(Updated with info. sent in by Man Mohan Ji)
Man Mohan Ji has sent in this little quiz. Can anyone identify these items?
I am putting in my wild guess.
The first one looks like some sort of territorial insignia and the second one looks like fossilized remains of some animal ( perhaps an elephant, I read that their remains have in fact found in the region)
An archaeological engraving about 1 foot in diameter on a Schist rock
at Anjan, Nanga Pahar at an altitude of 9.000 ft of a southerly spur of
Pir Panjal Range radiating from Muni Mal Peak
Fossil of tusks and mandible of Stegodon Ganesha – an elephant with
huge tusks which along with other vertebrate animals roamed the
Himalayan foothills during Siwalik times.
It is called Vichar because it is said that every year Pandits used to gather at this place, compare, debate their calculations and decide on the Calender for next year.
[Updated this old rant of mine (don’t even recall what triggered it, first posted here ) with the posters of a little known called ‘Kashmir Hamara Hai’ from FilmIndia Magazine dated October 1951. (Thanks to Hindi filmbuff Memsaab Greta !)]
Movies like Roja and Yahaan mean nothing to Kashmiris. One can say that the target audience of these movies is different. Roja must have made sense to this targeted audience and Yahaan (shot beautifully!) must have made a bit more sense. But, to me they don’t make sense. Let us look at some selected usual suspects.
Vidhu Vinod Chopra, for all his love of Kashmir and for all his childhood spent in Kashmir (he was born in Kashmir) and as a step towards the ‘right’ direction (remember it was released in the year 2000), made MISSION KASHMIR. One fails to understand how could he make a movie like that and still feel good about himself. He could feel good because that is how the things work in India; we only make filmy blinded righteous Nationalist movies. Our movies just like our mythologies are supposed to have a moral. A conflict has to become a myth. The Hero has to save the nation. Heroine has to sing and dance deep in side dingy caves in front of hundred bearded ‘extra’ men who carry plastic guns in hand and sticky grins on their faces, all this while the heroine tries to seduce Osama and make him forget about Nuking India.
On this relative scale, Vidhu Vinod Chopra must certainly be rating himself highly. But, didn’t his movie have the same elements. A Super Villain (Jackie Shroff playing Hilal Kohistani) who whispers evil words into the innocent ears of an angry and confused young boy, while the boy is carrying the injured Villain on his shoulders, asking him to wage Jihad. While the scene is very symbolic, it again presents a belief that is very common —The Pakistani Islamic Warmonger befooling the ‘innocent but angry’ Kashmiri in the name of religion and making him carryout their dirty tasks. Only this time the idea presented is in symbols in a scene that reminds one of Vikram Vetal (a radio show that at one time was very popular in Kashmir). The idea itself is not new. This idea is the accepted average limit to which a common Indian is willing to naturalize the Kashmir conflict. Besides this, the movie has The Super Army man, the Super Mother, the Super villainous plot (I must say that Kargil conflict was also a super villainous plot. At times Kahsmir does go into Super mode) and everything else that could be Super.
Isn’t he the maker of the film An Encounter with Faces that was nominated for an Oscar in the short, non-fiction film category in 1979. Couldn’t he make a different movie about Kashmir? Why is Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi doing a film about Kashmiri Children called Kashmir Afloat, while the Indian filmmakers are sitting on their golden ass, brooding over what all-great Intellectual filmmakers brood about things like, “Is a heroine of size 36D going to help my film, about street children, get more money on the opening day or should I take a frail newcomer and show her (yet!) plum ass in a dramatic slow motion! ”
But, then things do improve with time or rather the scene does evolves.
Remember the religion less movie Jab Jab Phool Khile. How can anyone make a movie like that? Shashi Kapoor is a Boatsman who loves Nanda, a women from mainland India. Anybody making a movie about Kashmir should have known that the Boatsmen in Kashmir are Muslims of a separate tribe who claim ascendance right to the Prophet Noah, the supposed builder of the greatest boat ever built.
Is religion a problem in the movie? No, religion is one big yarn and India is a one big happy family.
