Author: Vinayak Razdan

I saw a glimpse of it in Aldous Huxley’s description of year 1925-26 Kashmir in his book Jesting Pilate (1948). He heard ‘Dum-dum, BONG; diddy-dum, BONG’. He wasn’t the first British person to hear it. Much much earlier, around 1835, another Brit, G.T. Vigne heard in it an old comic song. He thought he was hearing ‘Kitty Clover’. I managed to re-create (unfaithfully) the old song from his notes and some software. But I failed to see a patter until I read about it in introduction to ‘Kashmiri Lyrics’ (first published in 1945) by J.L. Kaul:

There is indeed a “nursery rhyme thrill”, a certain Hickery-Dickery-Dock patter of rhythm, which anyone can hear (as Aldous Huxley heard it) any time, of day, in the streets of Kashmir with which a group of coolies enliven the heavy loads they carry collectively. Several Englishman have told me that they can catch and appreciate the lilt of a Kashmiri song (say), a boatman’s chant more easily than they can do elsewhere in India. here is what Mary Hallowes caught of the tune of a chant sung by boatmen punting up their cargo boats “Khocu”  in the Jhelum. [published at the time in The Illustrated Weekly of India]

“Swift the current,dark the night,
(Ya-illa,la-illa)
Stars above our guide and light
(Kraliar,baliar!…)
All together on the rope,
(Ya Pir-Dust Gir)
In our sinews lies our hope
Khaliko,Malik-ko!…”