in bits and pieces
There is no ‘touch-feet-of-elders’ among Kashmiris. We hug and kiss. As I hugged her that day, even in pain, she kissed me and repeated our old joke. In my ears she said, ‘I stole you from your room while your were sleeping. Remember!’
I remember.
I once passed into sleep. When I woke up, I realized I hadn’t woken up in my room, the naya Kamra, the new room. I hadn’t woken up to the familiar sight of a Philips B&W TV, instead a smiling curly haired Baba in Saffron robes was showing me white of his one palm from a photograph sitting cozy inside a cabinet of an almirah. But this too was a familiar sight. I was looking at the Gods Cabinet of Bhabhi. She was sitting in front of it, praying, lighting agarbattis, diyas, arranging and re-arranging marigold and rose petals around more than a dozen photo-frames of various gods. A silvery bracelet studded with beautiful blue and green stones jingling on her left wrist. ‘It is for pressure,’ she would always say when I would often quiz her about that strange piece of jewellery. A few years later, her son, my uncle, also got one. ‘It is for pressure,’ he says. As I looked at that bracelet, I knew I had woken up in Bhabhi’s room which was right across our naya Kamra.
Still in a daze, I crawled my way to her and asked ‘How did I get here? Did I sleep here last night?’ She looked away from her gods and staring at my face, reading the confusion which must have been well writ on it, she replied with a straight face, ‘No. I stole you from your room while your were sleeping. At night, after you went to sleep in your room, I sneaked in and quietly picked you up and brought you here.’
‘Is that possible? If that is possible, any body can walk in and steal me at night. Am I safe? How could they let this happen!’ These troubling thoughts crept into mind. I got up with a start and ran out of the room to find my grandmother and ask her if it is true and if yes how could she let this happen. As I ran out of that room, and out of the door, the sullen darkness of a Kashmiri living room suddenly gave way to the brightness of the glorious Kashmiri summer sun. In an instant my mind cleared. I understood the joke. I went back into her room and screamed at her ‘You are quite a thief Bhabhi!’ We laughed for sometime. Then she went back to her pooja as I sat next to her, watching in silence.
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Summer 2008.
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The spot where once stood Bhabhi’s room. It is now a garden lawn or a saw mill. Just across it, my naya Kamra, my sleeping room, although now looking worn out, with the smoothness of its outer walls all gone. It is the only old structure that survived.
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‘You should not have left Kashmir’
The shawl seller from Kashmir concluded while trying to show his ware. Something about the statement ticked off Veena.
‘You should be glad my brother’s are not at home. They would have answered it better. No, I don’t want to buy anything. Please, leave!’
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My first Id was at the house of Tabassum, friend and colleague of my bua Veena Didi. I remember eating sevaiya at the house of her friend somewhere in downtown Srinagar . I remember how excited about visiting the house of the famous friend of my dear bua. They would run experiments on rabbit blood. I would ask her if I were to visit her office, would I see rabbits, white rabbits. She promised, I went, but I never saw any rabbits. Her office smelt of hospitals. It was a hospital. That year, besides her impeding marriage, she was excited about the new imported machine in her office. This machine could churn blood at an unimaginable RPM, round and round, separating blood into fine individual components for study. Among her sibling she was the only one to have gone outside the state to study. It was a time she was to always remember fondly. I remember how excited I was about eating real sevaiya. I remember the shops in the area, the pistols, that looked too real and the police holsters, that were certainly real, handing from the roof of those shops. I was obsessed with Bandook that year. Guns were all I could think of that year. Diwali was just around the corner. I wanted a gun that year. The visit turned out to be a formal affair. We were sitting, on floor, in the drawing room of a house that looked newer than the house in which I was born. Tabassum served the dishes. Sevaiya were different and certainly better. And then we left.
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She was the first one to leave.Veena didi finally got married in Jammu in middle of a cerfew over an issue that would roll-ball into what would be remembered as ‘mandal comission’. A year after her marriage, some people from Kashmir paid her new home a visit.
‘Where is Veena?’ That is all the woman at the door wanted to know.
Veena’s mother-in-law was in a fix on hearing this question. At first she was suspicious of the Muslim brother-sister duo that had come inquiring about the whereabouts of her daughter-in-law. Al though her family had a house at Chanapora, she had spent most of her own married life in Amritsar. How do they know? How did they find out? Terrorist? These thoughts filled her up instinctively. But on hearing a lengthy explanation on the nature and depth of relationship, she was convinced enough to tell them,’Veena is at the place of her parents. Perhaps you should come some other time. Sorry!’
‘Okay, take us there. I won’t leave without meeting her.’
Shocked as she was at this unabashed display of emotion, under duress and with a word of advice, ‘Take Care’, she deployed Veena’s husband to accompany the brother-sister duo to the place of Veena’s in-laws.
It was a colony which was in winter filled with ‘Durber move’ Kashmiris. It was the place were I celebrated a couple of more Ids growing up with boys from Kashmir who would bowl like Imran Khan and Wasim Akram. Boys who taught me reverse swing even before the rest of the world knew it.
‘How could you not invite me to your marriage? You thought I wouldn’t come?’
‘How could I?’
With that the two friends, Tabassum and Veena hugged each other. Veena welcomed her into the two-roomed house of her parents.
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I have no recollection of the second event. It’s a story my Bua likes to recall sometime. She went on to teach herself programming just around the time when I first started to pick it up in school. In her exercises to keep herself busy, a thought that filled minds of a few pandits in Jammu, on weekdays she teaches computer science to village kids, who in Summer sometimes bring her offering of Mangoes, and on weekends she spends a lot of her time in the ashram of a Kashmiri Saint freshly relocated to Jammu. I think she misses her imported Beckman machine and the rabbits. She tells me she again heard from Tabassum a few years back. Tabassum is married and in U.K. May on somedays, she too misses that blood churning machine and those white rabbits.
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Cross posted to my other Blog.
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Late 1960s, Gopal Kaul was one of the earliest and famous faces of Doordarshan. According to one of the most intriguing and famous stories from the early days of Doordarshan, Gopal Kaul, in a somewhat comic way, was the reason why Salma Sultan became a newsreader. The story goes that Gopal Kaul, who was already a known face on Doordarshan, didn’t want to be a newsreader, he wanted to be a producer and was always was often at loggerheads with the DD people. One day to put an end to his newsreading tussle, in a unique way of protest, Gopal Kaul reported to job with his head completely shaved off. An emergency replacement was found nearby in Salma Sultan.
In my post about ‘Famous old faces of Doordarshan‘ Gopal Kaul was one big and obvious missing name as I couldn’t find a single image of him online. But then recently, Gopal Kaul’s son Ashutosh Kaul wrote to me and generously offered to share his personal collection with this blog. He also informed me that among many other things Gopal Kaul also used to read President’s speech in Hindi.
Thanks to Ashutosh Kaul here are some rare and wonderful images of Gopal Kaul at work:
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| Gopal Kaul in a play (with turban on right corner) along with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Babu Rajendra Prasad. |
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| Gopal Kaul with Raj Kapoor. |
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| Gopal Kaul with Manna Dey |
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| Gopal Kaul after retirement. Ashutosh Kaul informs that Gopal Kaul finally retired from Lucknow Doordarshan and settled down in that city. He passed away in year 1999. And he did became a Producer in Doordarshan. |
