Tag: remembrance

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Artist in Exile – Invoking the grief within, with shaky hands

Guest Post by Jheelaf Parimu, daughter of Painter Late Bansi Parimu. This piece was triggered by the film Shikara (2020).




As we complete 30 years in exile, I reflect on my recurring journey of disconnect. I go back to more than three decades to revisit the routes I navigated, that seemed disparate from my co-travellers. My life in Kashmir is like a dream playing repeatedly on a spool where I recall the image of my late father as someone secular to the core. That we co-existed peacefully with a Muslim majority is a fact, that there were instances of subtle undercurrent of distrust towards Pandits is a reality too. Precisely in that milieu my father like many others followed humanism and compassion, that became my ideology in my growing years by default and consequently by design. My DNA defies what most like to call ‘logic’.

My parents in Ganderbal, Kashmir, 1971.
Takhleeq (creation) our modest cottage, was an artistic marvel designed and built brick by brick by my father in 1968 – it was his sanctum sanctorum. Years later he purchased his sister’s house, adjacent to Takhleeq, and named it Tassavur (imagination). Both my parents were artists, wrote and spoke Urdu fluently, were multifaceted and self-made. They rubbed shoulders with many a talent, from Begum Akhtar to M.F. Hussain. Music and Art were their religion, money was scarce, dreams were simple, passion was abundant. Life was merciful.
There may have been a disconnect between my reality and the reality that most Kashmiris lived or projected. The disjoint being purely a consequence of being raised in an unconventional and liberal yet somewhat sheltered set up. My experiences were different, my mindset was different, my life was different – by no means perfect or superior. I was privileged.
My father and my younger sister, Takhleeq in backdrop and Tassavur seen partly, Srinagar 1987.
My reality changed the night of 19th January 1990 when I first heard the announcements from the mosques, the decibel moved higher with each elevated slogan, the footsteps grew louder on the streets. Like many of us, I too hoped it was transitory and would soon be under control. 
A Muslim woman, who was a stranger to us, kept calling on our landline that night, reassuring my mother that everything would be fine, she even knew my father was away. Her husband had been summoned to join the protest too, she confessed. Perhaps that was the faith and camaraderie we were habituated to; the unpreparedness for the events that would unfold was therefore inevitable.

My mother decided to pack us off for few days, opting to stay back till our father returned. Clearly, our family was left off the Governor’s fictional guest list, the unaffordable flight tickets served as curfew pass; the journey was uneventful. My sister was sent to Jammu, I landed in Delhi, both oblivious to what lay in store.

Ignorance was not going to be bliss this time round.
My mother [Jaya Parimu] in center, with her sister, brothers and the legendary Begum Akhtar.
Srinagar in early 70’s
Come July 1990, my father, who up until then was refusing to leave Kashmir, arrived in Jammu. Still in denial, still hoping things would settle down in few months. The whole family gathered there, trying to figure out what to do with our lives, with each passing day the reality started sinking in; we were not going back home. My Maasi (mother’s sister), who had migrated too, owned a house in Jammu and readily accommodated us. We struggled to adapt to the new environs.

By now my father was restless. Days were dark, nights were long with no sign of dawn.

My short stay in Jammu had exposed me to a myriad of challenges my community was facing due to our sudden exodus – the initial hostility and suspicion from locals, the minuteless meetings in Geeta Bhawan, multiple members of a family holed up in one room tenements, the serpentine relief queues, sunstrokes, scorpio and snake bites, termites vining up the walls, transit camps, waitlisted appointments with renowned Neurologist Dr. Sushil Razdan, premature deaths and obituaries in Daily Excelsior, encountering hordes of Pandits in mini buses with moist towels on their heads, trying to beat the heat.

And my beautiful grandmother transitioning from a graceful sari to a frowned upon paper thin cotton maxi, her exemplary ‘survivor spirit’ intact. The list can never be exhaustive, the pain can never be articulated – we certainly had not chosen this. Yet, I must admit, I was far more privileged.

My father, in those briefest 12 months of exile, did everything in his power to darn the shreds. He even secured my admission in the prestigious IP College in Delhi University under migrant quota, mother had preferred I study in Jammu. My parents had limited resources but had sensibly invested in a small house on the outskirts of Delhi in Ghaziabad, barring that we had nothing left. A non-Kashmiri friend suggested they name it Swarika – an abode of art and music- my parents were not destined to rebuild nests.

My mother, a Professor in the Camp College continued living in Jammu with my sister who was enrolled in Presentation Convent. I moved with my father to Ghaziabad, we had to share the house with our sympathetic tenant who did not wish to render us homeless all over again. Swarika remained a dream.

