‘Don’t Basherakawa Me’

A Marwari friend of mine calls me up to tell me:’We had a visitor from your place yesterday.’
‘My place’
‘A Kashmiri. Kashmir. Your place. You folks are quite something.’

I know. I know which way the conversation will go this point onwards. The last time he called me up to talk about people from ‘my place’, that was about a year or so back, the conversation was about a Kashmiri truck driver opening up his heart in middle of Delhi’s Loha Mandi to a bunch of shop-helps. He told them how his life was messed up because he, a poor Kashmiri, was caught between Militants and Army. ‘Yes it is bad,’ shop-helps conceded. But time and again some shop-helps, much to the displeasure of the Kashmir, kept interjecting his laments to remind him what his people did to the Pandits, the Hindus. ‘We did nothing. They left on their own.’

‘You folks are quite something. What do you expect?’
‘Is this why you called me? You @$#!’ I have stopped peddling stories. I am through telling them about the ordeal, the exodus, the great evil that evil men did, the evil that drove them, drove us out, the apple and the almond farms and the assorted addendum. I have to stop listening too.

‘Yes. Kashmiri. So listen. He came in a Lancer. A Pashmina dealer, we have known him for more than 10 years. And I didn’t know that. My family has had many dealings with him.’
‘Yes, they operate that way.’
‘My mother was buying Pashmina for her would-be bahu.’
‘That would be your would-be wife. How’s your Sheesh Mahal coming along? Is it finished? It has been what two years? Do you plan to cover it with Pashmina? You Marwari. Boozwa pig.’
‘Yeah. So. He greeted me in English. Funny guy. ‘
‘So.’
‘Pashmina he gave us for fifteen. A special discount price, he said, specially for us. My father told him not to misuse to term. Discount. It’s his take on Geelani that I found interesting. Funny you people are no doubt! Freee…’
‘For fifteen. Are you sure that is the real stuff? Because…’
‘Yeah, he said it is some hybrid or something. New stuff. Some Kalakari or Kamkari.’
‘Kalamkari. What that got to do with…anyway I don’t know what you got but you got it cheap.’
‘My father asked him about the situation.’
I have to stop telling random strangers travelling in  trains about the situation. You can keep advising GOI and GOP about how to go about solving the situation. You can keep exposing the truth to the world.
‘What can we do against Goondas? That’s what he said.’
‘I am working. Don’t you have Loha to sell. I gotta…’
‘China wants to make Geelani the Dalai Lama.’
‘What?’
‘ He said China wants to make Geelani the Dalai Lama. Tum log!’
‘Chal bye! I gotta run. Bye. You Marwari @$#!er.’

Call over, I listen to Dimyo Dilas Gandyo Valas Paertho Gilass Kulni tal.