to hopefully guide us in this physical world.
There’s no coming back once the light through the woods shines on your soul. You will find yourself absorbed in a series of captivating stories, thoughts, ideas, feelings, and experiences. Celebrating his nostalgic memories from his birthplace, the author paints stunning imageries and delivers a bleak atmosphere of the sufferings he endured in the past. He expresses his joy in reminiscing his childhood while echoing the sadness and drudgery of the place, emphasizing the tragic dispossession and diaspora of the people in India.
Maharaj’s creation will surely transport readers into a winding path of pain and joy, love and loss, disenchantment, and self-discovery.
“In this illuminating compilation of poems, Maharaj Kaul plumbs the depths and scales the heights of human existence in the modern world, with a clarity of vision that speaks to the heart with stark honesty and graceful candour.”
Maharaj Kaul was born in Kashmir, India, where he spent his childhood and boyhood. He graduated from Banaras University, India, in electrical engineering and went on to Polytechnic Institute Of New York for a master’s degree. He is the author of “Inclinations And Reality: The Search For The Absolute,” “Meditation On Time, Destruction And Injustice: The Tribulations Of Kashmiri Pandits,” and “Life With Father.” He retired from engineering after forty years of work and lives in Suffern, New York.
Suffern, New York, Oct. 14,2021
www.kaulscorner.com
maharaj.kaul@yahoo.com
Stillness of Being
In Stillness of Being, his sixth anthology of poems, Indian-American poet, Maharaj Kaul, describes the human conditions we all must experience.
In the poems:
Stillness Of Being
The World I left Behind
A Struggling Dream Never Complete
Hope Never Blinks
Life Is A Playground
Dreams
A Spiral Of Time
Music Of Earth Will Never Die
The Paradox Of God
Beloved
and fifty more, the poet reflects on the joys, dreams, suffering, and will to live a man experiences though the grand and mysterious process called human life.
The Rhapsody of Kashmir, his fifth collection of poetry, Kashmiri American poet, Maharaj Kaul, describes Kashmir, the land of his ancestors, after the civil war of 1989. He saw the wanton destruction of human beings and homes, milieu and culture. He laments:
The clandestine evil schemes of 80’s
Hatched in our neighbor country
Coalesced into one infernal insane fire in ’89,
Destroying the finely woven culture of a millennia in the valley,
Disturbing the tranquility of a million years among the mountains.
A friend turned into a murderer,
A neighbor into an arsonist;
A community acquiesced to become an army.
An angelic valley became a death valley –
All in the name of God and religion.
(From the poem “Roots.”)
In his preface to the book he writes:
“The ongoing political crises in Kashmir, born in 1947, has mutilated the soul of Kashmir. The political heroes of the crises have no idea of the damage they have done to it. It will take a long time before the soul of Kashmir is healed,….”
But Maharaj Kaul has a hope that one day Kashmir will be reborn:
“But the idea of Kashmir is still not dead,
There is hope, in fact, a dream, that one day it will be reborn
And reconnect with its past glory.
Then we will not mourn the lost time,
But celebrate man’s infinite resilience,
To forget, to forgive, to recreate, and move on.”
In the fourth compilation of poetry, Kashmiri-American poet, Maharaj Kaul, further explores the elements that make the inner life of a human being.
The theme of the book, continued from his earlier works, The Light Through The Woods, Meditation On Time,
and A Beautiful Pain, that the journey of human life, as practiced in the age of technology, is greatly flawed by the modern culture.
Today’s man’s soul is tarnished by the tremendous stress he lives under by the demands on his energy and time. He has lost the values of relaxedness and reflection. His lean contact with other human beings and less than ardent family relationships have enlarged his loneliness. Furthermore, the accent on materialism has crippled his joy in the wonder of life. All in all, he feels an invisible inner emptiness while in the lap of material security.
The poems also reflect on the human condition and the search for the human values.
A visionary collection of poems warning man of not losing his umbilical connection with nature, which is the source of religion, art, and science.
The central message of the book is that man should resist the inhuman thrust of materialism and technology and preserve the grandeur of his soul, with which he was gifted by nature when he arrived in the world.
A Beautiful Pain
In the varied concatenation of life’s experiences lies its essence-a journey full of joy and pain. Man comes with pristine qualities of truthfulness, simplicity, and the wonder of nature. In his birth lies his religion. It is his passage through the world that is often full of struggle; in response, he looks for a God to help him.
A Beautiful Pain presents a collection of poems ruminating on joy, beauty, and the wonder of life. Meditating on life’s meaning, it explores the range of human emotions, from the pain of first heartbreak to a study of the quintessence of inner luminosity. Poet Maharaj Kaul searches for the truth of life in this collection, which like life itself is multi-faceted and has a few grand themes running through it.