My father was even contributing to the formation of ‘Panun Kashmir’ in its very early days. I am not sure what he was thinking, perhaps he would have steered it in a different direction had he lived longer. He was possibly going through his own manthan(churning) at that point. In the same breath he was not losing sight of reality and would often sigh “the common Kashmiri is now trapped between the security forces and the militants, where will he go?”. He was thinking a lot, about innumerable issues, while thoughts and intents of the heart were getting usurped by failing survival instincts.

I was frivolously revelling in my newly found freedom in Delhi, my father was withering away in melancholy, the shedding leaves of autumn were renouncing the ensuing seasons. Back in Kashmir I had known him as a fighter who had triumphed bigger battles single-handedly, a rebel, extremely strong willed and self-respecting, a non-conformist who did not believe in God but certainly in good deeds. Fearing that people’s respect and adulation for him would instinctively raise expectations of me, I would at times want to go into hiding. His imprint was so overpowering.

And here I was living with him in exile now, helplessly watching him shrivel and grieve, buried in sorrow, slowly becoming a nonentity. What ailed him?

One sultry evening in Ghaziabad, in his sparsely furnished bedroom cum studio, I saw him seated on his swivel chair facing the easel, gazing at an unfinished painting, his back towards me. I stepped closer to read his pain and then I heard the sobs. That was the first and the last time I saw my father break down. Kashmir was his salvation; clearly, he was choosing it over his young wife and loving daughters.

My mother nonetheless was accommodating, she suggested he return to Kashmir given his constant pining and yearning. He dismissed the suggestion “bu tarre’huh, magar su maahol keti ruud” (I would return but that ambience does not exist anymore), he was anything but bitter. A year of separation appeared like a lifetime to him. On 29th July 1991 he was gone, his galloping gangrene paled before his bleeding heart that perpetually lamented for home.

For once I wanted to live in my father’s shadow, but the mighty Chinar had fallen. I knew, life would never be the same.

The void became deeper, he could have lived but not to witness what ‘his Kashmir’ was turning into. Varied shades of ‘betrayal’ killed him – betrayed by the Indian state, by the institutional silence, by all those he considered his own, those who swore by him, revered him, trusted him, those Coffee House cronies, those aspirants he helped achieve political success without seeking recognition, those he mentored, groomed and supported silently and unconditionally, those who hailed him for his secular credentials. He was heartbroken. A bullet could not have done worse.

My mother turned out to be more resilient and resolute, after my father’s demise she kept returning to Kashmir; even courageously witnessed Takhleeq and Tassavur being taken down, to lay foundation for new homes for the new owners with new hopes. She had made a pact with destiny, ‘maahol’ notwithstanding. She made no claims, she was not going to wait for an invitation nor seek permission. And to her credit I got a little closure by visiting Kashmir, after 20 long years. Not many were as fortunate and are waiting till date.

As social media started gaining popularity, once again I became privy to innumerable firsthand accounts of Kashmiri Pandits and many facets of our collective tragedy. Consumed by my own survival and misfortunes, I had done nothing for my community, especially the underprivileged, the disconnect became evident. The suffering can never be compared, the humiliation can never be measured, the tragedy can never be underplayed.

Fast forward 2020, in my delusional optimism I still seek answers to countless questions, my father long gone, I can neither match his tenacity nor his foresight. However, as much as majority might want to justify political/religious aspirations, facts glare back – a innocuous ethnic minority persecuted, a community with no resolve to kill or terrorise, a minority that should have been protected not displaced, we were neither consulted nor given a choice – the gun alienated, the silence killed.

Those who refused to perform in the ‘Danse Macabre’ orchestrated by the devils, were not spared either; the syncretic social fabric was ripped apart, the mutual respect slaughtered, a whole generation raised on fabrications denying them the opportunity to seek truth; baseless insinuations that the victimized symbolized persecutors. Unquestionably human rights violations in Kashmir must not be brushed under the carpet, nor should the chronicles of betrayal be denied. The denial continues to betray.

While I am mustering courage, having watched the trailer and ‘behind the scenes’ of ‘Shikara’ and reading the mixed reviews from India, I am contemplating if it is creating a further rift between the already estranged communities. Truth be told, we need the state actors to play their role in place of movie directors, more so in backdrop of polarisation in the country. Needless to admit it has been my fervent desire, a film be made on our exodus. As Rahul Pandita rightly pointed, too much has been kept pent up for 30 years.

Insurmountable walls have been erected in place of steady bridges over these decades. Abyss has quadrupled the monsters.

