A painting of Guru Nanak and his followers done in Kashmiri style.
Early 19th century. [Kashmiri Painting by Karuna Goswamy, 1998]
A couple of months back I found my Bua singing these lines to herself. We were preparing for my sister’s wedding, it was late at night, we were having a group singing session, like Kashmiris do, striking a spoon on metal platse and kids beating an odd tumbakhnaer out of beat, everyone singing a song of their choice, often all at the same time. Hindi songs. Kashmiri songs. General fun. In this happy melee, I found my Bua singing some very odd lines. It was obvious she didn’t know the entire song as she kept repeating the same line over and over.
The lines went like this:
Guru Nanak yelli pyau thannay
Zool kari’tyav Heri’tay Bon’yay
A Kashmiri song referring to birth celebration of Guru Nanak. Roughly translated the lines mean:
The day Guru Nanak
was born
We light up our
houses
from top
to bottom
Intrigued, much later I asked her more about the song. She said she danced to it when she was in Matric. Back in 1976 a bunch of girls of Katleshwar School danced Roff, traditional Kashmiri dance, to these lines.
If I ate lotus seeds, I’d return to Kashmir LIFE 2 Sep 1957
An American couple following Kipling’s trail in Asia.
Peggy Streits swims among lotus plants in Nagin Lake
Dear friends, let me remind you of a very cheesy past-time activity that we all indulged in with great passion growing up at downtown Srinagar; Window Gazing.
Before I begin, I want to admit, to the hard fact that the second inference of “window gazing” dawned on me only after migration to Delhi. I realized that these parts staring at someones window amounted to an “uncultured act” and something that ought to be corrected immediately .
But back home in Srinagar our window gazing was entirely of the reverse nature; Whenever we needed a break, we would just sit and gaze out from inside the window and appreciate the passing life of the day. It was an art form. For older folks, it must have been akin to meditation.
Before I attempt to dwell further into the subject, allow me to recreate the scene, that made Gazing-out a passionate act filled with the experience that left us with a feeling of connection and appreciation, of love rooted in the neighborhood.
Need for Gazing out:
It is said that Finnish people, the people who gave us Nokia, were prompted to mobile communications simply for the reason that harsh winters would otherwise prevent physical interaction. We in Kashmir perhaps as a society must have been in similar frame of mind when as a solution we indulged in “Window Gazing” as the medium of communication.
The Act:
Memories of a typical “Window Gazing” for us would today read something like following:
Observing the pedestrians.
If your house be on a river bank, watching the river flow and the boats.
Listening to Radio Commentary for better reception would always be better near the window.
Watching the snow fall.
Watching a neighborhood fight.
If you be ill and parents not letting you to go out; a consolation would be a view through the window of friends playing in the angun, yard.
Watching old men and women passing their days.
Making important announcements and listening to important announcements.
During lunch time – Vidya Bhavan class mates would “window gaze” across the river to see the activities of girls college; back benchers had the premium view.
List is endless …..
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To this list I would like to add a memory shared by my father. Sometimes, he used to sit on the window to watch Katij (Barn Swallow) chase and evade passing cars and people.
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Update: Additional Input and a beautiful old photograph from D.N. Kaul Ji shared via email by Arun Jalali Ji. ‘Buethuk dari- dakas’ is a term that I too have heard from my elders but only now I understand its meaning.
There used to be various types of windows in a Kashmiri pandit’s house.
1. Front Facade Windows – These windows would open to the common or slightly bifurcated compounds of cluster of neighbour’s houses. The window ledges were designed to maintain the height of window size to suite a normal adult to rest his/her arms on window frame while sitting over there. While as, a child guard (Dum-dier) was also fixed. The window ledge were well furnished to make the sitting comfortable for the long sittings. The window gazing from front facade windows were not apprehended as peeping or probing, Because all neighbours around had already recognized it at the back of their mind. Knowingly or unknowingly these windows were used for many purposes:
a. Security purpose (a vigil) – as was required.
b. Keeping eye on visitors or tresspasser and any day to day activities, in any of the neighbours’ house – for good intentions or in some cases for inquisitiveness.
c. For spitting, coughing out or creating hullabaloo, to dilute the quietness of winter hours (which used to be very depressing at times).
d. Window gazing was very beneficial to older persons to keep their blood pressure under control.
