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“Say, goddess, what ensured, when Raphael,
The affable archangel…                                 Eve
                                                               
The story heard attentive, and was filled
with admiration, and deep muse, to hear
Of things so high and strange.”

                                            – Paradise Lost, B.vii.

from Chapter III, Middlemarch by George Eliot

from Chapter XXV

“Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in hell’s despair.

Love seeketh only self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another’s loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.”

– William Blake: Songs of Experience

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I get notes of thanks and appreciation for this little blog from all kind of people. Thank you. I get mails offering to contribute to this blog. Be my guest. The count of readers keeps tickling. All are welcome. I see stuff uploaded by me finding way to all kind of Kashmir websites, tweets and Facebook groups and pages, and chain emails, all giving birth to all sort of discussions. A gentle reminder to the readers of this blog – everything you see here is free. Give credit if you feel like it. Take what you need, or even take what you want.

This blog started as a personal blog, a collection of notes to myself and personal it remains.

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Kashmir Photographs, 1904

Vintage Kashmir Photographs from the book A lonely summer in Kashmir (1904) by Margaret Cotter Morison.

Temple of Payech, south of Pulwama district.

A family of Hanjis

Kashmiri Boatman

Kashmiri Villagers

House Boat and the Cook boat
The Mar Canal

Shah Hamadan

Temple at Chemar Bagh

[Update March, 2017]The house on the left belongs to Ravinder Raina, now living in Jammu post violence of 1990.
Near Wular Lake

Rice boats for rasad

View of Haramuk peak from Gangabal Lake

Ruins of temples in the Wangat Valley

Women at the river bank

Bridge over Liddar

‘Honeymoon Cottage’ at Dulai, now on the other side of the LOC

Bridge at Kohala, now in Pakistan.

The Pir Panjal Pass

Lal Mandi

Fishing on the Jhelum

Camping near Haramuk (previously)

Sind Valley

Balti people

A Hanji woman with Kanz and Muhul

Previously: Post about Kashmiri hair braids and other things

A Kashmiri Doonga boat

Gulmarg

Rare photograph of a Kashmiri Sweet shop

House on Canal. (Something like that from present time)

Irrigation wells of Kashmir. [Called ‘Tol’e’ in Kashmiri]

Kolohoi near Pahalgam

Pahalgam

Ruins of Martand Temple. (Previous posts about these temples: post1, post2 )

Islamabad or Anantnag. The locals must have already started calling it Islamabad back in early 1900s.
Fakirs. (previous post about Kashmiri Fakirs)
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Kashmir The History & Pandit Women’s Struggle For Identity by Suneethi Bakhshi

Bought it from Ghalib corner of the inner circle Connaught Place. Printed price is Rs.695 (which I think is a bit too steep) but the mian let me buy it for 500.

The first thing that I noticed about the book was the profile of the author. Born in 1931 to Malayali parents in Mumbai, Suneethi Bakshi became a Kashmiri by marriage to a Kashmiri Pandit in 1957. She moved out of Kashmir in the 90s.

The Kashmir history bit, especially the period of  later Kashmiris Kings, Mughals, Afghans, Sikhs, Dogras and the British is really well handled, concise and useful.  However, it is the ‘Pandit Women’s Struggle for Identity’ bit that really stands out. In her own words the seeds of the book go back to 1965 when she wrote a paper titled ‘The Rites of Passage of Your Community’ for her Sociology course at the Maharaja Sayaji Rao University of Baroda.

That rite part can certainly be seen in the sections about the traditions followed by Kashmiri Pandit women and in history tracts about the famous Kashmiri women of past. But the best part of the book is when she writes about the achievements of the early pioneering women who decided to get an education and then went on to excel in their fields. Equally enlightening is the part in which she writes about the efforts that were put in by some exceptional Kashmiri Pandit women in running various services for their migrant community. Towards the end it gives details of with various educational programs that these women are running. Her observations on post-migration have an insight of an insider and an outsider, like she noticed how Kashmiri almanacs now run messages about turning vegetarian and subtly claiming the Non-Veg was to blame for most of the wrongs that the community suffered.

The book doesn’t go into what the life of Kashmiri Pandit women was like in the past or what it was like in the 90s or even now. You won’t read about stuff like how these days ashrams of Kashmiri Pandit Saints in Jammu (yes, the old ashram culture in now thriving in Jammu) have colorful charts posted on walls advising women and girls visiting the ashrams to not come in Jeans or something like that. It doesn’t detail the subject of how sometimes (maybe often in their history) the fear of losing their culture and identity makes the life of a common woman difficult. How the weight of culture and identity is put on their shoulders. The book is more about the ability of Kashmiri Pandit woman to come through in tough times, its almost a celebration of their lives.

Editing of the book, as often is the case with Kashmir books, could have been better, but certainly worth a read.
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You can buy it from here: Buy Kashmir The History & Pandit Women’s Struggle for Identity from Flipkart.com

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Building Bridges, late 19th century way

The various bridges (Kadal) under which we passed, the boatmen shouting together in chorus as they worked their hardest to keep the boat steadily in the middle of the stream, were all pf the same type; their foundation are of deaodar piles, then logs of wood about twenty-five to thirty feet long and two or three feet in girth are led two feet apart at right angles, alternately with layers of stone. So piers are built up from about twenty-five to thirty feet in height, and twenty-five feet square. These stand ninety feet apart, and are spanned by long, undressed deodar timbers. The force of the stream is broken by abutments of stones running to a point constructed on the up-stream side. These answer admirably their purpose, stemming the wild rush of waters and standing securely for hundreds of years, even when exceptional floods, like the terrible one of July, ’93, have swept all away. Even on that occasion the first bridge the Amiran Kadal though submerged, stood, but all the others were swept away. This was one of the worst floods ever known in Kashmir, and terrible destruction to city property resulted from it, more than two thousand houses disappearing in it. Mercifully, comparatively few lives were lost, though, of course, the amount of discomfort and misery it caused was very great.

– from the book ‘Afoot Through the Kashmir Valleys’ (1901) by Marion Doughty.

Finally found out the exact details of how those magnificent bridges were built in old times and a photograph of the build under process.