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| What can’t you get in Kashmir? You can get everything Raj Kumar in ‘Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai’ (1960) |
It has to be everything.
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What can’t you get in Kashmir?
Freezer = Kashmir
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| Something like idea of Home. Jammu. July. 2013. |
“One hot summer day when I was six years old, my mother opened the refrigerator, and pointed to the ice compartment and below it to the pears and the plums. She exclaimed:”This is Kashmir!” In our home at Jaipur, the capital city of the arid state of Rajasthan, every scorching summer our thoughts, like those of innumerable indians, would turn to the cool heights of the Himalayas. From antiquity to the age of the computers, countless Indians have been beguiled by Kashmir, a land of learning as well as of lakes and lofty mountains.”
~ Raghubir Singh’s opening lines from introduction to his beautiful photo-book ‘Kashmir: Garden of the Himalayas’ (1983).
intolerable beauty
Painting: ‘Nightfall on Wular Lake’ by Col. H.H. Hart, R.E. From the book ‘Our summer in the vale of Kashmir’ (1915) by Frederick Ward Denys.
Quote: Silvia Baker, ‘Alone and Loitering: Pages from a Artist’s Travel Diary (1938-1944)’ . She was describing her visit to Wular Lake in around year 1944. [via: exiledstardust]
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Every man thinks his own country Kashmir
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
bits from Chakbast
Village Tulamula, 2008.
“Zara Zara hai mere Kashmir ka mihman-nawaz
Rah men pathar ke tukrun se mila pani mujhe”
I first came across these lines (typically, unattributed ) in the book ‘Kashmiri Pandits’ by Pandit Anand Koul (1924). Recently, picked up that the lines are by an Urdu poet of Kashmiri origins, Brij Narayan Chakbast (1882–1926).
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If I ate lotus seeds, I’d return to Kashmir
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| 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 |
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too much pleasure and enjoyment
“All the people I send into Kashmir turn out haramzada; there is too much pleasure and enjoyment in that country”
~ Maharaja Ranjit Singh to Sir Alexander Burnes of the East India Company.
Came across it in ‘The Abode of Snow: Observations on a journey from Chinese Tibet to the Indian Caucasus, through the upper valleys of the Himalaya’ by Andrew Wilson (1875) .
I see Kashmir ! I see Kashmir !
A CERTAIN frog, after several ineffectual attempts, managed to climb to the top of a clod of earthclose to the puddle in which he was spawned. “Ah !’, cried he, casting one eye at some cattle which were grazing near, “what a grand sight have I ! I see Kashmir ! I see Kashmir !”
Punjabi story ‘The Frog and Kashmir’. I came across this ‘other folk-tale’ in ‘The Adventures of the Panjáb hero Rájá Rasálu, and other folk-tales of the Panjáb’ (1884) by Charles Swynnerton. [Book link]. The really interesting part of the book tells us stories of King Rasulu, ‘Muslim’ son of Raja Salban of Sialkot, claimed to be descendant of Raja Vikramaditya/Vikramajit (102 BCE to 15 CE), the legendary king of Ujjain. Also, in one of the stories Rasalu matches wits with famous Raja Bhoj of Malwa.
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Raja Rasalu beats Raja Sirikap (‘The Beheader’) in a game of Chaupat (Pasa). The sketch was taken by Charles Swynnerton from a Punjabi storybook on Raja Rasulu published in Lahore.
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A longer version of ‘The Frog and Kashmir’ was done by the famous writer from Punjab, Mulk Raj Anand in his More Indian fairy tales (1961).
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who spends the summer wandering in Kashmir
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| wanderers in Gulmarg. 2008. |
To feel the cool breeze on a body
covered with drops of perspiration;
to taste the water, cold and clear,
in a mouth all parched with thirst;
after travelling far, to rest
the tired limbs beneath the shade:
blessed indeed is one who spends
the summer wandering in Kashmir
~ Bhatta Bana, Sanskrit stylist in court of King Harsha of 7th Century CE, Kannauj.
Came across it in ‘Subhashitavali: An Anthology of Comic, Erotic and Other Verse’, translated from the Sanskrit Subhashitavali of Vallabhadeva (fifteenth-century CE, Kashmir ) by A. N. D. Haksar.
but you have no mangoes
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| Near Fatehpur Sikri. Summer. 2011. |
“It was spring-time in Kashmir, and the flowers were all out to greet the couple on their honeymoon. They were as happy as any newly-wedded couple has ever been, but even in that time of bliss they could not forget the lonely man in Anand Bhawan who was sweltering in the heat of the plains to prepare the country for the final struggle.
From Gulmarg they sent a jointly signed telegram:
WISH WE COULD SEND YOU SOME COOL BREEZE FROM HERE.
He must have been touched by their affectionate concern but Jawaharlal summoned his celebrated and subtle sense of humour to promptly send the telegraphic reply:
THANKS. BUT YOU HAVE NO MANGOES.”
WISH WE COULD SEND YOU SOME COOL BREEZE FROM HERE.
He must have been touched by their affectionate concern but Jawaharlal summoned his celebrated and subtle sense of humour to promptly send the telegraphic reply:
THANKS. BUT YOU HAVE NO MANGOES.”
Came across it in fantastically titled book ‘Indira Gandhi: Return of the Red Rose’ (1966) by K.A. Abbas.
Summary:
Kashmir: Cool. India: Hot. But. India: Mangoes. Kashmir: No Mangoes. And so it is appropriate, you too shall be ordained to brotherhood of mangoe-hood.
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