1977 Archives - SearchKashmir

For centuries, no old chronicle of Kashmir, not even the later Persian ones, was complete without having a section on the ‘supernatural’ things witnessed at various places in Kashmir. In the photograph from 1970s (via Huntington Archive of Buddhist and Asian Art at The Ohio State University) can be seen the famous ‘Kah-Kah’ Pal (Eleven-Eleven Stone) of Vijeshwer Shiv Temple, Bijbehara. The green coloured conch shaped stone weighing roughly 60 kilograms, it was claimed could be lifted by eleven people using their index finger chanting ‘Kah’ (Eleven). The stone went missing in the 90s.

‘Kah-Kah’ Pal (Eleven-Eleven Stone) of Vijeshwer Shiv Temple, Bijbehara. Extract from a docu made in August 1977 on Gopi Krishna.

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Similar stone lifting practice among South-Asian Muslims and Tibetans:

Dargah of Qamar Ali Shah Dervish in Shivapur near Pune.

Aabi Guzar

Water Way Octroi

Francis Brunel, 1977

In around 2010, when my father got posted to Srinagar, I forced him to buy a cheap point-and-shoot camera so that he would send me photographs of Kashmir, the places he saw. Every couple of months we would meet in Jammu and he would show me the photographs. Among the photographs was a photograph of this beautiful old building that stood out. He told me in old days ‘Aabu Guzar’ was the toll collection point for the goods leaving and entering Srinagar city via the river.

2010.

Over the years, I started coming across photographs of the place in old travelogues. Having never been to the place, the sight of the place in an old book became a thing of little joy for me. Earlier this year when I visited Srinagar, the thought of finally visiting the place did occur to me, but it was winter, the water levels were low, it would not have been a pretty sight, I told myself, ‘Next time when the water levels are higher.’

This old building is now gone, destroyed in the flood of September 2014.

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2013, Aabi Guzar, 1954

2010, Aabi Guzar

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Tag: 1977

‘Kah-Kah’ Pal

Aabi Guzar Gone