There is a road in front of us smoother than any highway we have seen,
There is music beckoning us more rapturous than we have ever heard,
There is faith in us stronger than a million facts we have known,
There is a light within us more luminous than the thousand exploding suns,
We were born with a spirit thirsting for the infinite.
-from “Quintessence of Inner Luminosity”
Kashmir has been in my mind ever since I gained a consciousness to connect my observations with some sort of a thinking process. Obviously, it was due to my having been born there.
During my childhood I was ever conscious of the backdrop of the high mountains encircling me, no matter where I went. Also, life in Kashmir seemed to be secluded, a self-contained universe, with little interference from the outside. This contributed to the fairly-tale existence of my childhood.
Whether it was the enigmatic beauty of Kashmir, or my own inclination, which made me a thinker, I do not know. But my childhood was studded with a veil of mystery surrounding human existence. My growing up became a gradual unveiling of that mystery.
At the time of my birth Kashmir was a peaceful place, which from time to time was jolted by Sheikh Abdullah’s assault on its undemocratic governance by the reigning Dogra monarchy. Kashmir went through the birth pangs of the new nations of India and Pakistan, but without being a part of the either. This orphanhood was self-inflicted by Maharaja Hari Singh. He harbored the fantasy of an independent nation of Kashmir. While he was going through the Micawberish state of mind, hoping for the best but without doing anything about it, Pakistan tried to exploit an inviting opportunity, while the Maharaja was in deep meditation on what to do and India was busy taking control of the reins of the new nation. It struck Kashmir under the camouflage of a northern Kashmir tribal revolt against its government. Sheikh Abdullah, a staunch follower of Gandhi and Nehru, and latter’s personal friend, had rejected Kashmir’s integration with Pakistan and thrown its lot with India. Pakistani forces were stopped and repulsed to a point which left about one-third of Kashmir with Pakistan, when the U.N. sponsored truce was put in effect. Sometime after assuming the prime ministership of Jammu and Kashmir, Sheikh Abdullah recalled back his old fantasy of an independent nation of Kashmir. This situation of Pakistan’s attack on Kashmir to absorb it and Sheikh Abdullah’s change of mind about integration with India engendered the six-decade old intractable problem called Kashmir Problem. This was the beginning of the heartbreak of Kashmir.
Subsequently, Kashmir Problem became more and more unyielding, as the successive Indian central governments mishandled or did not handle at all the persistent viciousness of Pakistan in nullifying India’s advantages over it of providing Kashmiris with a democratic frame of government, pouring a vast economic aid, and a hands-free approach to their government. Indian government was not able to stand up to Pakistan’s shenanigans and Kashmiris’ vacillation and week spine. Then there were incompetent and corrupt Kashmiri leaders, some of whom had divided loyalty to both the sides.
But what happened to Kashmirii people’s common sense and sanity? Why could not they raise their hand for survival and decency? Why did they fall prey to Pakistan’s Islamic card? Where did the wisdom of Lalla Ded and Nand Rishi go?
The Hindu-Muslim divide in Kashmir is more than 600 years old but there have been many long stretches of amity and peace between them. During the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, when about a million people were killed, not a single person died in Kashmir. (Deaths in Kashmir in 1947 came from the Pakistani attack to grab it and not due to the partition) This accord between the people was not accidental but due to many efforts made by wise and common men from both sides over a long stretch of time. During the almost 500 years of Muslim rule in Kashmir there was never any serious attempt made to break Kashmir into Hindu and Muslim parts of the state or into two states. But exploited by the evil greed of Pakistan and seduced by the worldwide Islamic fundamentalist movement, Kashmir Muslims lost their balance of mind and expelled the Pandits out of the Kashmir province.
The protracted experience of the Kashmir Problem has put heavy pressure on the soul of Kashmir. Kashmiri aloofness has changed to high-intensity partisanship, religious tolerance to extreme bigotry, and psychological tranquility to flawed passion. The present suffering of both the Muslims and Hindus will cast a deep shadow on their lives for decades to come.
Kashmir Problem has been on my mind since its phase-two inception in 1989. I have been obsessed about it. I have thought about it, written about it, and spoken about it. This is because it represents a violation of my sacred homeland, my birthplace, where the foundations of my mind were cast. Kashmir has been the scene of my childhood, boyhood, and early adulthood. Its desecration is a knife-stab through my heart.
