Starts right in from the last strain of previous song…
zaar, playing cards.
Time – 12:57 AM
While the music plays, in an adjacent room, almost invisible, men play zaar – cards, they play Flaash – Flush and they play Paplu – ‘Rummy’. Money goes around. Alcohol moves around like a shy new bride. Prized. Concealed. Consumed. In moderation.
Song: ‘Khanmaej Koor’
Man at Kralkhod
Hato
The street looked deserted. Not a sound. As if nobody lives here anymore. A man carrying a burden of trash on his back was the only one walking down this lane. My mother grew up in a house on this lane.
Man, Hawks at Habba Kadal
Photograph of a Security man posted on Habba Kadal.
Count the number of street lamps and the number of security men, if the security men out number the lamp posts, you know you have set foot on a troubled street.
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On way to Gulmarg, I saw a security man standing, on duty, alone, in the middle of a vegetable field, shooting. He was taking pictures using a digital camera.
Kashyap Kashef Kashuf Causality
On the United Nations Assembly Floor:
A representative from India began: ‘Before beginning my talk I want to tell you something about Rishi Kashyap of Kashmir, after whom Kashmir is named.
When he struck a rock and it brought forth water, he thought, ‘What a good opportunity to have a bath.’
He removed his clothes, put them aside on the rock and entered the water.
When he got out and wanted to dress, his clothes had vanished. A Pakistani had stolen them.’
The Pakistani representative jumped up furiously and shouted, ‘What are you talking about? The Pakistanis weren’t there then.’
The Indian representative smiled and said, ‘And now that we have made that clear, I will begin my speech.’
– a ‘forward’ Email that was in circulation a couple of years ago.
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Pages from History.
‘Travels in Kashmir, Ladak, Iskardo, the Countries Adjoining the Mountain-Course of the Indus, and the Himalaya, north of the Panjab with Map’ By G.T. Vigne (Published 1844).
Godfrey Thomas Vigne(1801-1863), an English travelers visited Kashmir in 1835.
You know you are a Kashmiri if…
Got this ‘forward’ in my mailbox today. I have read a similar ‘forward’ from Bengalis about Bengalis. Nice to see wicked Kashmiri humor at work here. Hats off to the anonymous who came up with the Kashmiri list.
Each of the point listed here rings true…chaeyn kasam 🙂 but I am making some additions
1) You have the Kashur Nass.. we have a face on a nose!! Its like a nose broken into pieces and then reassembled by a 2 yr old..2) You luuuuuv food!! No offense to fellow food lovers but we take our love for food one step ahead. (Even celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain had to concur during his visit to Jaipur where he ate out at the house of chef Vimal Dhar)
3) You take pride in being a Kashmiri .. So much so, that you think that the human race should be divided into two groups; People who are Kashmiris and people who wish they were Kashmiris:)
4) You have atleast 10 Avtarkishan, Hridainath. and we pronounce it has hadeynath.. we just don’t pronounce the r , santosh, pamposh, usha, bhusha, shanta, kanta ..in your family.. And people with nicknames like pyntu ji, paapu ji, byttuji….
5)You like alhach, wangan hach, hogaad.. I think kashmiris are the only people who dry perfectly good vegetables and then eat them even if they are living in tropical region.
6) All through your childhood you thought your father’s name was ” HEY YAPARHASA“.
7)You learnt all the kashmiri” WOH WOH” before you even learnt how to spell your name..
8)You look at non kashmiri people and say ” Uhn shikass“
9)Get excited when you see a kashmiri on television even if he’s standing in the corner and all you can see is his finger…” Oh look Kashmiri..” [Example in point 2]
10) Your sense of fun is having batta and sleeping..
11) You are obsessed with giss and mandloo..
12) You go to a Kashmiri gathering and turns out the next person is your relative that you havn’t ever met.. some mamtur poftur boy…and you don’t even know what the relation is called.
13) Your father addresses every person as ” this is my another brother” turns out that person is the next door neighbour’s sweeper’s son..
14)You have a typical Kashmiri name like Sheen, Sondri Gondri, Sukta..
15) If you translate Kashmiri into hindi in an attempt to speak hindi..”hum ghar main teen aurtey hain“-” uss chi gharass manjh trey zanaan“
“airport pay takleef nahin aaya” – “airport peth maa ove takleef.“
16) Your mom gets scared at every tiny thing and says “kossay trath hey payam“.. and then reads the yindrakhi paath . She screams ‘hai kya gom‘ on hearing about ill health of next door neighbour’s sweeper’s son.
17) You are a Doctor or an Engineer..
18) You eat every single organ of the goat like the chagul( goat testicles) , charvan( liver), hooves, the kidneys we don’t spare any part..
19) You have the funniest surname…
zalpuri ( zall which means pee) whyyyyy..
mattooo, kher ( donkey) or what kashmiris call ” Dunkey”
wattal( garbage man).. pure genius..20) Have a thick accent and pronounce scotch as ssakaych.. or smoke as ssamokh
21) Have the weirdest style of dancing as if you are screwing two bulbs..
22) When your mother yells into the phone because its a long distance call!!
23) Your real birthday is called “cake vohorvod” or ‘angree’z vohorvod‘.
24) You go into a kashmiri store just to show off how much you know about Kashmiri artifacts but buy nothing..
25) Stuff people with food even if they are bursting up to their throats. Meyean dree…ahk piece byakh piece. And the curry is poured onto your palm and the piece is in your lap.
26) You are a Kashmiri if you pick that piece up, put it in your thaal and quitely eat while praying they don’t come back with more.
