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When I say “I read Kashmir”, I mean…
List of Children’s Books on Kashmir
- ‘Rhamon a boy of Kashmir by Heluiz Washburne, pictured by Roger Duvoisin’ (1939).
- Jean Bothwel’s ‘River boy of Kashmir’ (1946), illustrated by Margaret Ayer
- Salima lives in Kashmir. Photos by Anna Riwkin-Brick, story by Vera Forsberg. 1971
- ‘Search for a Magic Carpet in Kashmir’ (1981) by Frances Hawker and Bruce Campbell
River boy of Kashmir, 1946
Some illustrations by Margaret Ayer for Jean Bothwell’s ‘River boy of Kashmir’ (1946)
It is interesting to note that a lot of the illustrations in such books were based on the imagery created by photographs of Kashmir that were reaching Kashmir.
The above illustration is based on a photograph by Randolph B. Holmes in around 1915
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| from Tyndale Biscoe’s book ‘Character Building in Kashmir’ (1920) |
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Something aside: This is funny…it took me sometime to remember where I have seen that face…
Doug Wildey’s Hadji Singh of Calcutta from the cartoon series Jonny Quest
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Search for a Magic Carpet in Kashmir, 1981
‘Search for a Magic Carpet in Kashmir’ (1981) by Frances Hawker and Bruce Campbell was probably the last of its kind – a children’s book meant to introduce young ones in west to the exotic east, to Kashmir, all using some beautiful images and a simple story.
This one is weaved around photographs of two little girls Shukila and Hanifa, and send them on a quest for a Magic carpet of their grandfather’s stories.
The camera follows them as they walk around the city asking everyone about it. So, along the way we get glimpses of the city. But, the magical flying carpet remains untraced, or so it seems till…
“Hanifa drifted into deep sleep. She felt herself floating upwards. Suddenly the mountains and lakes of Kashmir seemed far below her. Was this a dream, or had she really found the magic carpet?”
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Travels in Kashmir by Brigid Keenan, 1989
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.
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Buy Travels in Kashmir: A Popular History of Its People, Places and Crafts
Fire on the Mountain, Anita Desai, 1977
An old woman living in a colonial house on a hill in Kasauli would let no one enter her little paradise – a hard won lonely life after a ages spent serving a husband, many children and many grand-children. She is a recluse. She wants no one. Not even her great-grand child. But then the child arrives. A sickly young girl who turns out to be just as much of recluse. The child doesn’t want anyone to enter she little paradise, a child’s world half lived in fantasies. A mind that seeks little adventures like looking for berries, snakes, jackals and ghosts in the peaceful loneliness offered by the hills. The old woman realizes while they are similar, there is a difference too, while her reclusiveness in self-imposed, the child was just born into it. The old woman starts changing, she now wants to enter the child’s world and share her own world with her. She tries, but fails. The child wants no one. The old woman falls back to the age old stratagem of ‘Nani Ki Kahani‘ to try and reach out. She weaves stories of her life by taking snippets of inspirations from travelogue of Marco Polo, in desperation she makes her own father a reflection of Marco Polo who travelled far into the mysterious lands of East. The child’s mind is stirred and old woman senses a relation blossoming. She tries harder. Nanda Kaul tells her great-grand daughter Raka about the paradise where she was born, she tells her grand exaggerated stories about Kashmir. Strange stories about a house with a private zoo and backdoors that opened into flooded rivers. The child listens. But…
Raka’s words did not reflect the poetry of this vision. They were blunt and straight. ‘Why did you come here then,’ she asked, ‘instead of going back to Kashmir?’
Nanda Kaul simply shook her head and seem to wander in a field of grey thoughts, alone. ‘One does not go back,’ she said eventually. ‘No, one doesn’t go back. One might just as well try to become young again.’
The child soon catches on to the tricks and again retreats back into her world while Nanda Kaul’s world suffers another intrusion. Ila Das, a childhood friend whose shrill voice even sends birds into frenzy, arrives at the house, this paradise of recluses. She is a recluse of another kind, she has no choice, she has no one. And the friend she has doesn’t find it in her to offer her company, even though in moment of lapse Nanda Kaul does almost end up inviting Ila Das to stay with her. The moment passes. Ila Das leaves the house. It is with her leaving that the world of this little reclusive paradise, its neatness, its sweet lies and deceptions, its inhabitants, and the fableistic preambles of the story itself, get violently swallowed by the real world. Like by fire, like by life. And the mountains go up in flames.
The book won Anita Desai Sahitya Akademi Award and Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize in 1978. This was the first time Anita Desai visited Kashmir. Just a year ago, she had written a book called ‘Cat on a Houseboat’ (1976) for children. That one was about a cat (again a reclusive animal) that goes to Kashmir for a holiday.
