in bits and pieces
From my personal collection, Kashmir on the cover of July 1948 issue of a London based magazine called The Wide World.
 |
| Samuel Bakkal in Palestine in World War I. From: ‘Tyndale-Biscoe of Kashmir: An Autobiography’ (1951) |
When the boy who was born after prayers at the shrine of Nakashbandi went Christian in his youth, all hell broke loose, he was told to mend his ways, imprisoned in his house, married off to an older woman, he was mobbed, beaten-up, but finally rescued by his English benefactors and smuggled out of Kashmir. When Mama went Christian, he took on a new name – Samuel Bakkal.
In years to come, with road to Kashmir still blocked, Samuel Bakkal during World War I joined Y.M.C.A as Secretary and went fighting to France, Palestine and Mesopotamia. Later he even went for the Afghan war. It was only after the end of war that he returned to Kashmir and to his alma mater, Biscoe School. On an invitation by Maharaja of Mysore, he went to that state to start something like Biscoe School there. He went on to be the founder of Myscore Boy Scouts [around 1917]. He then returned to Kashmir as Executive Officer in charge of state granaries, at a fine when Kashmir was almost reeling a man-made famine caused by black-marketing. He did his job honestly. He got married to one Victoria Thornaby and had two girls and a daughter. When he died pneumonia at a young age, nearly two thousand people followed his funeral procession.
-0-
“Ted and I hired six arabas, and shortly after mid- night on the 14th of July we piled ourselves and our belongings in them and set out with all the speed feasible for Aksu. We loaded the carts lightly, and hoped to make long marches. Besides Rahima Loon and Khalil, we took with us the second cook, Rooslia with Loosa and Sultana. Sultana had received sad news at Yarkand. In a letter to Rahima from Bandi- par he heard of the death of one of his children, a boy of fourteen. The ravages of cholera had been frightful-more than 700 of the villagers had died. Our Kashmiris reminded me of the crew on a New Bedford whaler in the old days, when almost every member was related by marriage or blood. This of course made it sadder still for the Kashmiris, as each one had a relative or close friend to mourn. We had become much attached to our followers. Aimed Shah, who was to take charge of Cherrie’s caravan, had proved himself most efficient on the trail across the passes. Feroze was an excellent little fellow; he had a keen sense of humor, and was a merry companion.”
“Our Kashmiris were a patriarchal group, well led by Rahima Loon. To his many other qualities, he superadded that of diplomacy. A born diplomat, he managed to be ever smoothing our way, and yet getting us along with amazing speed, for which he fully realized the necessity. He watched over the finances with an eagle eye, and time and again saved us many rupees. Not only did he cut down the larger expenditures, but he also kept well under control the small daily sums that have such a tendency to mount.”
 |
|
Rahim Lone at Ayalik, Turkestan
|
 |
| Jemal Shah, the cook. In Ladakh. |
At Tian Shan
“It would have both interested and amused Father [The American President ] to find our native American name bestowed upon the wapiti’s Asiatic cousin. Our Kashmiri shikaries, getting the name from British sportsmen, referred to the big deer as wapiti. The general native name was boogha, a slight variation, if any, of the name for Yarkand stag. Our Kashmiris called ibex “ibuckus,” and it was as that we usually referred to them. Their native name in the Tian Shan is “tikka.” Siberian roe is known as “illik,” and when Rahima first talked of it we believed that he was Kashmirizing elk and was speaking about the wapiti.”
The next adventure of Roosevelt brothers had another duo of Kashmiti hunters, this time out hunting a Beishung in Ningyan, China. This was the first time any white man had seen a Giant Panda, or shot it.
Photograph from ‘The search for the Giant Panda’ by Kermit Roosevelt (Natural History, Vol. 30, 1930). The Kashmiri crew included Shikaris Mokhta Lone and Ghaffar Sheikh.
“The beishung does not hibernate. We found fresh signs in regions where the brown and black bears were hibernating, and the one we shot was living in a locality where the black bears had not yet awaked from their winter’s nap. We came upon his tracks one morning in the newly fallen snow. They were partly obliterated, for four or five hours had passed since he went by. Three hours’ trailing through dense jungle brought us to the spot which he had selected for his siesta. We caught sight of him emerging from the hollow bole of a giant fir tree, and fired simultaneously.