The international release date of ‘Shikara’ awaits announcement, I may not even get to see it on the big screen, though I am visualizing myself in a cinema hall, both nervous and eager. I start vacillating between reality, utopia, dreams, slumber, wakefulness, wondering if there would ever be any ‘truth and reconciliation’ in my lifetime; will justice be delivered to Pandits, in an ideal world the first step would be acknowledgement.

I find myself transposed to a migrant camp where I discover the two communities, facing each other across a long wooden table. The table is laid, not for the ‘Last Supper’ but ‘Truth or Dare’. An intense game begins, few take turns to perform a dare, others put forth questions, candid responses are bartered. At the far end of the table I spot Haji Saab, seated right opposite him, my father in his swivel chair.

The game concludes, there are no winners.

My father speaks up ‘hum aayenge watan apne, magar su maahol keti ruud’. Dad was cremated in Delhi, I have no recollection of locale, I did not register anything, Raakh (ashes) could only travel to Chandrabhaga. Jhelum had changed its course.

Each one of us has our own ‘Shikara’ immured deep inside. It merits a vent.
My father in Dubai, 1978.
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Matchbox Dwellers

I remember a summer spent going around houses asking for Eedi. Asking random strangers for money. Even then I understood there was no difference between post eid money and post Shivratri money. Back then I had a friend, all I remember is that his name started with Q. That Eid morning, he asked me to recite Kalma…I did…and it was done. I could tag along with him asking for money. We made lot of money and spent is all on ice cream. He would call me when ever a Bakra was getting zibah. The place was always crowded, you couldn’t see anything. Only drains in the entire neighbourhood used to turn red. He was a strange fellow. If he saw human blood on ground he would put soil and bury it. For a whole month he wouldn’t talk without spitting And he would piss while sitting. The kid was a Kashmiri like me. But, this was all in Jammu. Kashmir didn’t have this story anymore. Qadir, that was his name. 

There was another much elder kid, an adult…had a nice big zabiba mark on his head from all the 5 time prayers he must have read in 23 years. The man could swing the ball like Imran Khan. He would play sometimes and people would watch just to be awed with speed. A man in pathan suit, a short run up, and the plastic ball bends in air like a flying snale. Sometimes, he would bring news of Kashmir. One time he told me ditties they were singing in Kashmir for pandits. There was one funny song in which he would ask a pandit to keep paache (feet) clean…for he was coming to have them. Even then I knew it was a sort of warning. I still don’t understand why they wanted to eat our feet. Then there was Nafi, he was best buddies was a guy whose father we liked to imagine was in RAW, because he was a Kaw. However, Kaw was more of a Jammu boy, his mother was a Dogra, we could tell, he was dark. He was the kid with the biggest comic collect, the costliest bat, a VCR, a color TV, he had the best of everthing. And Nafi from Kashmir, kid with crew cut and Uzbek looks was his second in command. We all hung out together. I had come to Jammu from Kashmir with a bat that had no handle, a cousin had broken it. The bat was no good but I continued using it for a few years, playing without handle. Finally father bought me a Kashmir willow. Nafi came to check out the bat. Nafi, Nafi, Nafi, how mad you made me that day. Nafi took the bad and then went door to door in the quaters we lived in. He went to each boy in the neighbourhood, me in tow. Showed the bat, “We have a new bat.” Another door, another kid, “We have a new bat.” Another door, another kid, “I got another bat”. Another door, “I got another bat”. I got worried, irritated, “tommorow he may declare it to be his bat, he has all the witnesses also now.” We must have gone to 20 houses like that. I told him to return the bat, I had to go back him. He was not done yet, there were 20 more doors to knock. He laughed. He knew what he was doing. Something inside me snapped, I made a dash at the bat. He wouldn’t let go. Nafi was not even a batter, he was a bowler, he could hit, but he was a bowler. His grip on the bat tightened. I pushed, he pulled. A second later we bother were down rolling on the ground like two snakes grappling. It was not about bat anymore. It was something more primal. I could see his eyes, just as he could see mine. There was hate that normally comes with age. But, we were locked, neither of us ready to give up. As we rolled on the ground, from the corner of my eyes, with horror I could see, a little girl with a big rock in hand running towards us screaming something that my sense were too shocked to register immediately. “Myani Khodaya!!! Baya!!” (My God! Brother!) It was Nafi’s youngest sister, no more than seven or eight. She was about to bash my head. Nafi turned, he left the bat, got up, took the stone from her hand. Tuned around towards me and dropped it. He then slapped his sister yelling, “Maetchi…ye chu mai boi. Ghas dafa!” (Mad girl! He is my brother. Be lost). I got up, took my bat and left for home.