2. Back Facade Windows – These windows at the back of the houses were generally opening to either a street (Kocha) or far neighbours’ house. Gazing from these windows of course would not be etiquette. Generally gentlemen would not gaze from these windows. It was done very rarely and only when actually need be. Yes if young boys or girls would be caught gazing, they would be scolded by elders ( buethuk dari- dakas).
3. Windows at the upper story’s Cantilever (Dubb Deir ) – Gazing from these windows was for panorama. One would gaze at far away house, street, like in Srinagar-Jehlem or Kutt Koal River. One would gaze at stars or moon -faraway snow Cladded Mountains, roofs of other houses.
4. Wogha (Roshan dan)- These used to be very small window on a height, not easily reachable
“Bewada“
Around two weeks ago my mother fell down from a rickshaw. And on top of it, the rickshaw fell down on top of her. As she lay on the ground, the riskshaw-puller, seemingly unhurt, came running to pick her up.
“Shikaslada-Kaula,” my mother screamed as she now picked the scent of alcohol in his breath. She tried to kick him. But she couldn’t move. Instead a pain moved into her right shoulder. A crowd gathered. In her anger, she wanted to say something else to the riskshaw-man. But she just couldn’t find the right word. She knew the word, but just couldn’t recall it. A young guy dropped her home in his car, neighbours took her to the hospital.
A week later, as they brought her out of the operation theater, on a stretcher, in her anesthesia induced delirium, I heard her say,”Heya, me chuv nasti sakh kashun yewaan.” I couldn’t help laughing out loud. Sometime later, she had me scratching her nose. In her delirium, I promised her I will get married, buy a car and even get back my ‘Kashmiri’ skintone that I had when I was four, get back the apples of my cheeks.
Two weeks later, adjusting to a metal plate in her shoulder, she finally remembered what she wanted to say to the rickshaw-walla. ‘Bewada Kahi Ka!’
One of my favorite sounds
For “as aaye na Chakravan”
For we have been scattered
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Update December 2012: Learnt something new. In some place in U.P., some people actually call it Shoof. And is an important part of Brahmin marriage ritual.
and even her old husband
now float on Jheeli Dal
like little yellow ducks
in a pitless bath tub
Mother
is still
counting the sound
her bones now make
as she sits by the side of
Jheeli Dal
Never in her life has she been on a Shikara
or on anything afloat
She keeps to an ancient pledge,
‘Not for us. It is not meant for us.’
A son soon joins her company.
‘It is too hot anyway!’
Mother and son now sit side by side
by the side of
Dal Lake
On boulevard road
under one of those signature street lamps.
‘Mother, look mother, look,’
a man from Pattan approaches them.
A crowd gathers in response to the call.
‘Moji, wuch,’
he says as he takes off his khan dress
and turns his bare back
to an embarrassed and shocked old woman
‘Look mother, look, what they did to me!’
There are burn marks,
there are what were once wounds
of flesh and blood
She sees the maps,
carved
She sees islands,
She sees lakes,
She sees roads,
She sees men,
on move
always
She sees countries,
She sees continents,
She sees the world.
Spinning.
She sees me.
‘You remember when you where young, and in summers you used to run around shirtless.
And I used to tease you: you shirtless zyinmohnyu, you shirtless woodcutter, please cover up, go get a shirt.’
In winters
a woman
arrives in city
She walks house to house
door to door
Claiming to be a Hindu
a Pandit
driven
Out she asks for money
For Poor Children.
To Feed.
On some days
People
some they pay
But not before they hear
a sad story or two
Then on some days
she runs into
some other Kashmiris
In their offices, apartments and bungalows
‘But how can that be!’
They exclaim.
They think.
‘It happened wayback in 90s.’
And so they ask her
for a proof
Now, if you be a pandit
sing us a leela
in Kashmiri, if you can
any shall do.
The woman
taking a deep breath
holds it for a minute or two
and then bursts croaking
Shiva Shiva Shiva
Shiva Shiva Shiva
Shiva Shiva Shiva
‘Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices That, if I then had waked after long sleep, Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming, The clouds methought would open, and show riches Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked I cried to dream again.‘
This blog is now definitely floating in some strange waters. A couple of weeks ago my sister went to Jim Corbett National Park with her colleagues for an ‘Office Picnic. The place she works for, an IT firm based around Noida, has quite a lot Kashmiri Muslims on its payroll. In fact, the firm has a mini-branch of a sort operating from Srinagar. It was simple, they hired a Kashmiri in Delhi who good at what he did and they got him to hire some more. Because the work involves technology, the firm was just as happy having them work from Srinagar. For the Picnic these outstation employees were also invited. So at Jim Corbett my sister got to interact with some Kashimiri Muslims. Her impression of them was of the usual type: one a bright beautiful girl but head ever covered and other a decent, honest, zealous boy who asks questions like, ‘So, why did you leave?’