The giant panda, from all we could learn, is not a savage animal. After the shooting, our Kashmir shikarries remarked that he was a sahib, a gentleman, for when hit he had remained silent, and had not called out as does a bear.”
-0-
“There is magic in names. Who of us has not felt the lure hidden in such words as Samarkand, Peshawar, Khartoum, Peking – the far-flung places of the earth, which call us in our hours of dreams? So I felt about Kashmir, that beautiful vale which lies in the lower Himalaya, north of the Indian Punjab”
~ ‘House-Boat Days in the Vale of Kashmir’ by Florence H. Morden (photographs by Herford Tynes Cowling), for National Geographic Magazine, October 1929.
 |
| Afternoon Tea on the Upper Deck of the “Melisande’ Usually some English friends, on leave from lower India, would drop in to chat with the Americans. Old Golry flies because it happened to be Decoration Day [Memorial day/first Monday of May]. Though the Kashmiri is a skillful boat builder, he did not invent the house boat. It was introduced into the country some 40 years ago. |
-0-
Previously:
Vintage Kashmir in National Geographic Magazine
 |
| Houseboat Life in Kashmir on way to Sumbul on the Thelum River Drawn by W. Small The Graphic August 8, 1891 |
Came across this while digging The British Newspaper Archive.
-0-
 |
|
Painting: Danseaurs cachemiri, Schrinagar
Kashmiri Dancers, Srinagar
|
 |
| Original Etching in ‘Dessins et Peintures d’Asie exécutés au cours de l’expédition Citroën Centre-Asie’ |
 |
|
Chanteur cachemire. Schrinagar
Kashmiri Singer, Srinagar
|
 |
|
Caption in book reads: Danseaur cachemiri, Schrinagar
Kashmiri Dancer, Srinagar.
But the note on the painting reads Kashmiri Dancer, Astor.
|
 |
| A page from a government of India publication on Kashmir, 1955 |
 |
| Portrait of Kashmiri dancer/Bacha Gulzar Ahmed from Budgam. In Noida, Delhi. 2011. |
 |
| Top Right: Kashmiri at Bandipore Below it: Baba …Das…(Udhasi). Pandit at Sopore |
 |
| Portrait D’Homme Du Cashmere Portrait of a man of Kashmir Pandit Shreedhar Raina Officer in charge Government Telegraph Office Misagar Gilgit Kashmir |
 |
| Notice the headgear on the Khirgiz woman drawn by Jacovleff |
 |
| A Kashmiri woman drawn by drawn by H.R. Pirie in around 1908 |
 |
| Screenshot from the first Kashmiri feature length film ‘Mainz Raat’, 1964. Set on life in rural Kashmir. |
The following postcard dated 1907 (Bombay) and captioned ‘A model of Panjab Beauty’ is probably the strangest curio in my collection.
But, it obviously needed some fixing…
 |
| A Muslim Singer-Beggar From Dutch travelogue ‘De zomer in Kaschmir : De Aarde en haar Volken’ (Summer in Kashmir: ‘The Land and its Peoples) by F. Michel (1907). |
It is widely believed that the first person to bring works of Kashmiri poet Mahmud Gami (1750-1855) to western world was Karl Frederick Burkhard when in 1895 he partially published Gami’s retelling of ‘Yusuf Zulekhah’ in a German magazine.
Last night, I came across something that proves that Mahmud Gami’s words may have actually reached west a couple of decades earlier due to incidental travel journaling by a British painter, who also happens to be a blood relative of Virginia Woolf.
In 1877, after sketching the royalty of the Kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir, while on his way back, at Thanna Mandi, a place near Rajouri, in the afternoon of 13th June, V. C. Prinsep (1838-1904) met a traveling Kashmiri bard, a singing fakir, who regaled him with Kashmiri songs for hours while they walked. Preinsep made some notes, and later got two of the songs translated.