A few days later I was sitting at the window with a matchbox in hand. I saw Nafi passing, I threw the matchbox at him. “A gift for you.” Nafi picked it up with a smile and opened. A big yellow Tumudi, a wasp flew out singing that stingy song. Nafi jumped, both feet in air, running away, thowing the matchbox away. It was a scene straight out of Charlie Chaplin. Nafia was still shivering when he looked up screaming, “Batta gokha pagal!” (Have you lost you mind Pandit!)

Still laughing, I replied, “I am coming down. We have a new bat, get everyone, let’s play.”

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P.S.

Feb, 2019. The quaters in Jammu where site of big communal flare-up between Kashmiri Muslims quater dwellers and outside locals. 

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mygrandfatherhadnomemory

October, 2014

There was a storm last night. One of the window panes broke. It had been accidentally left open overnight. Grandmother rang me up on phone to tell me all about it.

‘He would have given me an earful. He would have said, “Ye kus taavan sunuth!”
It’s been about a year now. I guess she still misses him.

They wanted me to write an obituary. I couldn’t. I couldn’t sum up a life in just a few words. In the end, he got an obit, the kind that has become the default for most Pandits of his generation who died outside of Kashmir in exile: ‘He was a Karamyogi…we remember…Papaji.’

I try to remember ‘Daddy’. The most lucid memory is that of him sitting down to eat. The rice in his plate doused generously in lassi. A man of fine eating manner, his plate, even if too watery, was always neat. It was almost like watching a ritual. At the end of the rite, he would wash his hands in the plate, take a sip of water, swish it in his mouth, hold out his right hand like a little wedge, sprout out the water onto it and into the plate, all without a sound. Then he would take out his dentures, clean them up a bit by pouring some water on them and then put them back into a little yellow plastic container. It was a ritual he followed most of his life. 
My grandfather had no teeth. I laugh a little when I hear stories about how peaceful Kashmir was in old days. Indeed, a toothless peaceful Kashmir. Somewhere in 1970s, much before I was born, grandfather lost his front molars in a neighbourhood fight. It wasn’t his fight. Two Muslim neighbours were fighting over the right to erect a fence. My grandfather, like a good neighbourhood ‘Pandit Ji’, was there to help settle the matter. The issue heated up. One of the guys swung a bamboo stick but missing the intended target, instead, hit my grandfather on the mouth. Two of his teeth popped out and onto the ground. Blood sprouted out of his mouth like a fountain of Shalimar in spring. My grandfather was afraid on the sight of blood for the rest of his life. He would pass out if he saw too much blood. Many decades later, he once witnessed a bus accident in Jammu, we had to collect him from hospital for he had fainted on the road on seeing the scene. One would think he ought to tell tales about how he lost his teeth in a fight from a Muslim blow, but he never did. It wasn’t anything worth telling. Maybe it wasn’t. In the evening of the incident, the bamboo swinger came home to apologize. It was an accident. He had tea and left. However, over the years, grandfather started loosing rest of his molars too.
I never understood. If my parents wanted me to hate Muslims, all they had to do was point me to my grandfather’s denture and tell me a story about what they did to him. I would have cooked my heart in oils of hatred every time I saw my grandfather eat. It’s not like they didn’t tell me other stories, but in this story, ‘Muslim’ was not the point. In this case, it was just an accident.

After grandfather died, all the relatives came, it was a big gathering. Here, I asked his children again, “Why didn’t you tell me a Muslim did it.” They still answer, ‘Why would we lie to you?’

My grandmother added in mock jest, “In any case, he had crooked protruding teeth. Good riddance!”

I rolled my tongue over my front teeth, felt the point where one of my front teeth bends in a little and seems mashes into another. Grandfather did pass some bad genes to me.

When my grandmother married my grandfather, he worked the accounts in Shali Store, the government grain store. Grandfather was in his early twenties while she was still fifteen. 
“My mother never checked his teeth. She did secretly go to check on him at his work place, the Shali store, but only managed to get a glimpse of the back of his neck. Mother came back and said the boy is fine. He can walk upright. That was about it. I was married to him”. As my grandmother recalled this, his elder brother wiped a tear and in a choking voice added, “She was too young, she was just too young. She didn’t understand what was going on, she even ran back into the arms of her mother at the time of final send off.”
I try to imagine my grandfather with crooked teeth, with teeth, but I can’t.

Instead, I see him sitting down to shave, his little shaving kit spread out. Working up lather using a badger shaving brush. Taking extra time to shape his toothbrush moustache. Once done, his face covered in little newspaper bits to stop bleeding from little cuts.