On that infamous January night in 1990, my mother and sister were at my Massi’s place in Chanpora while I was at home with my Grandmother in Chattabal.
‘Your sister, who must have been 6 at the time, was quite a screamer as a kid ( in fact still is), master in the art of Baakh. When the loudspeakers from the mosques started their death songs about creating a new paradise on earth, your devil little sister, probably disapproving, or perhaps afraid or just hungry, or just for the fun of it, started crying at the top of her lungs. Your mother and I tried to console her as we were terrified that the sounds emanating from her loudspeaker were going to attract the attention of whoever was singing the hit number ‘Death to Kafirs’ from the mosque. After all our attempts to reason with her failed, we did the only thing we could think of: we stuffed her mouth with Parle-G biscuits, chunks and chunks of it. Megha chup ho Ja! Megha Dam Kar! Please shut up! That shut her up good and we again focused back our attention to the long-winding sermon from the mosque.The sermon stopped a few hours before dawn, it stopped just as suddenly as it had started. It was only next morning that we realized that it was all probably audio-taped sermons imported from Pakistan. No one could have stayed up that late into the night just to sit in front of a microphone and talk about killing. Most of it was in Urdu, in any case. Next morning, I asked a neighbour about happenings of the last night, but only to be greeted by silence. Not a word was spoken. As if he didn’t hear anything.’
At this point my Massi’s narrative as broken by her Bahu who added:
‘Yes, I too remember the night. When the sermon started, my mother shut me and my younger sister in a storeroom under a staircase.’
‘Where did you used to live?’
‘Jawahar Nagar. The night was same all over the city.’
I don’t remember what happened that night in Chattabal. I have no recollection of it. All those nights are the same to me now. All I remember is that just around that time we stopped sleeping in Naya Kambra, the room closer to the outer wall and started spending nights in the Thokur Kuth, the main God Room, all eight of us. Those days, there were stories of people getting killed in sleep, in their beds. We stopped sleeping. I slept.
Given the nature of this blog, one would expect that I have a lot of Kashmiri Muslim friends or that at least I interact a lot with them or that I interact a lot with Muslims. That definitely is not the case. As a Kid, growing up in Jammu, I did have a lot of Kashmiri Muslim ‘Cricket’ friends who taught me reverse swing. I had a Muslim friend in college who regaled me with stories like the one about Muslim men planning to melt all of American Gold at Fort Knox by crashing mercury filled plane into it. Given my ‘Muslim Parast‘ concerns, one would think I must be hanging out with Muslims all the time. That definitely is not the case. In fact, I became conscious of this fact only last year when hoping to join my family for a holiday on 2nd October, I reached my mother’s place only to realize that she along with my sister had gone to the wedding of a U.P. Muslim friend of my sister somewhere deep in Ghaziabad. It occurred to me that even though I have read a bunch of books on Islam and Muslims, and even though my sister has read none, it was she who can now say that she has been to a Muslim wedding and not I. In fact, I am sure she doesn’t even think of it as a big deal. ‘You live there, We live here.’ is how she simply answered the question, ‘Why did you leave?’
I am writing all this after running into a Kashmiri Muslim from Baramulla last night at a Lohri ‘Party’ thrown by a bunch of couples from Ranchi and Kota living in Dwarka. It was a ‘beganay ki shaadi may Abdullah deewana‘ kind of scene for me as I just knew onlt one of the guys and that too only because we briefly worked together. On realizing that I am a Kashmiri, one of the hosts pointed to a guy in the room, a college buddy of his, and said, ‘He too is a Kashmiri.’ Indians are generally ignorant about complexities of ‘Masla-e-Kashmir’, this ignorance is often a cause of heartburn for Kashmiris but in this particular case, it somehow gave me pleasure that these simple working guys knew nothing about our history and didn’t care about its complexities. To them, we both were just Kashmirirs. Just when you put people in cozy, comfortable definitions, people break out of them. And so I met a fellow Kashmiri and we started a brief conversation with the usual questions, ‘So, where do you live?’ ‘Where I used to live! Well, you know Chatchbal.’
