in bits and pieces
Har ek admi apne mulk ko Kashmir samajhta hai
Every man thinks his own country Kashmir.
~ A line from a translation exercise in ‘Domestic Hindustani, a simplified and abridged grammar of simple colloquial Hindustani’ by D C Phillott; William George Grey (1907).
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Previously:
Garmiyon may Kashmir jannat hai, 1886
It was around 1989 in Kashmir that I first discovered the world of comics. I came across a treasure chest belonging to an elder cousin. I remember staying up all night, my first all nighter, to go through his entire collection comprising mostly of Phantom of Indrajal comics. I remember witnessing my first break of dawn from a window of my Massi’s place in Chanpore. I was seven, I couldn’t actually read those comics. Comprehending words was a challenge. Bubbles in the panels, a puzzle. But it was the colorful images in those panels that spoke to me. They spoke of some other magical worlds. A world were guns went ‘RaTaRaTa’, punches went ‘WHAAM’ and men went ‘UUg’.
Recently, after having helped in a minor way in the creation of a new generation of comic in India on Kashmir and that too with a high dose of History, I couldn’t help but wonder what Kashmir, the place, its people, looked like in earlier Indian comics.
The most obvious place to start was Amar Chitra Katha.
If it’s Amar Chitra Katha, it has to be history. Amar Chitra Katha has a bunch of issues based on stories from Kalhana’s Rajatarangini. Here the action is based in Kashmir (and please note Dharmendra or Amitabh was not the first hero to battle a wild cat, Jaydpeeda of Kashmir was). Some issues carry stories from Somadeva’s Katha Sarit Sagara (in which we have more of Ujjain), and there are are some ancient ‘travelogue’ issues in which we see a panel of Kashmir (like in case of comic on Hiuen Tsang). That’s about it.
Next, we pick Indrajal. In its ‘War-Series’ comics, in one on China war of 1962, we see a glimpse of peaceful Ladakh.
That’s about it. But then in late 1980s, just as Kashmir began to simmer like never before, and just as Indrajal’s readership was dwindling, Kashmir became a central prop for one of the ‘newest’ action hero’s created indigenously at Indrajal.
Dara, urf Rana Vikram Bir Singh, urf Raja Saheb, an flamboyant ex-prince of Kashmir who secretly works for Indian Intelligence Wing run by one Mr.Rao. In all there were about 8 issues published after which not only the series but Indrajal too shut shop. Of these 8 issues at least two stories are based in Kashmir – ‘The Savage Mercenary’ (with some of the action taking place on snow capped mountains) and ‘Sparks of Treason’. Of these two, ‘Sparks of Treason’ is the most interesting specimen of ‘Kashmir issue in Indian Comics’.
The title and the cover sets the tone. Dara the super spy is called in by Mr.Rao to save Kashmir from a gang of Agent provocateurs who are tying to spark treason.
The way that story unfold reminds one of the gratuitous Hindi films on Kashmir made in 1990s. And this comic came out in 1989.
Some interesting panels.
The way the situation is sorted out in the comic reminds one of a recent statement by Union minister Jairam Ramesh, “Spy agencies dictate Kashmir policy.“
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Elliot Jacoby & His Orchestra – Kashmiri Moon (1928)
‘Chinna Chinna Kannile’ from Tamil film ‘Then Nilavu’ (1961)
‘Tu Navtaruni Kashmiri’ from Marathi film Madhuchandra (1967)
‘Chakkani chukkala’ from Telgu film Pasivadi Pranam (1987)
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In 1952 Dina Nath Nadim on a visit to Peking gets to see Chinese classical opera, White Haired Girl. He is impressed with the format and believes that it could very well work for a Kashmiri story with Kashmiri folk music. 1953, only a year later, drawing inspiration from a popular Kashmiri legend about change of seasons, he comes up with Bombur ta Yambarzal (The Narcissus and the Bumble Bee). That year this opera is staged for the first time at famous Nedou’s Hotel. Acclaimed to be first of its kind in the entire country, it proves to be a roaring success among the public who can’t keep themselves from singing the songs from this original production. Quasi propagandist context mixed with genuine folk music, a popular story that everyone knows, earnest socialist fervor triggered by promise of a new political change, another new beginning – this creation of Nadim, not yet disillusioned, offers it all. It is a significant achievement.
