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Rituals in Death

I picked lot of things from my grandfather, including a love for books. In death, he offered me some bits about the death rituals of Kashmiri Pandits. He also gave me a fear. Although he read a lot, he remembered little. And in the end he forgot everything. Because I too forget, I write…

Daddy and Badi Mummy clearing snow. Winter 1988. Srinagar.
With his youngest daughter-in-law and youngest grandchild.
21,  July 2013. Jammu
Mourning: the house is essential divided into two parts. One section for women and one for men. Frequent wailing sounds can be heard for women’s side. In the men side there is mostly talk of bitter sweet past, sorry present and doomed future. 

5th August. 2013. Shakti Nagar Cremation Ground, Jammu. 

5th day
We go to the cremation ground to collect his bones and ashes. Among the bones is a bone known among Pandits as Porush (Man). It is part of upper vertebral column. The bone holds a special meaning as in its shape it is said to resemble a sleeping man, a symbol of departed body. While placing the body on pyre special care is taken by putting in in right posture to ensure that the Porush remains intact after burning.

Cleaning of the spot by sons
The spot as it is left by locals of Jammu – the Hindu Dogras
The spot as it is left by Pandits. Honey, sweets and candy is left
(possibly so that ants can do rest of the cleaning)
White radish or Mooli is an absolute essential part of the 5th day ceremony
 and is a must offering for the departed on this day. 
Mahakal Bhairava and his dog (s) at Cremation Ground

Still Day 5.
Ghat on Chenab river. Akhnoor.
Site for immersing the ashes.
In older times, in Kashmir, ashes were sometimes kept buried in a wall of the house till they could be immensed at Gangbal Lake in September.  Or, at Shadipur.
Pandit ji is a lot miffed when he finds out one of the daughter-in-laws is also present for the ceremony. It is pointed out to him that she took care of him like a daughter.  He says Kashmiri women come from the clan of Nagas, the snakes. Hence that headdress. Hence the separation.
Father and uncles remember Pandit ji as a haughty little kid growing up in lanes around Habba Kadal. Of course, his indignations are ignored. He believes in rules of Manu. He believes Kashmiris may be Jews, may be even Russian. He believes.  
Prasadh at the end of the ceremony. Walnut.

Day 10.
The departed is a Preta till it becomes a Pitr on completion of all the rites and joins the realm of previous Pitrs. A process that takes a year. The main rituals last for 13 days. There are talks among Kashmiri Pandits that 13 is becoming too difficult to manage. Working people can’t be home for 13 days, that it should be reduced to 4. But the old guards and priests don’t agree. 

Garuda Purana is remembered and recited.

Hindu afterlife Punishments given in Garuda Purana.
A poster found at a little shop in Jammu.  Febuary 2012.
Mother tells me punishment for those who waste salt is that they pick you up by your eyelashes.
An interesting custom on this day has the sons walking in between rows of relatives lined up on two sides. The relatives are supposed to put money in their pockets discreetly as they walk past. In a way they help them bear the cost of feast for relatives that follows the next day. 

Meat being prepared. 
In Kashmiri tradition if the meat is not prepared on this day then no meat can be prepared for next 5-6 months. So meat is prepared.

The cook was earlier worried because a relative of his was badly injured in a recent earthquake in his hometown Kistwar. By the end of the day, he is worried because there is news of communal disturbances in his town. By evening the disturbance spreads to Jammu. Mahaul goes Kharaab. In evening I go out to city to get some more Mooli from Mandi but return back half way because there are gangs on bikes roaming around with knives.

Evening feast. The Pandit ji also eats meat. 
Day 11. Army is out on the streets. The cook doesn’t come. Aunts take charge of cooking.

The news in local paper is confusing. All it talks about is ‘majority community’ and ‘minority community’. If you don’t know the demographics of the area, you are forced to imagine who killed whom.

When the last ceremony is over and the Pandit ji leaves, a token pebble is thrown at him as he crossed the main gate…probably so that he does not return soon.

