rare out-of-print Archives

May 4, 2014October 12, 2020

Legends of Kashmir (1982) by Edna Machanick

Edna Machanick lived in India from 1951 to 1955 and often spent months on houseboats of Kashmir. Here she collected these tales from Pandits and Muslims. Much later, she illustrated and published the stories as ‘Legends of Kashmir’.

The stories included in the book are:

The Birth of the Lakes of Kashmir (A pandit folklore about origin of Springs in Kashmir, this one is about a place called Khrew, which once had more than three hundred springs and now only about eight remain. Th story and the place…some time soon)

The Rajah and the Snake Princes, rather famous story of Ali Mardan Khan and his Chinese Snake wife, also given in the most authoritative work on the subject, ‘Folk-Tales of Kashmir’ by Rev. J. Hinton Knowles (1888)

Phutu, the Dwarf. (‘Foot Two’ of English), is rather funny tale of an unlikely hero.

Lelemal

The Farmer’s Wife and the Tiger

She who became the Sister of the Prince. An interesting tale in which an evil Afghan prince is reformed after he takes a Pandit woman as sister. The story gives the name of the evil Prince’s father, who is a thorough good fellow, as ‘Sultan Jannulabdin’. An obvious reference to Zain-ul-Abidin, the Budshah. However, in this story, it is the Prince who suffers from an ailment (a curse) and is cured by a Pandit woman whom he had earlier disrespected.

The King of the Crocodiles. About a girl who is almost force married to a Crocodile who doesn’t turn out to be a bad guy.

The Princess of the Green Chili. This one about a little Chili lady raised by a Jinn. A typical ‘put-to-sleep’ Kashmiri tale involving birds.

The illustration by Edna Machanick are truly imaginative and give the magical feel of the story and the place perfectly. The only other illustrated version of Kashmiri folktales is by ‘Kashmiri folk tales’ (1962) S. L. Sadhu in which local talent was utilised, but the illustration by Edna Machanick are more expansive and detailed.

It is amazing the places our tales have traveled. Tales we have forgotten. It is amazing the places I have to recollect them from. This beautiful book of Kashmiri folktales come all the way from South Africa. The name Edna Machanick is much respected there is even a scholarship awarded in her name to female undergrad students.

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April 23, 2014October 12, 2020

Sharaf Rashidov’s Song of Kashmir

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.

December 15, 2013October 12, 2020

St. John’s Bible in Kashmiri, 1940s

Man Mohan Munshi Ji shares Kashmiri Bible from his collection. He say’s, ‘ I studied this particular Bible, ‘Yuhanna sinz injil’ in then C.M.S Headow Memorial High School in late 1940s’

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July 4, 2013October 12, 2020

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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July 3, 2013October 12, 2020

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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November 28, 2012October 12, 2020