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The Captured Gazelle: The Poems of Ghani Kashmiri: Tahir Ghani
The Captured Gazelle: The Poems of Ghani Kashmiri
Tahir Ghani
Translated by Mufti Mudasir Farooqi and Nusrat Bazaz
Penguin, 2013
Tahir Ghani
Translated by Mufti Mudasir Farooqi and Nusrat Bazaz
Penguin, 2013
This is probably the first proper collection of English translations of verse by Mulla Tahir Ghani, or Ghani Kashmiri (d. 1669), a Persian poet from Kashmir who lived during Aurangzeb’s time and whose language was respected even in Iran. A poet whose creations, whose idioms, influenced Indian writers even as later as Mir and Ghalib.
The collection comes with a insightful introductory essay by Mufti Mudasir Farooqi on Ghani Kashmiri and Persian language in Kashmir.
The book offers translations of Ghazals, Quatrains (Rubaiyat) and a Masnavi.
As one reads through Ghani’s work, one gets to step into Ghani’s world, his joyous exclamations, his saddening doubts, his dejection of the way world works and his playful jokes at the world.
The compilation comes with English transliteration, so you actually get to read the original work as well the translation (a practice that should always be followed for such work. But somehow is seldom followed). The translations try best to retain the meaning of the original, the only problem is for a reader not already familiar with the way Persian poetry works, particularly in case of some Ghazals where the reader can easily forget the central theme of a composition in an attempt at catching the meaning of translation of an idiom.
One of the most interesting work translated in this book is Masnavi Shita’iyah oe Winter’s Tale, a graphic and poetic description of Kashmiri winter by Ghani Kashmir that ends with lines:
Hinduye didam ki mast az ‘ishq bud
guftamash zin justjuyat chist sud
Dar javaban gift an zunnar dar
nist dar dastam ‘inan-e ikhtiyar
rishtaye dar gardanam afgandah dust
mi barad har ja ki khwatire khwah-e ust
I saw a Hindu drunk with devotion
‘Such striving to what end?’ I asked.
In reply said that wearer of the sacred thread:
‘The reins of will are not in my hand.
“The Friend has yoked my neck with HIs thread
And pulled me by it wherever He wills.”
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There is an interesting famous story given in the book. It is said that when Ghani Kashmiri was invited by Emperor Aurangzeb to his court, the poet snubbed him and refused.
The poet said to Mughal governor Saif Khan, ‘Tell the King that Ghani is insane.’ Saif Khan asked, ‘How can I call a sane man insane?’ At this Ghani tore his shirt and went away like a frenzied man. After three days he died.
What is not given in the book is a probable reason for Ghani’s hesitation at joining the royal court. The explanation for this behaviour may be sought in the story of his master Shaikh Muhsin Fani.
“Fani was a court poet of Shahjahan and was greatly honoured by the Emperor. But when Sultan Murad Bakhsh [youngest son of Shahjahan] conquered Balkh [in Afghanistan] a copy of Muhsin’s diwan was found in the library of Nadhr Muhammad Khan [Uzbek, happened in around 1646] the fugitive sovereign of the kingdom which contained panegyrics on him. This detection of duplicity very much enraged Shahjahan who removed him from the court. However the Emperor allowed him a pension. Fani returned to Kashmir and spent his days in instructing and educating youngmen.”*
* From ‘A Descriptive Catalogue of the Hindustani Manuscripts in the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library, Madras’ (1909)
Also, another thing not mentioned in the book is that his old takhallus Tahir is Chronograph for the year when Ghani (his later takhallus) started his poetic career.
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Buy The Captured Gazelle: The Poems of Ghani Kashmiri from Flipkart.com
‘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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Salima lives in Kashmir, by Anna Riwkin-Brick, 1971
Salima lives in Kashmir.
Photos by Anna Riwkin-Brick, story by Vera Forsberg.
Children of the World Series
Published 1971 by Macmillan
Anna Riwkin-Brick (1908, Russia -1970, Israel), Swedish photographer, spent a good part of her life traveling the world, and to place she went she captured the lives of children on camera. Later, these photographs were used to produce a series on day-to-day lives of ‘Children of the world’, with text captions from collaborating writers added to weave a story. In all there were 19 such book with titles like Dirk lives in Holland, Eli lives in Israel, Gennet lives in Ethiopia, Marko lives in Yugoslavia, Matti lives in Finland, Noy lives in Thailand, Randi lives in Norway, Gia lives on Kilimanjaro and Salima lives in Kashmir.