The 20 articles on the Kashmir Problem were written over 21 years. They were started at the time of the inception of the present civil war in Kashmir in 1989. They were written as the state of mayhem, chaos, and exodus of Kashmiri Pandits, shifted from one peak to another, as each significant step for peace was knocked out, as each period of calm and constructiveness was shattered into hopelessness and misery by their enemies. The articles were meant for Kashmiris as well as for non-Kashmiris. They were written with anguish, at the moment of passion, but structured with a fabric of reason, and imbued with a lot of hope. Obviously, there is a lot of repetition in them, because though they were written at different times, they were on the same subject. They remind the readers that Kashmir problem did not have to have happened, if we had the right quality of leadership present at Kashmir and the central governments. Much frustration and heartbreak emanate from the articles, as I believed that the tragedy in Kashmir was man-made. At some point in future the problem will start attenuating, when we have the right leadership. This is especially more significant at the Kashmir end. Kashmiri leaders have been weak and corrupt, as they have let the masses bleed to secure their power and pages in history. A morally upright Kashmiri leader, concerned about the welfare of his people, would have arrived at a settlement with India a long time back. Throwing Kashmir’s lot with Pakistan is suicidal and its independence would amount to the same thing, as shortly after achieving it, it would crumble into Kashmir’s usurpation by Pakistan.
Kashmir people are not insecure about losing their land in their relationship with India. They are not insecure about practicing their religion of Islam under Indian nationhood. Kashmir cannot survive alone, as it does not have an economic base, and also it does not have the necessary military power to fend off Pakistan from usurping it. If its leadership had been honest and competent, as it was up to a point in the time under Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, it would have continued to have an accord with India, as it did until August 9, 1953, when he was arrested for his separatist activities. Clamoring for more autonomy than what it already has is just an excuse for being closer to the state of independence. Islamization of Kashmir is another chimera of Kashmiris’ troubled mind.
This book is about Kashmir Problem and vignettes of some of its places and people. Also, it contains 12 poems on it. The title of the book comes from the title of one of its poems Agony Of Dal Lake. Dal Lake is the most symbolic representation of Kashmir. Agony of Dal Lake is the agony of Kashmir. In the poem Dal Lake speaks about the pains, desecration, and humiliation it has experienced since 1989 due to the ongoing civil war among its children.
The heartbreak of Kashmir continues unabatedly. I do not believe it will be over within my lifetime.
Note: The articles and poems have been presented in the descending chronological order.
Back Cover Of Hard Cover Book
Black Flap Of Hard Cover Book
Front Flap Of Hard Cover Book
Back Cover Of Soft Cover Book
The Light Through The Woods
Dreams Of Survival Of Human Soul In The Age Of Technology
Hardcover Back Cover
Excerpts From The Book:
“I want to feel the unsmooth, soft earth below my feet, See the uncluttered horizon in full width, Be an element of my community, Know my neighbors’ first names, And visit my grandparents’ graves.”
“For man his life is to discover his soul and live with it – For that he does not need to build skyscrapers.”
“A blade of grass has more wisdom than a library full of books, A sunset is more rewarding than a week’s bull market on Wall St. Where have we lost the mind in the matter, the spirit in the process; Where have we lost the miracle of nature, the life in the world. Man is trapped in the petty materialistic schemes of his brain, While the light through the woods lies unexplored in front of him.”
Hardcover Front Flap And Paperback Back Cover
In his second compilation of poetry, Kashmiri-American poet Maharaj Kaul explores the shimmering emptiness of modern life.
From the author of Meditations On Time and Inclinations and Reality: The Search for the Absolute comes an exciting new book of poetry, The Light Through The Woods. In it the poet bemoans how modern man has sacrificed his inner freedom and natural joy in living by creating and believing in the present culture of materialism and technology. He believes that man is born with inner freedom, joy, grandeur, and grace but as he grows up the existing culture corrupts him to realize these powerful elements. He strongly urges man to spiritually reconnect with nature to regain his soul.
The poems also celebrate the poet’s stunningly beautiful birthplace, Kashmir, India, and express his joy in reminiscing about his childhood there as well as his sadness as he contemplates the wastefulness of its political struggles and the tragic dispossession and diaspora of his people, Kashmiri Pandits.
The poems also reflect on the drama of human condition and the search of the human values.
Author Bio For Paperback Back Cover And Hardcover Back Flap
Maharaj Kaul was born in Kashmir, India, where he spent his childhood and boyhood. He graduated from Banaras Hindu University, India in electrical engineering and went on to Polytechnic Institute Of New York for the masters degree. He is the author of Inclinations And Reality: The Search For The Absolute, Meditation On Time, Destruction And Injustice: The Tribulations Of Kashmiri Pandits, and Life With Father. He retired from engineering after forty years of work and lives in Suffern, New York.
