tsogh to nail

Student of University of Madras. Preparations for exams (working hard, they tie hair to nail in wall to prevent falling into sleep)

From V.M. Doroshevich’s 1905 book ‘East and War’ (Востокъ и война).

And I thought my father was kidding me when he used to suggest that I ought get a tsogh and then tie it to a nail, ‘like your ancestors’, to keep awake while trying to study at night.

Politics of Information

A couple of weeks back, on a Sunday at around 11 at night I finally started writing that story. I had been wanting to write it, get it out, for more than two years, but couldn’t find time. Writing takes too much necessary time. You have to bargain with time. That night too I was bargaining with time to finish a story. I had a job to report to in the morning. It was around 2 when I laughed to myself and thought,’Can’t stop now. I am never get down to writing it. May this be a long night!’ The story ‘Fish’ finished at around 4:30. I didn’t poofread it, I almost never do. Let it be ‘Kehu Main Pade Khuda. Time is nothing. It is just a unit. I hit the publish button, went to sleep. Woke up at around 8:30. ‘At least earlier they used to look like map of India, now they look like Antarctica.’ With that I bid my mother and her Parathas good-bye. After a two and a half hour commute that included cycle-rickshaw, Auto-Rickshaw, Metro and the again Cycle-Rickshaw, I was in office where I going to stay for entire next week, tying to design a social game. Now week’s days would be spent trying to understand behavior of people online, and nights would be spent bargaining with time. And on every second night, like a wound up monkey with cymbals for hand, a monkey in love with the noise he is making, [system crashes, dies, as it tries to recover, I pick up a half-read book, flip to the page with a folded top corner and read a few pages only to stop after the narrative reaches the part about lyricist Gulshan Bawra‘s ironic inspiration for an early 1980s Bollywood love song peppered with Kashmiri greeting, ‘Kherishu, Varishu’. I want to write some more. But my system does not respond. It crashes. I return next night to finish this post from a friend’s system. Like an automaton, I would religiously hit the publish button.

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Last week, thanks to my super vanity – a habit of self-googling, I realize ‘Fish‘ got posted to some newspaper called kashmirmonitor [kashmirmonitor.org/krkashmirmonitor/08232011-ND-strange-tales-from-tulamula-10326.aspx]. Although my name as the author is there next to the miss-titled story, ‘Strange Tales from Tulamula’, no one wrote to me asking ‘Hey, nice stuff, can we use it?’, No, it just got posted, filled up a space. Served what purpose? No clue. What monkey business! And what harbingers of new social change.

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Two nights ago, I run into more monkey business. I was going through comments section of various articles on Kashmir Current Affairs. My sorry excuse for this despicable exercise is that inspite of all my genuine efforts, I still regularly fail at entirely burying myself in Past, and sometime I too get tempted to get in touch with Present whose commentary offers us the LOLs of future. So I was digging comments. And I ended up the gallery of vintage photographs collected from “various sources” set up by an online newspaper called ‘kashmirdispatch’ [kashmirdispatch.com/gallery.html]. Yes, among other stuff ( some new even for me, sourced from who knows where) I saw Vintage photographs of Kashmir that I have been posting for more than two years now, with notes on dates, places, photographers and sources. That’s more than 60 post with more than  And I saw stuff that Man Mohan Munshi Ji  posted on this blog from his personal collection, like  The paperwallas just post it on their website as part of a gallery without any adjoining description. The exercise serves what purpose?

When I started posting, I could have easily put a big ‘Search Kashmir’ logo on all of them. But that would not have served the purpose of their existence. The fact that these photographs were shot by someone long ago, and that they were used in detailed narratives about an exotic foreign land written mostly by men (and in some cases by women) seemingly burning with a strange zeal for information, and the fact that these photographers were mostly always duly acknowledged, that these photographs were preserved for years, and only now scanned for free by billion dollar companies, that part of the story of these photographs tells us just as much about the politics of information as the manner in which we the ‘subjects’ now use or misuse these information. And right now I think we, in this part of the impoverished world, still don’t get it.

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On one hand I have newspaperwallas who just Monitor and Dispatch and on other hand I have people who are kind enough to drop in a line before even posting stuff to their Facebook Walls. For people who use this blog, please feel to use use whatever you want but…try to give credit where it is due. If this post leaves you confused enjoy this video by Nina Paley.

do the pahada

At Shalimar, 2008

It came back to me a couple of years ago while watching a sequence from Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Iranian film ‘Gabbeh’ (1996). The poetic sequence involved an elderly teacher singing a lesson to his young pupils [video link]. I remembered the way my grandmother sang table of two to me when I was a kid. It’s rustic nature never failed to delight me. In many futile attempts I tried to capture it. Could manage only a few delightful multiplications. I asked my grandmother but she too recalled it only in parts. Last night I again gave it another shot but instead ended up getting distracted by ‘Do Ekam Do Do Duni Chaar’ song from Dil Deke Dekho (1959) [video link]. But it also made me finally go for closure. This morning I called up my grandmother and over a long call, finally managed to compile the table. It was a fun exercise, which started after I failed to explain her my interest in something so trivial, in fact I am now somewhat in-famous in the family for my trivial interests,  nevertheless, ever the Dadi, she agreed to entertain me one more time with her table song. From the voice in the background, I knew this time she had help, her son and daughter were filling in the blanks (only that my father was adding his own mock ribald version into it,only adding to the confusing). At time she ran so fast with the flow that I had to stop her so that I could follow, and then she would again start from the beginning, with each stop and re-rendering the song kept changing. In any case, I think I now have an acceptable version. Little rhyme, no reason. First line is what could pass off as ‘Hindustani’ but the second line, the auxiliary for memory, is in Kashmiri. And it goes like this:

do e kaya do
Padow Ladkow

[2 1 za 2]
[Read my Boys]

do duna char
Batt’e Lejj Phayaar (Or Maj’e Dyutnay Mar)