In none of these ceremonies is my grandmother involved. She was married to the man for about 64 years.

Day 12.

The entire city is shut. Early morning, I start out on a long walk to airport with father to catch my flight out of a trishanku’ian town.

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January 17, 2014

It’s been six months. Today, we cook fish in dinner,  offer it to the dead and feast. Pandits call it the day of ‘till‘. 

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Jehlam flows into Bay of Bengala


Goof-up from a time when East India Company had just arrived at Mughal courts:

Kyshmier [Kashmir]. The Cheefe Citty is called Sirinakar [Srinagar]. The Riuer of Bhat [Behat or Jehlam] passeth through it and findeth the Sea by Ganges or, some say, of it self in the North Part of the Bay of Bengala. It bordereth Cabul to the East Southerly. It is all Mountaines.

From the Appendix to ‘The embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the court of the Great Mogul, 1615-1619, as narrated in his journal and correspondence’ (1899).

A note in the book does point out the obvious error in sending Vitasta eastwards and mentions that William Baffin’s map from 1619 of Mughal empire , based on Sir Thomas Roe’s account did get the direction of the river right.

William Baffin’s Map
[via: columbia.edu]

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Kashmiri Opera Performers, tracing 1955/2013


It’s 1955. First Kashmiri opera Bombur ta Yambarzal (The Narcissus and the Bumble Bee) by Dina Nath Nadim, that has already had a few re-runs, is again put up at Nedou’s Hotel for special guest – military leader and Marshal of the Soviet Union Nikolai Bulganin who is accompanied by First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee Nikita Khrushchev. By the end of 1956 Uzbek communist leader Sharaf Rashidov brings out his interpretation of the story in a novella titled ‘Kashmir Qoshighi’ ( also known as Song of Kashmir/Kashmir Song/Kashmirskaya song) acknowledging Nadim’s work. Almost a decade later, in 1965 , the year of second Kashmir war between India and Pakistan, USSR’s famous Soyuzmultfilm studio produces an animated film called Наргис based on Rashidov’s Song of Kashmir. Interesting the film retained the original Kashmiri names of all the characters sketched originally by Dina Nath Nadim, all the names except Yambarzal who is given the popular name Nargis, the name of this film.

[More details at a post from 2011: ‘Bombur ta Yambarzal’. From Russia. With Love.1965.]

A group photograph of the artists who gave performances in honour of the visit of Soviet leaders at Srinagar.

Image from Photo division India.
[Date of event via a Russian archive at visualrian: 05/11/1955]

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Within an hour of posting this photograph to Facebook page of the blog, I started getting comments identifying the people in the photograph, words along the way painting a beautiful picture of connections and relations:

Archana Kaul That is my mom( Nancy Kaul now Nancy Dhar) when she was in college, and is seated first from the left!!
5 hours ago
Puneet Dhar I wonder if Zia Durrani is also here? Bindu check with Ma? Is that her next to Ma?
5 hours ago
Indira Rao Archana, your mom looks absolutely lovely! I still fondly remember her teaching us music. One of the ghazals she taught us (hum apne gham ka fasana) continues to be one of my favorite
4 hours ago
Zia Durrani I am the one standing all the way to the right!! My cousin Farkhanda is the fifth standing from the left. She died last year. Gargi is the second standing from the left. I recognise some other faces, but can’t remember their names.
4 hours ago
Sudha Koul Principal Mahmuda ( Govt. College for Women, Srinagar.), the tall one standing in the middle, so young and striking! Thanks Bindu!
26 minutes ago

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Comment in July, 2018

Roshan Dass Raj Dulari the one sitting in the middle of front row must be around 77 now. she is a bundle of talent 

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double gilaas

Cherry Earrings
July. 2013.
I had to promise my little cousin a ‘pizza treat’ for posing





My mother remembers
in spring
she would run around with cherry earrings.