An achievement significant enough to draw a special audience. In 1955 the show, 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. At the end of the show, the two political giants offer Nadim a hug each. The story was believed to be allegory on American Capitalism and Soviet Socialism.
That was the story of ‘Bombur ta Yambarzal’ this far.
Nadim was joyous that day.
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| Dina Nath Nadim, the artist, between the two colossus Khrushchev and Bulganin. 1955. Found this rare photograph (by Anatoliy Garanin) at RIA Novosti website. Dina Nath Nadim stood unidentified, unmarked, with his crew. [Came across this photograph thanks to Autar Mota ji] |
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| Update: July 7 2013. Another photograph of the event. Via: Photodivison India [Update: July 29,2013 Details about the performers in the photograph sent in bt readers] |
This great interest of Russians in a Kashmiri story wasn’t sudden. It was cultivated. In 1955, on a diplomatic goodwill mission for USSR to Kashmir, Uzbek communist leader Sharaf Rashidov, a name that in later years would be called ‘a communist despot’ and a few years later would be called ‘a true Uzbek hero’, came across Dina Nath Nadim’s modern re-telling of an inspiring old Kashmiri story. By the end of 1956 Rashidov was already out with 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.
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Much dwelling, much seeing, much tasted from pleasure and burning the teacher has asked the schoolboys,whose young eyes were alert, and mind just spriad it’s wings for a long-distance flight:
– Where the wisdom of people originates?
– In experience, – one has answered.
– In thought, – another has answered.
– In connection of experience and thought, – third has answered.
And again, having thought, the teacher told:
– The experience of the man dies together with the man, the mind of the man dies together with the man. For the tam of ours is short! The wisdom of the people originates in memory of the people. It is – ocean, from which the mining flows and springs becoming on the way the rivers are born. Memory is the consequent of wisdom and it is the reason of it. But where the memory lives and what gives it force to pass, enriched, from century to century, from past times to times of future?
It is a figure on a wall and a picture on a canvas.
It is a line on an stone and book.
It is a fairy tale, tradition and legend.
It is a song and music.
In them memory of people, which widening the beaches, flows from breed to breed, in them is wisdom of people, which as all the inflaming plume, is transmitted from breed to breed
~ lines from Rashidov’s Song of Kashmir (via this interesting Russian article)
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By the start of 1960, the dream was already over for Nadim and many of his friends. The poets were coming to term with new realities, promises broken and perhaps their own role in the events of past. Making a departure from his earlier ‘progressive’ style, in his 1959 poem Gassa Tul (Blade of Grass) Nadim wrote*:
This blade of grass
Like me
Soft silk when sap was there
Bowed to the sun and waved with the wind.
In winter nights its roots were lost.
Robbed of its sap, it stood erect,
Dried up, stiffened with false pride,
Changed in kind, having outlived its day.
Blow on it, it crumbles;
Step on it, it is dust;
Show it a flame and
Ashes is all.
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1965 was the year of second Kashmir war between India and Pakistan. It was also the year when USSR’s famous Soyuzmultfilm studio produced an animated film called Наргис. Soyuzmultfilm excelled at producing animated fairy tales and other popular stories targeted at children, but for Наргис the story came from 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.
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| Nargis |
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| Bombur |
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| Wav |
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| Harud |
With the birth of Doordarshan, by mid-1970s, animated films from Russia made appearance on Indian television science, they would keep up such appearances for decades to come even after the fall of USSR and Soyuzmultfilm getting devoured in capitalist market.
In his early 1970s poem Hisaab Fahmee (Know the Science of Number) about a man whose account balance has gone haywire, Nadim laments*:
It never became four,
At last I saw only a cypher,
One round zero,
Now shrinking, now swelling again,
Like breathing in and out.
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* translated by T.N. Raina
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.
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| Poster of a Malayalam film in Kochi, Kerala. |
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Also, read: Film talk about Kashmir