[2 2 za 4]
[Stir the Rice Bowl (or Mother beat you)]

do tiya che
Vothu Batt’e Khe

[2 3 za 6]
[Get up and eat rice]

do chukay aath
Hyer par paath

[2 4 za 8]
[Read a bit louder (Read upstairs (?))]

do panjay dus
Hooyn Kheynay nas

[2 5 za 10]
[Dog ate your nose] (Laugh.Recall point.)

do che barah
Mol chui Praran

[2 6 za 12]
[Father is waiting]

do satay chowdhah
nikkan kori maedaan

[2 7 za 14]
[You kid just shit]

do ahthay solah
mol chui bolan

[2 8 za 16]
[Father is talking]

do navay athara
mol chui laran

[2 9 za 18]
[Father is giving a run]


do dahya bees
ungjan kad tees

[2 10 za 20]
[crack your knuckles]

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I thank my grandmother for teaching me how to spell धन्यवाद्.


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Trath

Lightning. Gurgaon. 18/5/11

tsaalun chu vzmala ta trattay
Tsaalun chu mandinyan gattakaar
Tsaalun chu paan-panun kaddun grattay
Heyti maali santuush vaati paanay.

Patience to endure lightning and thunder,
Patience to face darkness at noon,
Patience to go through a grinding-mill —
Be patient whatever befalls, doubting not
that He will surely come to you.
~Lal Ded (via KOA)

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Life is like a road which is difficult, full of trials, sorrows, pains but if u fall, just stand up straight, b confident & say “Trath Yath Sadki”.
– A Kashmiri SMS
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Lightning. Gurgaon. 4/2/13

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DumOlu

All kind of potato dishes, from plain boiled small potatoes sprinkled with dhaniya to big potatoes cut in eight pieces and served with Dahi or Mexican sauces and some other irrelevancy, are sold in Indian restaurants, Dhabbas, eat-outs, as Kashmiri Dam Aloo. I have cousins who make it a point to try and enlighten their friends and the waiters about the ‘Authentic Dam Aloo’.

‘What the hell is this? You call this Kashmiri Dam Aloo. You know I am a Kashmiri. You call this Dam Aloo. What a joke! What’s this green thing in it! I tell you my friends – it is a fake. You guys should stick to Innovating on Chinese. Puff…Cashmeri Daamalooo. It’s an atrocity perpetrated on simple and gullible.  You will probably go into shock if you see and taste the real thing. It’s a fiery beast. And not your beast of burden served in a plate. I protest.’

‘Bai’ja Bhai! Tu Kashmiri Pulao Kha lay!’

‘So you want to know what I think about this Pulao. This piece of…’

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Tasted some fine Dumolu after what seems to be ages. There was a havan-gathering at the local community temple back in Jammu. Some of the Olus made their way to me.

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4 miles speed per hour, 1958

I couldn’t stop smiling. An awesome post by Man Mohan Munshi Ji. 
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‘This man is ordered to walk in front of you to enforce 4 miles speed per hour.’
In 1958 I came across a road bridge somewhere near Jammu & Kashmir – Himachal Pradesh border  where speed limit  was  enforced by a man walking in front of any vehicle crossing the bridge.

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Koshur British Rhymes

I saw a glimpse of it in Aldous Huxley’s description of year 1925-26 Kashmir in his book Jesting Pilate (1948). He heard ‘Dum-dum, BONG; diddy-dum, BONG’. He wasn’t the first British person to hear it. Much much earlier, around 1835, another Brit, G.T. Vigne heard in it an old comic song. He thought he was hearing ‘Kitty Clover’. I managed to re-create (unfaithfully) the old song from his notes and some software. But I failed to see a patter until I read about it in introduction to ‘Kashmiri Lyrics’ (first published in 1945) by J.L. Kaul:

There is indeed a “nursery rhyme thrill”, a certain Hickery-Dickery-Dock patter of rhythm, which anyone can hear (as Aldous Huxley heard it) any time, of day, in the streets of Kashmir with which a group of coolies enliven the heavy loads they carry collectively. Several Englishman have told me that they can catch and appreciate the lilt of a Kashmiri song (say), a boatman’s chant more easily than they can do elsewhere in India. here is what Mary Hallowes caught of the tune of a chant sung by boatmen punting up their cargo boats “Khocu”  in the Jhelum. [published at the time in The Illustrated Weekly of India]

“Swift the current,dark the night,
(Ya-illa,la-illa)
Stars above our guide and light
(Kraliar,baliar!…)
All together on the rope,
(Ya Pir-Dust Gir)
In our sinews lies our hope
Khaliko,Malik-ko!…”

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