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Cherry Picking. Kashmir. 1953
(From  the archive of Indian Photo Division)

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dimyo dilaas
gandyo walaas
peirtho gilaas kulni tal

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Kashmiri word for Cherry comes from Persian word for Cherry: gilaas

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Update: April, 2016

Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Irania film “The Silence” (1998)

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Kashmir in Sven Hedin’s Trans-Himalaya, 1906

Man Mohan Munshi Ji shares some scans from his copy of Sven Hedin’s Trans-Himalaya : discoveries and adventures in Tibet (1909). On way to Tibet, Sven was in Kashmir in mid of 1906. Among the scans are two old photographs of famous Nedou Hotel of Srinagar. I add some recent photographs of the hotel sent in by another friend.


Sven Hedin who entered Tibet even after having been denied official permission to enter; The British Government allowed him to proceed via Jammu & Kashmir on his way to Eastern Turkistan from where he crossed into WesternTibet and carried explorations in areas never visited till than by any white man. His publication “Trans Himalaya” published in two volumes in 1909 is a master piece [in fact he later brought out a third volume covering mostly his visit to the source of Indus. Read the books here via archive.org: V1 (covering start of his journey from Kashmir), V2, V3]. He made his preparations for his journey in Kashmir initially. He is profuse in his thanks to a Kashmiri gentlemen Pandit Daya Kishan Koul Diwan Sahib who arranged everything from supplies, equipment, mules ponies and four soldiers as body guards. He has also acknowledged the services rendered by about thirty six Asians mostly Ladakhis who accompanied him to Tibet where when discovered by local authorities they did face trouble. Besides others, he also thanks Sir Francis Younghusband, the then British Resident at Srinagar who had explored Muztag and other passes of Karakorum Range between Eastern Turkistan and Jammu and Kashmir and also led the British Expedition to Lhasa in 1905-6.


title cover


Portrait of the then Maharaja of Jammu & Kashmir [Pratap Singh]


view of the then Srinagar Palace now old Secretariat


view of Fateh Kadal, 3rd bridge of Srinagar. The building on the left with the flag is the C.M.S School, Srinagar. On the right the minaret of Shah Hamdan’s Ziarat is visible with North Kashmir or Sogput Range in the distant background


Sven Hedin in front of the Nedou’s hotel Srinagar with his baggage


Some of the mules being loaded at Nedou Hotel

Four body guards for Sven Hedin arranged by Pandit Daya Kishan. Sitting: Ganpat Singh, Khairullah from Peshawar. Standing: Bikom Singh and Basgul from Kabul. Both Singhs are Dogra Rajputs

starting off from Ganderbal


The Road to Baltal.




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Some recent photographs (June 2013) of Nedou Hotel that was last year vacated by CRPF. And is now under renovation with possible plans of reopening. Shared with me by cartoonist Sumit Kumar of Kashmir Ki Kahani.

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Previously:
Sven Hedin in Kashmir [From Pole to Pole: A book for young people by Sven Hedin]

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Two Weeks in Absurdistan


Spent last two weeks in Absurdistan
attending an ailing old man who has
now definitely lost his memories
or maybe not
He wouldn’t admit
Grandfather hasn’t spoken for a year

In the ER, next to his bed
A dying old woman fell off a rusty, naked iron bed
broke her skull
all this while
her son was trying to find a place to keep the medicines

In the ward, next to my Grandfather’s bed
to the left was an old Sikh from Budgam

He had a failing body part
but yet lively he would wave his arms in air, time to time
Scream at his sons, still angry about scant quantity of chicken in his last meal at home

His daughter said I looked familiar
Thought I looked like Afzal

She is happy her family never left Kashmir
‘Why did you leave? Sometime they throw stones at us…but we stay put…Didn’t you read about conversions and the protests?’
Her brother says she is rich
‘Property worth 75 Lakh’
but she wouldn’t even gift him a Kashmiri shawl

Brother is in police. He think Kashmir will be over this time if ‘it’ starts all over again
Nothing of it will exist
He thinks I am familiar. A friend.