Yahaan(2005) at least gave religion to its main characters. Although I must say that the character of Adaa (played by Minissha Lamba) must have grown up living in a Nutshell just like Thumbelina to have fallen in love with a Hindu Army Man. She must have walked out of her Nutshell one day and stepped straight into the movie. And just like Shakespeare’s Miranda, fallen for the first man that her eyes ever fell upon. One big yarn…the height of things…a tall tale. In Kashmir, a true film buff would call it “Afarwat kiss’hi !” (Possible origin of word: Afarwat mountain in Kashmir), a term used for tall tales that people tell once in a while.
Mani Ratnam’s Roja at least had a screaming wife who cries that she doesn’t care about the Nation, just give her the missing husband. Of course, then the preaching starts and the happy end.
Roja was made in 1992, just years after the trouble in Kashmir started (1989). Maybe, it was too much to ask from the director. One would have had to be foolishly brave to have said something substantial at that time. Try to say something meaningful and then let it be used as propaganda by the other side. Only movies made during the conflict/war are propaganda movies, Nationalistic movies, and patriotic movies. The conflict has to end so that people can make something out of it…begin to analyze what happened… what passed. We need Distance in time and space. However, one can always cash in on the conflict and make a filmy movie about the conflict giving no thought to the actual subjects. Make it entertaining, appealing, alluring, sleek, demonizing, anglicizing, Nationalizing or downright vulgarizing the life of people caught in the conflict.
We are poor people; we do not have enough silver space for all the conflicts to compete for the screen time. While Kashmir suffers from wrongful depiction on the Screen, I guess other places like North Easter India (with its own set of problems) suffers from almost no depiction in the mainstream Bollywood Cinema. Again, the usual suspect Mani Ratnam tried his hand at it with Dilse (1998), managing to create just a great song n dance sequence atop a slow moving train and some memorable music thanks to A. R Rahman ( Bulleh Shah went pop that year and a whole new breed of people can to know of him).
Maybe, it’s too much to ask of main steam movies and their makers. However, even these movies mean something… must mean something. Someone from North East has fewer or maybe no Jab Jab Phool Khile to trash. Don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad.
Mansa Ram lit a laltain and in its flickering yellow glow slowly made his way up the round mud and wood stairs and into the room on the top floor. Nobody lived in the room anymore. It was empty. But no room is ever empty, or so it used to be said – specially about that room and especially in stories about that room. People told many stories about that floor – they said the room doesn’t like having people after dark. And Mansa Ram, the good house help from Orissa was going to become part of one such short story about the room. Mansa ram used to work with the family for six months of Summer and in winter used to travel back to his village somewhere in Orissa. He tired hard to keep everyone happy, he really did, everyone liked him, but that night Mansa Ram unknowingly upset a very powerful resident of the house. Just as he set his foot inside the room, laltain blew out and for no reason his face received a loud slap that set his entire body hurling to ground. With a buzzing sound still in his ears, his mind badly ruffled by the unprovoked violence, Mansa Ram got up from his crouched position, took a few cautious back steps, turned, groped walls in dark, tripped on the sill, crawled out the door, got up again and ran down the stairs screaming, ‘Bhoot! Bhoot!‘. In this way Mansa Ram became an unwitting victim of Ghardivtas anger and a character in one bedtime ‘true’ ghost story that I grew up with. The poor fellow was duly admonished for daring to go up to the floor at night. With out doubt everyone thought they knew exactly what had attack Mansa Ram that night. They had no question about it. Old Kashmiri belief in preternatural was strong.
To be rich, at risk to life, you could try to steal the topi of a Yetch, ancient Kashmiri Yeti.
A couple of years later, just after my birth, part of the house, along with that infamous part, was sold off by the extended clan members who moved down to Indian plains for work, better prospects and a better life. A wall separating the two parts was set up. Rooms were parted, divided. Our side. Their side. The new owner of that part of the house was a ghur-e-wol, the one with the horses. He moved the horses into the rooms next to the house. The place began to stink on damp nights. Every night you could hear the horses neighing and beating on the walls. With their each kick, from the walls fell off caked bits of mud. On many nights as I heard the story of Mansa Ram one more time from my grandmother, I imagined maybe it was Ghardivta playing around with the poor horses, giving them bad dreams. In morning, I would walk up to the wall and put my ear against it and try to hear. Something. Anything. I would only hear an occasional wheezing and thumping of hoofs. Then I would inspect the wall, carefully notice the new cracks and gaps in the wall, pick up a lump of wall mud cake from the floor and munch, pick a piece out from the wall and munch, pick out dry yellow straws from lumps, throw them down and munch the walls of the house.