Book Ordering Information
The book is available from www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com in the following versions:
a. eBook
b. Hardcover
c. Paperback
Inclinations And Reality: The Search For The Absolute
Maharaj Kaul was born in Srinagar, Kashmir, where he spent his childhood and boyhood. He studied at State High School and Amar Singh College. He went to Banaras Hindu University to pursue a career in electrical engineering. Later he joined Polytechnic Institute of New York for a Masters degree. Ever since, he has lived and worked in the US, never having worked in India. He worked for 40 years in the field of engineering, of which 30 years were spent at Wyeth (now called Pfizer). He presently lives as a retired person in the village of Suffern, in the state of New York. Besides the profession of engineering, he has all his life pursued the study of science, art, and religion. He is also an active poet. He has written five books which include Meditation On Time, Destruction And Injustice—The Tribulations Of Kashmiri Pandits, and Life With Father.
The book Inclinations and Reality, The Search for the Absolute is about the search of a human being to find how his worldview developed. The author traces the influence of the experiences, culture, science, religion, and politics on his mind since his childhood. Now at the vantage point of being in the later years of his life, he looks back to see what has created his universe and why. He looks back to his lonely childhood and boyhood in the ethereal beauty of his birthplace Kashmir, which was studded with his wonder and inquiries about the miracle of human life, the intricacies of family relationships, the complex web of the Hindu- Muslim divide—that evolved over 700 years and cast a strong shadow on the present life in Kashmir—the awe-inspiring mystery of nature, and the dark power of religion’s grip on human psyche. He paints the drama of Kashmiri Pandits’ life in the Valley in the 1950s, their frustrations and hopes, and traces it to its historical and psychological roots. It is the story of a life trying to understand itself and to live it.
He carried these inquiries to Banaras, India, one of the most religious places in the world, where he studied engineering. While trying to gain answers to some of his questions, his passion to find the absolute reality of human nature made him carry his search to America, where he spent almost half a century. In the New World, he was challenged to understand a culture which is very different than the one in India. The stunning success of America in political, scientific, and economic arenas compelled his mind to find the potentials of the human mind to achieve a higher level life for the entire mankind.
Maharaj Kaul explores the nature of Kashmiri Shaivism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, and discusses if they can be beneficial to the modern man. He ends the book with a searing analysis of religion and juxtaposes it with science, whose powerful shadow we are now living under. A penetrating search for the meaning of human life made with effort, intellect, and personal pain.
Life With Father
Preface:
My father was inclined to be a peaceful man, inclined to be happy. Had it not been for some special experiences he had in life, he would have been almost a happy man. He did not think much of material possessions and worldly positions. He did not care for fame and popularity, recognition and legacy. He very much lived in the present. He did not carry any special burdens of the past or special projects for the future. He enjoyed friendships, caring for people, and truthfulness.
He had a good childhood, in spite of having lost his mother at a young age. He had good years in college up to the point when he lost his father at a young age of fifty-four. After that burdens of life started making impression on him. But he still essentially remained himself. It was only when he left Kashmir in 1948, with a plan to work toward Ph.D at Lucknow, which changed to his taking a job with All India Radio in New Delhi, did his life change significantly. It was a watershed event in his life. Cut off from his relatives and friends in Delhi, he started to change from his natural gregariousness to seriousness, from inclination to laugh to tendency to brood. For the rest of his life he tried subconsciously to revive his old self, but only with mixed results. For him his original social environment was the best.
Considering he did not have any specific ambitions or dreams, his achievements in life were good. What he was looking for in his life was happiness and in many patches of life he did get it, in others he was bordering at that, while in many others he was badly away from it. He achieved a good level professional position. He was good at his work and very popular in his organizations. He met his family responsibilities very well and had achieved a reasonably secure material safety net.
He was intense but without goals. He thought the moment at hand was life and he tried to live it to his best ability. Luckily, not being introverted, confused, or depressive, he was never despondent. He knew a way will come out even in very complex and apparently difficult situations. He was hopeful without being overly optimistic, he was joyful without being too happy. His over deference to realism prevented him to let his imagination soar. He was neither poetic in his soul, though he enjoyed poetry, nor religious, though he did not out rightly reject it. He was a very intelligent, realistic, self-conscious, and a hopeful man. He believed that tomorrow will be better and he put in whatever effort he thought was necessary to make it so. He was not a searcher, like he was not searching to uncover the mystery of life or searching to find himself, or searching to find God. For him these were illusions.