‘Let me tell you what is really happening…’

He whispers in my ears, what he wouldn’t say out loud in front of ladies.
‘Even Muslims will have to move. And I don’t even like them. Even ten year old girls not left…the Militants, the BSF, the Police, the Army…all of them. ‘
He makes a loud vulgar rapid hand movement as he speaks about not so virginal Kashmir.

I wish away his existence. Or my own. He disappears.

His sister isn’t happy they didn’t move.

‘If we couldn’t move out, at least we too should have tried for migration certificates. College admissions are tough…My daughter is in Convent. It still has some discipline. Biscoe. It is worst of the lot. Boys now carry knives to school. And have you seen the size of those boys…all muscles. My son is friends with some…they eat at our place all the time…sometime secretly even during Ramazan. My son never eats at their place. Strong traditions, you see. And no young people speak Kashmiri there…they are ashamed of their mother tongue. You don’t have a Kashmiri accent…you speak hindi quite clearly. How long have you been out? Where do you live? How much money do you make?’

I don’t tell her my tongue still sometimes rolls out Kakaz instead of Kagaz.

She fiddles with Fluid meter of Oxygen mask that covers the mouth of old Sikh.

‘Never enough Nurses here. And all of them lazy. Munchers. In Bemina, it is worst lot. All running after money.’

I notice that the Humidifier is empty. I fill it up.

In the ward, next to my Grandfather’s bed
to the right was an old Kashmiri Muslim living in Poonch
A sturdy looking old man, his legs had suddenly failed him.
My father kept saying, ‘In five days they pumped in injections worth 3 Lakh into him’

The old man was happy all his sons were with him
including his adopted son – a house help named Ramzaan.
All of them kept massaging his legs from time to time.

Ramzaan, himself an old man, said I bestowed much respect on his old man
after I helped him carry his master to the bed once.

They were in awe that my Grandfather’s daughter-in-law should be changing his dirty diapers.
‘Sawab. Sawab.’

Much later Ramzaan asked, ‘Are there no good hospitals in Srinagar too? Why is Pandit Ji admitted here in Jammu?’
I laughed at the puzzle. His brothers laughed too. We laughed out loud. Miraculously, this poor man was untouched by history. Nothing had happened in Kashmir. All this time he was massaging someone’s leg.

I laughed at the Amar, Akbar, Arminder set-up created by the hospital.

A young surgeon came to check up on my Grandfather. It’s a private call. A distant relative. Son of a man who was killed by militants in 1990. My mother remembers that the boy was around two at the time.

Two days later. Hospital has extra security set-up. Access to canteen is blocked.
Either some minister is visiting
or something bad has happened.

Victims from ‘Gool firing incident’ start filling the ER.
It started over some insult.
It can’t say much about it
except that the hospital in which they were admitted
it has no clean, functional toilets.
The drains are clogged. Taps always running. There are no soaps.
There are no electric bulbs.
And no separate toilets for men and women.
The private ‘NGO’ toilet outside the hospital
costs rupees five and closes at 10 in night.

Some indignations, you just get used to.

Brought Grandfather home. It is Friday. The loud speakers of local mosque are angry. Jammu is peaceful. ER ward had one good facility besides good but overworked doctors, the ACs were on 24/7. However, at Home there never is enough voltage for an AC to work. The power scenario has been like that for almost fifteen years. Even if I can now afford to install an AC in each room, I can’t actually afford it.

I hear Jammu is in grip of a mass hysteria. In outer reaches of the city there are stories about a gang of magical thieves that steal children. They enter the house in the form of an animal, a dog, a cat, or a goat, and then transform to human state and pick sleeping kids and leave. Kuttey Billi ka Khel, they say. At night locals are keeping vigil. There are stories that people are beating up stray animals screaming, ‘Ban Insaan, Ban Insaan, Turn human,Turn human!’ The local paper carries appeals from police that there is no such gang stealing any children. Our old house help, Makhni, Buttery, who lives outside the city, rolls her head and insists such things are indeed happening. Children are missing.

I try to teach my grandmother to operate a medical pump on my Grandfather’s lungs. I tell her, ‘It is simple.’