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Godfrey Thomas Vigne, an Englishman who visited Kashmir in around 1835, in his writing provided an interesting list of preternatural beings that common Kashmiri, Hindu and Muslim. of the time believed in. In a section titled ‘Genii of Kashmir’ from his book ‘Travels in Kashmir, Ladak, Iskardo, the Countries Adjoining the Mountain-Course of the Indus, and the Himalaya, north of the Panjab with Map, Volume 1‘, here’s the list:
The Jins
“The Jins (geni) are of both sexes and all religions : they are very mischievous, and in the exercise of evil would seem to be almost omnipotent and omnipresent.”
“The Gins (geni) are the most universally feared, and Samud Shah [ a local noble and Vigne’s guide and host on many occasions] assured me that there were many places where a man could not venture after nightfall, for fear of them. There is an old musjid standing alone on a desolate spot, between Shupeyon and Safur Nagur, near, I think, the village of Arihel, where the gins, as he affirmed, were as thick as sheep in a fold. He once, when travelling, repaired thither for the purpose of saying his prayers ; he heard his own name pronounced, and a gin suddenly appeared in the shape of a jackal, and nearly knocked him down by running against him. He was terribly frightened, and having made his escape, narrated his tale to the first peasant he met, who expressed his astonishment at his having ventured into a place which every one knew to be so dangerous.”
The Deyu
“The Deyu are cannibal giants;[…]”
Believed to live in the mountains.
The Ifrites
“[…]and the Ifrites (elves), who were in attendance once upon Solomon, seem to have been of this nature.”
The Yech
“The Yech is nearly the Satyr of heathen mythology.[…] The Ghor, or Yech, is a feeder upon dead bodies.”
Offered fish and rice of a partlucar day.
The Dyut
“The Dyut is the inhabitant of houses ; and to him are attributed all noises, losses, and domestic troubles. They are propitiated with food once a – year; and would appear to resemble the brownie of the Scottish Highlands.”
Bram-bram-chuk
“The Bram-bram-chuk is said to be seen in wet and marshy places, at night. From its description, as a rapidly moving light, it may be pronounced to be a will-o’-the-wisp; but if an account of its personal appearance be insisted upon, and the informant finds it necessary to say that he had seen its shape, it was described as an animal covered with hair, with eyes on the top of its head, and a ” bisear bud shukl” (very ugly look) altogether. Its size is said to be about that of a badger; and I am inclined to think that it is the animal known as the grave-digger in India.”
The Whop
“The Whop, he said, resembled a cat or dog, and resided in old buildings.”
The Mushran
“The Mushran appears in the shape of a dirty-looking and very old man, who seizes a person with a parental hug, and produces thenceforth a wasting and dangerous decline.”
The Degins and the Degus
“The Degins are the females of the Degus. It is said that they often seek husbands amongst mortals, but that their attachment is productive of fatal consequences, as its object dies in the course of two or three months.”
The Dyn
“The Dyn, who is the witch of Europe, will sometimes carry her malignant disposition so far as to eat a man’s heart out.”
The Rantus
“The Rantus is the Aal of Afghanistan, perhaps the same as the Tral, or fairy, of Scandinavia, and the Goul of the Persian and Turkish tales. Her feet are reversed, and her eyes placed perpendicularly and parallel to the nose.”
The Rih
“The Rih is a nondescript female, said to be very handsome ; but will entice a man into a snare for the purpose of eating him.”
The Peri
“The Peri is a being beautiful enough to compensate for all these horrors. Their bodies are made up of the four elements; but fire is the predominant ingredient without consuming the rest. But their amours with a mortal are followed by death from fire.
The attachment of the females is as fatal as that of the other sex ; but they are said to play all kinds of pranks. Their ladies, like Titania, will occasionally become fond of “a lovely boy stolen from an Indian king.” And the young Kashmirian girls modestly accuse the fairies of both sexes of stealing the surma (antimony) from their eyelids whilst they sleep; the one from love, and the other from jealousy of their beauty. The old building of Kutlina, on the green slope that overhangs the city lake, is considered as one of their principal quarters, and is also on that account denominated the Peri Mahal, or the palace of the fairies.”