In his book ‘Imperial India; an artist’s journals’ (1879), Preinsep writes:
He was a filthy object, the dirtiest of the dirty; but he had the soul of a poet, and as he played his poor four-stringed instrument, he threw his head on one side, and bent over his guitar, much as first-rate performers do at home. He was grateful too, for when I left at 5 a.m., I found him waiting, and he played to me along a couple of miles of road, with his dirty legs keeping time to the twang of his music, and his nose well in the air ; neither would he leave until I gave hookham or permission.
My good friend Major Henderson [C.S.I., who was political officer in Kashmir, and an excellent linguist.] has sent me translations of two of this poet’s songs. One appears to be well known as the love-song of Mohammed Gami, a Kashmir poet.
“Like a flower-bearing plant I have become withered,
Even I, for thy love, O Bee ;
I will wail like the nightingale,
‘Where shall I seek thee, O Lily ? ‘
Deal gently with me, come to my feast ;
I will encircle thee with my arms, O Bee !
What said I to thee that vexed thy heart with me ?
By God, I adjure thee, tell me what is in thy heart.
O dear friend, where didst thou flee from me ?
Forsaking me, Sundar, O Bee ! “
I should like to have imported my poet as he appeared to me in his rags and filth ; yet is his love-song much like such as are sung in the drawing-rooms of Belgravia. The second song is another love-song, and the name of the poet is not known.
“Go, O bosom friend, bring me my lover, gently, gently.
In anger he left me, sore and vexed : what offence could I have caused him?
What is to me adornment of the person, antimony for the eyes, or any other
embellishment ?
For wealth and pearls what care I ? or the bells attached to my skirt ?
O friend, sit with me in the shade of a wide-spreading chenar !
Let not the calumny of an enemy affect thee. I am helpless.
For my beauteous and graceful lover a divan and couch I will prepare.
If he is not pleased with me, for whom shall I prepare them ?
See what happened to Shuk Sanaa for the sake of the Hindoo maiden !
He wore the sacred thread, he cherished swine with his own hands ! ”
Brigid Keenan originally meant this book to be a booklet on papier mache art of Kashmir, but once she started collecting material, as often happens in case of Kashmir, she got swept away in the flood its colorful history. So, instead she wrote a ‘general’ book about Kashmir. A book that picks the best bits about Kashmir and presents it beautifully.
The book revisits those old literally routes through which the west discovered Kashmir. It does this by presenting the interesting stories of early European visitors, most of them now famous because of their journals, but also some minor one and their little known travel diaries (some of them still not publicly available ). So we read story of George Forster travelling under guise of a Muslim and almost getting caught because in a moment of lapse he takes a leak while standing, like a man devoid of faith. And on other end we have the story of a Kashmiri tailor named Butterfly, maker of finest lingerie for British in India, who accidentally embarrassed his Memsahib clients when he brought out a catalogue carrying neatly sketched details of his comfy products and the names of the elite clients enjoying them.
Besides all this, what really makes this book stand out is that Brigid Keenan gives us the description and location of some heritage sites associated with British in Srinagar. Their playgrounds, their famous camp sites (Chinar Bagh), their church (All Saint’s Church), their graves (Shiekh Bagh) and their colony (Munshi Bagh). And much like the books of early visitors to Kashmir, this book too provides us a vital snapshot about the status of some old monuments and heritage sites of Kashmir. Reading this book we get to know their status as they stood in 1989 – already vanishing.
-0-
Buy Travels in Kashmir: A Popular History of Its People, Places and Crafts
 |
| Created by cutting and re-arranging Michelangelo’s ‘Christ on the Cross’ |
“May 8 to 17 [1832, Kabul]- I had the pleasure of talking with Mr. Wolff, who came into my room, and told me to listen to the Bible, and be converted to Christianity, which is the best religion in the world. My answer pleased the reverend gentleman very much. He added the following most singular speech : – That in the city of Bokhara he had an interview with Jesus Christ, who informed him that the pleasant valley of Kashmir will be the New Jerusalem after a few years.”
~ Mohan Lal [Kashmiri/Zutshi] in ‘Travels in the Panjab, Afghanistan, Turkistan, to Balk, Bokhara, and Herat; and a visit to Great Britain and Germany’ (1846), about his meeting with Rev. Joseph Wolff.