She laughs and sings me a simple song about marriage:

Syim’pul Khandar
Woth Kar Panas
Ye Chuuy Cha’nas 
Ganimath

Simple Marriage
Go for it
There is still chance
Be glad

I read two books. One by a white woman in 1989 about the early European visitors to Kashmir and about the crafts of Kashmir. Other by a white man in 1953 about his travels in all the areas of the divided Kingdom of Kashmir through roads and through air, and that too at a time when officially the common inhabitant of the subcontinent could never even imagine the possibility of it.

I prepared to leave again. My flight had a stop-over at Srinagar. My maiden flight. I was foolishly delighted. I was going to now capture Kashmir from skies. Flying over formidable Pir Panjal, I would perhaps capture its beauty.

At the airport when asked if I had any R6 battery on me, I told them my camera doesn’t work on R6. They asked what I planned to do with my camera, I truthfully replied, ‘I plan to photograph.’

‘Have you gone mad? This is Kashmir. Take the battery out and leave them in the bag.’

It was too late by the time I realised my mistake. I may have captured Delhi, Mumbai, Goa, Chennai, Everest, Ganga, Yamuna, Narmada from the sky, in flight. But this is Kashmir. I should have lied. I should have replied, ‘No. Nothing. Jenaab. Maibaap. Sarkar.’

I tried to reason. I screamed. I even told them, just imagine I never said that.

‘We have no imagination. Do not stall.’

I told them I made a mistake.

‘Ab toh ho gayi na. You did it. And you admit it too. Move on. This is Kashmir.’

I cursed that white man from 1953 who managed to move around with impunity even after divisions. I cursed Bernier, Forster, Moorcroft, Jacquemont and Vigne. I cursed all their houses. And I cursed this sad land and it’s mad people. I unimagined that my ancestors lived in these lands for thousands of years. I calculated the years that the ancestors of the man who stopped me must have lived in Kashmir. A hundred, a two hundred, a three hundred. Where do they stand against my thousands?

I howled and howled. It didn’t matter.

I realised I too melt into incoherence
when confronted by absurdity.

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Geographical Model of Jammu&Kashmir kept at Hari Singh Palace in Jammu
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Two Srinagars

‘The Rope Bridge at Serinagur’ by Thomas Daniell (1800)

“One can only wonder at the fortitude of the early travellers  men such as Huien Tsang, or the painters Thomas and William Daniel. Their determination must have been supreme in order to press them ever forward and eventually reach the Vale, settled as it is high among seemingly impenetrable mountains at the end of a route that was, and still is, full of hazards.”

~ Visiting Kashmir by Allan Stacey (1988).

All that is fine but…

Sometimes a familiar image and a familiar name can cause all find of confusion. A lot of people consider Thomas and William Daniel to be among the first Europeans to reach and paint Kashmir. Painting titled ‘The Rope Bridge at Serinagur’ by Thomas Daniell only confirms it. There are a bunch of books that claim this. All this because the place they visited is Srinagar. But the fact remains, the two never visited Kashmir. Thomas Daniell (1749-1840) and his nephew William Daniell (1769-1837) were in India during 1785 and 1794. In 1789 they visited of the city of Srinagar on the banks Alaknanda river in Garwhal which is named so because . That’s were ‘The Rope Bridge at Serinagur’ comes from.

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Now, coming back to ‘Srinagar’ or rather the two ‘Srinagars’, and continuing with the word games and antonymic folklores… it is believed that the town of Garwhal gets its name after the goddess of Fortune, Sri or Laxmin. Some say the same of the city of Srinagar in Garwhal gets its name from ‘Sri Yantra’, a giant rock which could kill you if you even looked at it. The rock had origins in a tale in which a Goddess kills a demon named Kalasura thanks to the device/rock . The local storytellers say that this rock was turned upside down by Adi Shankaracharya, in the 8th century AD and chucked into Alaknanda. He thus put an end to all the tantric exercises associated with the rock and laid down the plan for the city of Srinagar. Interestingly, there are places in Garwhal were Sri Yantra is worshipped. One of the belief associated with Sri Yantra in Garwhal is that installing a roof over Sri Yantra would bring disaster. [This last bit from ‘Marriage And Customs Of Tribes Of India’ by J. P. Singh Rana (1998)]

