in bits and pieces
Rehman Rahi & Shafi Shauq interview Dinanath Nadim for Radio Kashmir in around 1983. From personal collection of his son Ahinsa Kaul and daughter-in-law Vijay Kaul. Shared by Pratush Koul.
Note: Viceroy Lord Reading visited Kashmir in 1924. Coming of comets as portent of doom is a theme in Kashmiri history, going back to Śrīvara recording arrival of Halley’s comet in 1456 just before death of Budshah.
Essay in Kashmiri, “Shhitha Pompur” by Dinanath Nadim. Radio Kashmir recording. From personal collection of his son Ahinsa Kaul and daughter-in-law Vijay Kaul. Shared by Pratush Koul.
Butterfly as a metaphor for an artist.
The only surviving video interview of great Kashmiri Poet Dinanath Nadim (1916–1988) . Produced by Bashir Ahmed (?) for Doordarshan Kendra Kashmir and broadcast in 1987. This is a VHS copy made available by Ahinsa Kaul, son of Dinanath Nadim. Special thanks to Pratush Koul for reaching out to poet’s family. The family had asked their Muslim neighbour to record the interview at the time of broadcast as they had a VCR. Nadim never saw the video and the family kept the recording, digitalising it more than a decade back, but revisited and shared now.
Nadim remembers his childhood, his Bhagat Singh days, his early political and ideological influences, him finding his voice, he recites some of his famous works that enriched Kashmiri language with a verve that was uniquely Nadim.
It is 87. He has just been given a life time reward. There is an undercurrent of violence brimming in society. Maybe he knows what is coming. He breaks down reciting “peace”.
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Here’s the 1974 recording of the musical extravaganza produced by J&K Cultural Academy and directed by Pran Kishore Kaul. Music is by flutist Virendra Mohan.
Uploaded by Ramesh Mehta
Hat Tip: Mrinal Kaul
An old radio interview of poet Dina Nath Nadim (conducted by M Y Taing) for All India Radio in around 1971.
Family history
Nadim picked from a book of Karim ur logath in 1935
Listen, imagine and see.
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 opera Bombur ta Yambarzal, a 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.
I finally managed to get my hand on it. This is the English edition published in 1979 by Gafur Gulyam Literature and Art Publishers, Tashkent. Translation by A. Miller, I. Melenevsky. Illustrations by K. Basharov and R. Halilov.
From the foreword:
“Memory is a drawing on a rock and a picture on a canvas.
Memory is line of words carved on a stone slab and a book.
Memory is a fairy-tale, a tradition and a legend.
Memory is song and music.
In them we find the people’s memory, which widens its banks as it flows from generation to generation. This is where we find the people’s wisdom, the blazing torch that is passed from generation to generation.
Take it, bear it, pass it on!
Add grain to grain and line to line, fruit to fruit and music to music, blossom to blossom and song to song!”
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Previously: Russia and Bombur ta Yambarzal, including bits about the Russian animated film from 1965 based on the story.
Kashmiri man caught singing Bumbro Bumbro, Shyam Rang Bumbro, just the refrain, ad infinitum, at 6:00 in the morning while carrying loads of vegetables on his back working in the bustling Sabzi Mandi of Jammu.
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
Kashmiri poet Nadim, having seen a performance of White Haired Girl (Bai Mao Nu) in China, was inspired to write one along a similar style in Kashmiri language. White Haired Girl, first performed in 1945, told the story of trials and tribulations in life of a young peasant girl living in an exploitative society. White Haired Girl with its communist revolutionary theme was one of the eight plays permitted during the Cultural Revolution in China that lasted 1966 to 1976. Marshal Bulganin and Khrushchev, during the 1955 visit to Kashmir, saw the second production of Bombur ta Yambarzal. In 1971, the Soviet government conferred Nadim with the Soviet Land Nehru Award, an award given by Soviet Union to selected Indian artist in recognition of their outstanding work.
The cultural movement in Kashmir during that era starting 1930s and ending mid 1970s, like many other places in the world, was lead by many left leaning artists. Bombur ta Yemberzal first produced and performed in 1953, just as its Chinese inspiration, told the story a peasant girl and her tribulations. Based on a folk saying according to which although Bumblebee and Narcissus aspire to be together, they can never be together in their lives. First performed at famed Nedous Hotel and SP College Hall, both places of deep significance in the cultural scene of Kashmir, the play was a great success. The play had characters with names like Bombur, Yambarzal, Gullala, Maswal, Gilatoor, Agarwal, Tekabatani, Irkyoam, Wav and Harud. All these names had symbolic meaning with some of them like Bombur, Yambarzal, Wav and Harud being Kashmiri words for Bumblebee, flower Narcissus, Strong winds and Autumn respectively. Written at a time when Kashmir was going through a tumultuous phase that saw among many other events: 1953 arrest of Sheikh Abdullah and formation of Bakshi Government,* the Opera hoped for a better future as can be fathomed from its optimistic ending and was in someways a play on these events, Yambarzal and Bombur do get to meet at last.
The success of Bombur ta Yemberzal owned as much to Mohan Lal Aima, director and composer of music for the Opera. He took the tunes of already existing popular Kashmiri songs and by varying their rhythm, managed to create an original musical experience. For the song Bombro Bombro, its traditional Chakri tune was tweaked with a faster tempo to create a memorable song, a song that generation of Kashmiris were to sing.
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Recommended read:
One of the best articles, a first hand account written by Moti Lal Kemmu, about the Opera can be read at Kashmir Herald
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Footnote:
Another Kashmiri who has been awared Soviet Land Nehru Award:
Prof. Saif-ud-Din Soz ( ex- Union Minister of Water Resources, ex- Union Minister of environment & Forests ) for his translation of Mikhail Il’in’s 1,00,000 Whys – a Trip Round the Room (1929) from Russian to Kashmiri.
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*Bachha Nagma gained currency during the time of Bakshi Government as it was extensively used for sending out political messages.