Anna Riwkin-Brick captured children on camera like few could, perhaps because she started photography by first capturing dancers (her photograph of Third Reich dancer Alexander von Swaines in 1930s, although considered imperfect in its time for the ‘motion blur’, can now be called perfect).
The beautiful photographs in ‘Salima lives in Kashmir’ in all probability come from Anna Riwkin-Brick’s visit to Kashmir in 1969. The story that the pictures tell has a nine year old Kashmiri boat girl named Salima and she struggle for joining a school, about how she convinces her grandfather to let her go to school.
“Certainly there are few things more attractive than the friendliness and broad smiles of the Kashmiri children.” Even V.S. Naipaul, the man who thinks ‘World is What it is’ confessed it once.
And this book offers something akin to that, broad smiles, Kashmiri children and a friendly camera. The effect casts a spell of heart-aching beauty upon the viewer. A spell that is broken only by the realisation that this beauty, this innocence is now gone. It is only an illusion in the mind and a shadow on the book. Or so it seems to a grown-up and the world of children remains the same.
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Kashmir, Shinya Fujiwara, 1978
Kashmir
Shinya Fujiwara
Translated by Margaret F.Breer
This Beautiful World Vol. 60
Kodansha International Ltd., 1978
Shinya Fujiwara arrives in Srinagar at night through road. Tired he decides to sleep late into the morning and explore the ‘Emerald City’ of Srinagar after lunch. He goes to sleep. He awakes to the sound of someone singing. He checks his watch, it says 5:00 A.M. He looks out the window and sees few stars twinkling in western sky and hears birds chirping. He thinks he has woken up in evening and missed an entire day. He is about to jump out of bed but just then again he hears the strange singing.
“These words were sung by a strong quivering masculine voice and sounded strange to my ears, the ears of a foreigner. But the spiritual intonation might cause one to feel that long ago, when still in the womb, one heard these sounds together with the mother’s heart beat.”
He was hearing Azan for the first time in life.
After a few days in the city Shinya, the Japanese photographer, noticed a phenomena typical to Srinagar city. The second Azan.
“Hearing this second song after Azan always cheered me. It came from the stray dogs which roam this emerald city. Even thee dogs must have felt the force of the morning prayer for they seemed to be singing the Azan. The first few times I heard this far away howling, i did not know what it was. By the third or fourth day, however, I was sure that the dogs were calling in response to the people. It then seemed rather comical, and as I lay in bed I could hardly contain my laughter. Yet listening to this wordless song day after day, it began to sound just as devout a prayer as the real Azan and I was moved almost to tears. I should probably not even have written about being impressed by the distant howling of stray dogs, yet any tourist in kashmir who fancies the unusual should listen for this wordless Azan. It made me vividly aware that religion in Kashmir governs not only man, but all living creatures right down to the smallest insect.”
This is one of the most subtlety humorous ‘Guide Book’ I have read about Kashmir. Later in the book when he compliments a man for his devotion to religion, he is reprimanded and told, ‘I am not the only one who is religious. Here in Kashmir, everyone gets up early. While the Azan is recited, many people are in the temples saying their prayers. We believe that anyone who stays in bed when he hears Azan will receive only half the profit of Allah’s blessings.’
In addition to some beautiful photographs, this slim little book also offers some useful tips to the travellers besides listing and describing the ‘must sees’ (although the history of the places is a bit breezy, bit wrong, but yes interesting for tourists ). Every chapter starts a some neat drawings of oriental designs giving the book a feel like you are reading one of those old English travelogues.
The only problem with a book is problem that books with great photographs often suffer: sometime great photographs are slip over two pages. Who likes that?
In between pages, the subtle funnies just keep rolling. When Shinya is tired of all the salesmen chasing him in the streets and on the waters of Dal for buying one or another thing, he decides to employ a trick to avoid unwanted attention. He change his look. He goes about the city unkempt and wearing worn out cloth. Of course, everyone starts ignoring him. He roams the city unattended. But this also upsets him, he misses the nagging calls of the infamous Kashmir salesmen. He even comes to like them. This is a book of simple pleasures that gives a glimpse of simple pleasures that Kashmir could offer travellers.
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Some more photographs from the book:
In his photographs Shinya inadvertently also captured a phenomena that doesn’t exist in Srinagar anymore. A Kashmiri Pandit wedding. Although the book makes no special note of it, in the photograph we can see the the ‘groom’s welcome song’ being sung by women who were muslim neighbours An old Kashmiri tradition.
Also, it is interesting to note that the composition of a basic Kashmiri Pandit plate for the wedding day hasn’t changed much, there is: Hakh, Razma, Dam Aloo, Tchaman (in the pic probably served by someone from a bucket), Nadur Ya’khin, Palak, Aulav Churm’e and Muj Cha’tin.
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