The Srinagar in Kashmir still has the Sri Yantra rock at Hari Parbat. The origin of the rock/hill in local folklore has killing of a demon named Jalobhava by a Goddess using a rock, hence laying the foundation of Srinagar. The temple that was reclaimed in Srinagar by Adi Shankaracharya is across this Hill and on top of another Hill that is now renamed after Shankaracharya. The Sri Yantra is roofed at Hari Parbat. Done only in recent times. The only person to protest construction around the rock was an artist named G.R. Santosh.

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Mr. Vigne is responsible for the strange derivation of the name of the Kasmir  capital, Srinagar (Srinagara, or as he spells it, ‘Siri-nagur,’ from ” Surya Nagur, the city of the sun” (p. ii. 137). Judging from the persistence with which the error has been copied by a succession of modern writers on Kasmir, this etymology bids fair to establish itself as a piece of orthodox creed with European visitors to the Valley.

~ Ancient Geography Of Kashmir by M A Stein (1895).

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Kashmir by V.V. Vereshchagin, 1885

Two oil-painting of Kashmiri landscape by Russian artist V.V. Vereshchagin, more known for painting graphic battle scenes. He visited the place around April, 1885.


Mountain stream in Kashmir
1885
Glacier on way from Kashmir to Ladakh [via: wikipaintings.org ]
1885
[Update:  Man Mohan Munshi Ji identified the place as Machoi Glacier between Zogilla Pass and Matyan.

There were later used in his two volume autobiograpical travelogue ‘Vassili Verestchagin, painter, soldier, traveller; autobiographical sketches ‘(1887) with the capter on India by his wife.

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‘Ailan Gali Zinda Hai’ by Chandrakanta. Translated by Manisha Chaudhary

A Street in Srinagar (2010)
Ailan Gali Zinda Hai by Chandrakanta. Translated from Hindi by Manisha Chaudhary.
[Earlier published as ‘Between the Seven Bridges’ (2009)]

On the night of Khech Mavas/Khichdi Amavas/Yagya Amavasya/Yech Amavas /Yaksha Amavas a thief breaks into a house in a street in Srinagar. A woman raises an alarm. Neighbours come running. The thief while trying to make a hasty escape, tumbles down a window and dies. The brotherhood of thieves swears revenge. The street fears obliteration, of wealth and women. A settlement is mediated. A declaration is made that henceforward all the households in the street shall pay a small monthly payout to the brotherhood of thieves. Since that day, that street where no thieves shall venture, came to be known as Declaration Street or Ailan Gali. Hence, the strange unidentifiable as Kashmiri title of Hindi novel by Chandrakanta.

 In the first chapter of ‘Ailan Gali Zinda Hai’, author Chandrakanta while giving the story of origin of the street name beautifully merges the ancient folklore associated with Khech Mavas, about peace treaty between the demi-gods and humans, a war settled for a bowl of Khichdi, and the modern treaty amounting to blood money in instalments, or a ransom paid out to thieves with honor for being left alone. The ancient code merging with the new. Much like Ailan Gali, where the ancient and the new merge to form what may be called day-to-day life. In the end, thieves prove to be of least worry to the streets, the real threat to the street comes from within. The new struggling to be newer, and sometimes old, and sometimes both. While the old, their ancient wisdom struggling to explain the conundrum, their only self-comforting explanation – ‘Kalyug’.

It essentially a growing up tale of a kid in a typical Kashmiri neighbourhood in downtown, on a street which hasn’t seen sun’s light for ages. Where the old guards hold on to hope like they hold on to faith. But where the new guard is losing both. But maybe there is hope. Maybe the street will live and the circles of life continue. The light shall indeed be born out of darkness. Or may be not.