(?)
“There is another kind of hobgoblin (whose name has been accidentally erased from my note-book) to whose agency all the unaccountable noises and hootings in old buildings are ascribed.”
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Based on local lore name of some addition beings:
Tasrufdars: Spring elves, guardians of water bodies.
There’s an old Qurratulain Hyder short story having a minor character of a tribal woman whose most precious piece of jewellery was ‘tooria’ – a necklace of coins embellished with the image of Queen Victoria.
And I thought nothing could top that. Then I came across something bizarrely interesting in Walter Rooper Lawrence’s Valley of Kashmir. Visiting Kashmir in 1889 as the Land settlement officer, he noticed that –
“An interesting fact about the Hindus of Kashmir is that they worship the likeness of Her Majesty the Queen Empress. This prevails not only among the Pandits of the city, but also among the village Hindus. It appears to be their custom to regard as divine the sovereign de facto, but in the case of the emperor Aurangzeb they made an exception, and his likeness was never worshiped, for he was a persecutor of the Hindus.”
I tried imagining how that photograph or an etching (or a coin) would have sat in the dark thokur kuth, God room, of the Pandit. It wasn’t hard to imagine. Kashmiris were apparently quite happy with the coming of British. After the incompetence of Chak regulars, indifference of Mughal lords, the barbarity of Pathans and in-humaneness of Sikhs, the Queen must have appeared like a Goddess to put an end to all their sorrows. With the coming of British came the post service, the telegraph, the education system, the hospitals, the canals, etc. And it was all done in the name of the Queen. Francis Younghusband writes how easily he found hospitality in the remote North just because of the good work done under Queen Victoria’s name. With the British came the British sense of fair-play. It is said that around that time a distressed poor Kashmiri could often be heard saying (often half-meant threats) that he would take his case to the Queen herself and that she shall dispense justice. Talk about Mata ka Darbar. (Isn’t it interesting that only Mata Ranis hold darbars?)
Decades later, Tagore wasn’t the only one singing odes to British Empire. During World War 2, owing to the lack of enthusiasm among Kashmir Muslims for joining the British Army and to counter the German propaganda that fighting Germany meant going to war against the Ottoman Caliphate since the Turkish forces had joined hands with Germany, Mahjoor, the Kashmiri Bard, was assigned the task of writing a moving qaseeda for the British Empire. Mahjoor came up with Jung-e-German which became a rage in Kashmir (I wonder if Jum’German finds its origins in the popularity of this qaseeda). Mahjoor wrote:
When the liberal, benign and unassuming
British came to aid governance
Our destiny woke up from sleep
Long live our Gracious Emperor!
King of England who rules the world,
Grant him power and pageantry
May his kingdom be blessed
Long live our Gracious Emperor!
The poem also praised the Dogra ruler. He went on to write two more panegyrics praising Maharaja Pratap Singh and his successor, Maharaja Hari Singh. It is safe to assume Mahjoor the nationalist hadn’t yet been born, in fact may be that concept hadn’t yet taken seed in the Kashmiri mind. Interestingly enough Mahjoor never got any benefit for writing the poem. He was told that since he hadn’t brought in any volunteers personally, he wasn’t entitled to any special benefits.
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Information about Mahjoor and the lines from Jung-e-German comes from Trilokinath Raina’s work on the poet.
Image: A rare image of Queen Victoria laughing. Found it in The People’s Almanac presents The Book of Lists (Bantam Edition, 1978) by David Wallechinsky, Irving Wallace and Amy Wallace.
Movies like Roja and Yahaan mean nothing to Kashmiris. One can say that the target audience of these movies is different. Roja must have made sense to this targeted audience and Yahaan (shot beautifully!) must have made a bit more sense. But, to me they don’t make sense. Let us look at some selected usual suspects.
There’s an old Qurratulain Hyder short story having a minor character of a tribal woman whose most precious piece of jewellery was ‘tooria’ – a necklace of coins embellished with the image of Queen Victoria.