27) You prefer kandarwaan over the baguette..
28) While going for an exam your mother asks the kachravol or the dodhwol to walk to your right…and usually asks you to avoid Zanaan’e zang.
29) Your mother sees some women on television with skimpy clothes and calls her shikass mach, nang mach!!
30) Your father teaches you how to drive and all he can tell you is breyk breyk breyk and when you finally stop he says gggassuuu pppakooo..
31) “hello hello bi chass b” is your theme song..
32) Have at least 5 wokhuls and kajwatt in your house.
33) If someone reminds you every other day – Today is a aetham, don’t eat this.
34) If your scream ‘Tra’th‘ or ‘Ta’payeel’ thrice every hour, to no one in particular, without any rhyme or reason.
35) If you think smartest person in the world will one day be proved a Kashmiri. And also believe there is a good chance he or she will also turn out to be the most handsome or the most beautiful.
36) If you think every other Kashmiri is an idiot.
House for Pandit Premnath Shastri
Photograph: A house just across mother’s ancestral house at Kralkhod. I was told Pandit Premnath Shastri used to live as tenant in this house owned by a Muslim.
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Post migration, Pandit Premnath Shastri developed his Vijyeshwar Panchang not just like it was an almanac but like a document recording ancient religious practices and rites of Kashmiri Pandits. Today Vijyeshwar Panchang is one of the threads that hold the Pandits together.
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I read that in his old age Pandit Premnath Shastri became an ardent admirer of Osho Rajneesh.
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Ever year, Vijyeshwar Panchang would carry not only a year’s predictions for people born under various Zodic signs but also for the World, India and Kashmir. Skip the first few lines, no chance of getting the meaning, the last line reads:”Rest is up to God”. India was apparently born under a bad sign. Rest followed.
Sample this: This year the World will talk about ‘Nuclear’ a lot.
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I love this cover.
Nirjala ekadashi/ Neerzala kah
“Today is Neerzala kah,” my father shouted into the mobile handset.
At the other end, my grandfather replied, “I just had a watermelon! Ha!”
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Ekadashi, every eleventh of lunar month, is meant for fasting but on Nirjala Ekadashi or the ‘waterless’ eleventh lunar day, falling in the month of Jyestha(may-June), a day associated with Vishnu, even water is not consumed. And water is offered in charity.
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There is a rock on the top of a hillock called Haldar, over-looking the Manasbal lake towards its north-east. From underneat this rock a little water is ozing out. Every year on the Nirjala Ekadashi day a fair is held here. The pilgrims sing in chorus:
‘Balabhadra haldaro palah talah poni trav‘
(O Balabhadra Haldara (Krishna’s elder brother) allow water to flow out from this rock!)
then suddenly water flows out in a large volume from underneath of this rock which suffices for the bathing of the pilgrims assembled.
At this spot there was a stone image of cow from whose four Udders water used to come out in drops. It is said that about one hundred years ago this image was removed by Zamidars of the neighboring villages and buried somewhere under the rocky earth nearby.
– Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh by Desh Bandhu
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Cartoon is by my friend Sandeep Bhat.
Stats on Year of Old photograph Video
I had uploaded this video to Youtube on June 02, 2008. It has been a year since then and and here I am share the stats of this video.
Basic stat
Year of daily views looks like this
The actual views as of 2 June 2009 was 28XX something. The star rating (even that half star wan’t missing till a month ago) and the count for ‘Favorited’ tells me that the video is fairly well appreciated by the users.
A year ago, I hadn’t stated this blog, so most of the views come from my other blog [At The Edge]. At no. 2 spot is a post from Kashland (a sort of ‘Kashmiri’ Facebook with lot of features but not too fancy a name).
Comments Stat
No nasty comments were made, not a single comment had to be moderated (and I hope it remains like that!). Almost all the comments are by Kashmiri Muslim men. Interestingly, the first few readers of this blog, much to my surprise, were Kashmiri Musilms.
Where do these commenter come from?
A couple of comments are from West and these include a nice comment by the author of a ‘Jesus in Kashmir’ book [my take on the subject of the book ].
No comment by Kashmiri pundit (although the video did make it way to atleast one Kashmiri pandit blog directed at young but typically too heavy on religion and ‘culture is dying’).
Stat of
They stats are normal and ‘as expected’, stats that fit in with the general viewership of Youtube i.e. lot of males in the age group of 25-34.
Insterstingly, the video was posted on Kashland by a young Kashmiri Muslim girl.
Where do these viewers come from?
And here’s how they reach the video:
And that the reason why Kashmiris hate the Danish rock band ‘Kashmir’: we search for Kashmiri song and we get some rock song on top of the search result page and not the authentic Kashmiri music. And that’s why Kashmiris hate Led Zeppelin too…did they have to name it Kashmir if they even hadn’t been to Kashmir. And now we Kashmiris have to click some more just to get the real stuff on Kashmir. (Just kidding! I love Led Zeppelin and love even the Danish “Kashmir’ – Rocket Brothers is great [video] and they sound good )
What do they see and how do they see?
Hits its first peak on old photographs of Jelhum
Starts to declines on a series of photographs of Nautch girls [click to read more about them]
Gets low
Starts to rise again on ruins
Reaches for peak as the images move to pandit temples
Hits the highest peak on the iconic photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Stays at peak for the photograph of Jehlum.
Starts to decline again.
Continues to decline and crosses over into negative as photographs start to depict the common, the ugly and the harsh. And the credits.
A stir at the mention of music.
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If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.
– Jane Austen, Mansfield Park