The reader is drawn intimately into the lives of the people who live on this street as the author tells us about their most intimate secrets, shows us their private wounds, walks us into their dreams and nightmares, and describes their public rituals of joys. And that makes these characters flesh and blood. And what characters: an orthodox mother who wishes her son be adopted by a friend, maybe for the money; a woman who can’t bear children loves a neighbourhood kid like a son; a husband-less ‘keep’, a feisty woman who raises a daughter in an unorthodox way;  a beautiful daughter who withers away as she tries to keep an old long dead love alive by not marrying another; a ‘refugee’ girl who runs away to marry a Muslim boy; a wise old Masterji, a tailor, who wouldn’t see the face of his grandson even as he wants to because his son broke the “neighbourhood code”; old men who try to feel alive again by getting young wives, sometimes getting unlucky and sometimes getting lucky; ambitious young wives who want to live their own lives, run their own kitchens; a priest who steels temple money to raise his children; a sagely Master ji, a teacher who abets his own son’s suicide and drives a daughter man; a son who doesn’t go anywhere and looks after his own parents; sons who dream of crossing seven seas and sons who go off to distant lands.

Although, the stories are told though the mind of male characters, and the drama unfold due to actions of men, since the tales are from a Kashmiri household, we soon realize that the actual stage on which the drama unfold is held on the strong shoulders of women. Even the dislocation painfully felt by some men over loss of home, on some scale is felt by all women after marriage. Probably explains why the book has been published by a feminist publication (Zubaan). It is the women characters in the book that really stand out for their ways of looking at life and its challenges.

Towards the end of the story we read, “If you look back, you’ll find the longest journey will flash before you in an instant. But if ou try to look into the future you’ll not be able to see even an instant.”

Ironically, it seems this book wasn’t just looking into the past, but also into future. This most poignant yet funny tale of Kashmiri displacement was first published in 1988. The characters that bravely or disquietly stayed put in the street, probably got displaced in 1990. The street is now gone.

At a later point in the story, the text from the novel crosses from the domain literature and into the familiar Kashmiri domain of ‘other world’ that famously pre-occupies the mind of most Kashmiris. The text offers a prophecy and it offers an ancient advise by great Grand-mother of the land, Lal Ded. Al though the book is sprinkled with lot a Kashmiri says, old song, even long forgotten persian one, this particular time the text moves into sacred domain.

Ratni, the feisty ‘keep’, a throbbing pulse of the neighbourhood, is dying of cancer. Her son-in-law has come to take she away. Away from Ailan Gali so that her daughter can take care of her in her last days. As she leave, in a half-dead state, her  only last words to tearful residents of the Galli are the famous verses of Lal Ded:

Shev Chhuy Thali-Thali Rozaan
Mo Zaaan Kyon Hayond Ta Musalmaan,
Trukhai Chhuk Pannui, Zaan Parzaan,

[Shiv is imbued in eveyone. Make no difference between Hindu or Muslim. Know yourself first and that wil be really knowing Shiv]

It offers us scenes from future, it foretells the question that our hearts now ask. The question that in the end a history loving madman named Bhoota alias Lambodar Prasad Kakpori ask our main protagonist when he is about to start a new life outside Kashmir:

“Kalhan Gani te Sarfi, sairab kari yami aban, suy ab sanya bapath, jehre hilal astha?” (The water of the land which nurtured learned men like Kalhan, Gani and Sarfi, will that water turn to poison for us?)

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Chandrakanta now lives in Gurgaon. I write this living next to the Arabian Sea. We were both born next to a Himaliyan river. My mother told me stories of a woman named Savidhaan Ded who once pushed down a thief from third floor.

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Buy A Street in Srinagar from Flipkart.com [You can also read extracts from the book there]

Oddly, the copy I ordered came signed by the author. Probably a complimentary copy meant for someone.

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 Two houses in intimate conversation. Somewhere in downtown Habba Kadal, 2008
Last night food had no salt. When he enquired, she told him, “Old fool, you have lost your mind. Just Eat.” So how was your last night. No they don’t share bed anymore. So how was your last night.

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