His younger son Babu’s accident in 1972 was a very serious blow to him; in a way a lethal blow, as he passed away within a few years after that, at only sixty-five. He never recovered from that trauma, much as he tried to free himself from its entrails. The timing of it in his life could not have been worse, as he was just close to a much awaited retirement. This was the tragic phase in his life when even his hopeful attitude sometimes deserted him. In the end he succumbed to resignation, depriving him of his happiness, which he so assiduously sought in his retirement.
The few pages written in the book are more to honor him than to write his biography. They were meant to portray my life with him for my own illumination and perhaps for the illumination of his grandchildren who never met him. By giving shape to my experiences with him in language, I am trying to understand him better, and celebrate our relationship. Every man comes wrapped in a mystery, as for his motivations, thoughts, and feelings, and if I have lifted the corner of the veil of that mystery of my father even a little bit, I will have succeeded in my efforts.
What I miss most about him is his deep compassion, sharp laughter, his hopefulness, and his love for his friends.
Maharaj Kaul
Suffern, New York
6.15.06
Note: All the verses are by the author.
Destruction And Injustice
The Tribulations Of Kashmiri Pandits
Introduction To The Book
Maharaj Kaul, Editor
When a person or a community hits the headlines for a while a wave of curiosity to find out more about it is generated. People want to know more about the subject of the sensational news, in some cases they want to go to the roots of the story in the news.
Such is the situation with Kashmir Problem, which has hit headlines over a half-century. Kashmir Problem is complex as it has grown through a long stretch of time and contains diverse elements. A vast majority of non-Kashmiri Indians do not know it in full depth and very few foreigners have even a conversational knowledge of it. This ignorance contributes to the difficulties of solving this problem.
This booklet is mostly based on a seminar Kashmir Day presented by Kashmir Overseas Association (KOA) on Oct. 26, 2002, at Kendal Park , New Jersey under the auspices of Bharat Sevashram Sangha Of North America. The idea behind the seminar was to inform non-Kashmiri Indians about the intractable and longstanding problem of Kashmir. It was also projected by the creators of the seminar that the seminar materials would be used for organizing similar seminars in other cities in U.S.A. Behind this thinking was the idea that by improving the information level of people about the problem Kashmiri Pandits (KP’s) will increase the support of their Indian brethren and American friends, who will better understand the causes of their plight. The jump from seminar to the booklet was a logical step in the effort to maximize the dissemination of the information about Kashmir Problem, thereby gaining support for the cause of the rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits. The booklet is not a comprehensive work on the subject of Kashmir Problem but is a useful introductory outline for the people who are only superficially acquainted with it.
This booklet should have been produced by Government Of India (GOI) but that has been very behind in this and other departments in achieving the solution of Kashmir Problem. Throughout nineties the awareness of Kashmir Problem even among U.S. congressional representatives and their staff was low. Then unable to take GOI’s passivity and incompetence anymore, and seeing Government Of Pakistan’s strides in the diffusion of misinformation on Kashmir Problem through its spokesman Guhlam Nabi Fayi, a Kashmiri organization, Indo-American Kashmiri Forum (IAKF), took the wheel in its hands. Through its effective communications U.S. congressional people started getting some real information on Kashmir Problem.
Some sixty-thousand people, Hindus, Muslims, and others have died in the ongoing Kashmir war, without the end in sight. The recent murder of twenty-four KP’s in Nadimarg, Kashmir , which included two children, is a case in point, when many people thought that the war was cooling off. The fires driving the Kashmir Problem are enormous as they are sourced from the almost inexhaustible human weaknesses: religious bigotry, hatred, greed, blindness, and political exploitation. Generations of Pakistani politicians have kept the Kashmir Problem alive to keep the real devastating problems facing that nation on the back burner. The fantasy of a beautiful Kashmir hanging romantically on the horizon has seduced Pakistani people to the extent of them becoming blind to the downfall of their nation, economy, and institutions. Today Pakistan stands as a world terrorism capital, impoverished, torn asunder between the blind, insensitive, and incoherent extremists on one hand and unscrupulous, greedy, opportunistic politicians on the other. One thing that unites this benighted crowd is the fantasy of them one day acquiring the charismatic Kashmir.
We do not know what will be the conclusion to the fight over Kashmir, if there is one, given the intrinsic weakness of Pakistan as a nation and the shallowness of GOI’s determination to fight for what is theirs . Let things be as they may but we have to save KP community. It has almost totally migrated out of the valley of Kashmir and is struggling through the process of transplantation. It needs opportunity, respect, and friendliness.
We hope this booklet opens a window, however slightly, on the tribulations of KP’s through history and thereby makes the fellow human beings understand them better.
