reenactment Archives - SearchKashmir

August 26, 2013October 12, 2020

Biscoe’s Cure

When Tyndale Biscoe started his school, among many problems he had to deal with while trying to correct the character of Kashmiris was a problem of particularly vicious nature. He found most of his students addicted to literature of the dirty kind. He found the problem to be of epidemic proportions. He needed a cure for the disease. The solution he came up had a typical stamp of ingenuity. He talked to Dr. Neve and asked him how much paper can a human body have before it causes any serious damage. After getting the scientific estimate he put his solution into play: Any boy caught with such dirty literature was made to eat it.

Did the Pandit boys, who were probably not even allowed to have Tomato, wonder if paper is Satvik or Tamasic?

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An Ad from The Indian Express dated December 9, 1942

Grande Odalisque (1814) by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres.
The painter added a couple of extra vertebrae, an anatomical inaccuracy,
to make the painting more alluring, more eastern, he made the back of the woman more serpentine.

‘Serpentine Head Gear’
Kashmiri Pandit Woman. 1939. [By Ram Chand Mehta]
A recently heard a Pandit priest claim that all Kashmiri women come from ‘Nagas’ or the Snake race.

The snake woman or Lamia by J. Lockwood Kipling, father of Rudyard Kipling.
It accompanies the story of ‘The snake-woman and the king Ali Mardan’
in ‘Tales of the Punjab : told by the people’ (1917) by Flora Annie Webster Steel (1847-1929). Another version of the story can be found in ‘Folk-Tales of Kashmir’ by Rev. J. Hinton Knowles (Second Edition, 1893. Narrated by Makund Bayu of Srinagar), in which the snake woman claims to be Chinese and Ali Mardan Khan, actually the Mughal governor of Kashmir, builds Shalimar Garden for her. In Kashmiri the name for the snake is given as Shahmar.

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Kadru, is the mother of Nagas, and wife of Kashyap, the mythical creator of Kashmir. In, Adi Parva, we learn that Kadru cursed her offsprings for not doing her bidding. The curse with played out by King (Arjun’s great-grandson) Janamejaya’s famous Snake Sacrifice. The serpent race was saved by intervention by Astika, born of wedlock between Rishi Jaratkaru of Yayaver and Manasa, sister of Vasuki Naga.

[Near Jammu, Mansar Lake is the spot associated with Mansa Devi. One of the early description of the Lake can be found in Vigne’s travelogue from 1842]

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July 29, 2013October 12, 2020

double gilaas

Cherry Earrings
July. 2013.
I had to promise my little cousin a ‘pizza treat’ for posing

My mother remembers
in spring
she would run around with cherry earrings.

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Cherry Picking. Kashmir. 1953
(From the archive of Indian Photo Division)

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dimyo dilaas

gandyo walaas

peirtho gilaas kulni tal

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Kashmiri word for Cherry comes from Persian word for Cherry: gilaas

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Update: April, 2016

Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Irania film “The Silence” (1998)

March 20, 2013October 12, 2020

Ja’tee tee, Ritual Burning of Kangri

I witnessed the scene for the first and only time probably in the beginning of spring of year 1989. I must have been seven when I saw my uncle dancing with a burning Kangri. That was the last time I witnessed the ritual of Ja’tee tee. The scene stuck in my mind. The joy of it. Then we moved to Jammu in 1990 and that was that.

In Jammu, this year, after spending months trying to motivate my uncle, I finally got him to reenact the ritual around this Teela Aetham (‘Eigth of the oil/sesame’, held on the 8th day of the bright fortnight of Phalguna month of the lunar calendar).

The ritual is simple. We pick an old worn out Kangri, take out its earthen pot, fill the remenant wooden remains with dry grass, tie a rope to it one of the handles, set the Kangri on fire, hurl is around in circles singing: Ja’tee tee, Ja’tee tee… It’s alight, it’s afire.

In Kashmir the ritual would be held on a river bank and at the end, the lit Kangri would be hurled into the river. This Pandit ritual symbolized end of winter and the beginning of spring.

I made this short video and later showed it to my grandmother who then remembered an old ditty for Ja’tee tee.

video link

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November 28, 2012October 12, 2020

Faces. Again.

June 11, 2011October 12, 2020

Constructing the Memory of a Room by Gargi Raina

In the book-shack of a resto-bar came across brochure (dated 2007) for an art show by Gargi Raina titled ‘Constructing the Memory of a Room’. The name and the way it is presented says it all.

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September 15, 2010October 12, 2020

The Reenactment – II

Left:1988. My mother does tamul ~~satun~~ tcharun- cleaning rice.
The image is one of the last photographs of the house.
Right: 2010. She has a habit of eating rice while she does it, two sweeps of hand over the heap and in the next move she pops two grains into her mouth, and she does it with the deftness of a bird. For that she got the name Munne’Haer – Munna the Myna.

March 9, 2010October 12, 2020