“Kya chukh wuchaan? Aaz ti aav rath. What are you looking at? I again bled today.”
In his last days, his sons would give him those shaves. The moustache was long gone. He must have first grown that pencil moustache just when the subcontinent was about to get divided, just when new nations were sprouting. I remember the dates of the wars but I don’t remember the birthdate of my grandfather. Our life stories are just footnotes to a greater story of great wars shaping up an adolescent world.
In the violence that followed, as the war arrived in Kashmir, the story goes, my grandfather, like many others, decided to leave Kashmir. He did get onto one of those Dakota planes ferrying refugees to Delhi. But, the plane refused to take off. It was overloaded. My grandfather was among the people who got off-loaded. The impulse was gone, he turned back home and he was to leave Kashmir only decades later in 1990. They say Pamposh colony of Delhi was started by the men that got on those escape planes. This simple gaffe ensured my grandfather was not going to be a Dilliwalla Kashmiri but stay a Kashmirwalla Kashmiri.
This was also the war that ensured that my grandmother will be pulled out of school and married off at a young age. The joke in the family: “She could have at least been a collector!” Yes, she did teach me the spelling of ‘Thank You’ in Hindi.  Dhanyawad.
They got married in somewhere in early 1950s. Soon children were born. They had four. Two sons and two daughters, my father being the eldest. Grandfather joined state Secretariat as a lowly government employee. He had studied till B.Sc., wanted to study more, but running a family meant finding a secure job. He was born in a big family where joint family system was still the norm. His father had died just after his birth. Grandfather never could recall his face. Youngest among three brothers, he was raised by his mother and brothers. And there was the family of step-brothers – his father had married twice. We once had land, lots of land. It was slowly gone, all sold off. In the joint family system of Kashmir back then, everyone pitched in to run the kitchen and expenses. His children would ask for new school shoes.

His youngest daughter remembers, “Papaji had a wicked sense of humor, he would never say, ‘no’. He would say, ‘I shall buy you ten’. We soon got to understand it meant you were not getting any.”

In 1990, my grandfather didn’t want to leave Kashmir. He joined his children in Jammu only after trying to wait out the madness for two more months. In 1989, his youngest daughter was about to get married. He had retired from the government job, but to raise money, he was still working. I was eight at the time. I recall winter evenings he spent counting crisp notes. I was to think my grandfather a rich man. At the time he was working as a cashier for a Punjabi Medical wholesaler in Srinagar. I think their bestseller was ‘Boroline’.  I can smell Boroline when I think of those years.

Then I remember Jammu, and an afternoon he was hit by tail of big bull “Billo Bhel”, Grandfather smells of Zandu balm. In those early days of Jammu, I remember him writing and receiving letters. Yellow postcards and blue envelope inlays. From and to relatives that were now spread all over the country. Often the letter would end, ‘Rest you know what has happened.’

In Jammu, he often took me on walks. His long excruciating walks, familiarising me to the new place. His habit of getting up early in the morning. His habit of walking steps ahead of his wife who would walk too slow. His habit of making weird funny sound to make his grandchildren laugh. His habit of working the garden of his new house in Jammu.

We finally started to built a new house in Jammu in 1996. It completed only in 2015. A vague cement copy of our house in Srinagar. We moved in even before the house had windows. The first monsoon, water just flooded in from the wall. An empty cup was afloat. We laughed and laughed. It took just two more years to get the windows done. The money was raised by selling-off the house in Kashmir. The land for this house in Jammu was bought in late 1960s, a direct consequence of sectarian polarisation of Hindus and Muslims of valley during ‘Parmeshwari Handoo Case’ of 1967 when a young Pandit woman married an older Muslim man. The violence that followed scared Pandits and some of them started looking for an escape strategy. It was his brothers who suggested buying a piece of a land in Jammu. This was well before politics of ‘Love Jihad’ was employed in Indian mainlands to polarise community. It is as if Kashmir was a little laboratory where future of India was getting shaped by some mad social scientists.

Grandfather’s elder son-in-law remembered him as a true ‘Sanghi Batta‘, a term often used for a Kashmiri Pandit member of the ‘Sangh’ of which RSS is the spurious fountainhead. In 1990, among others, Sanghi Battas, or anyone suspected of being a Sanghi Batta were the prime targets of the Islamic flavoured Kashmiri terrorist. Muslims were convinced ‘Shiv Sainiks’ were coming. I couldn’t think of my grandfather as a Sanghi Batta. I know in 1970s, he had taken part in agitation over closure of a local ancient temple in Chattabal. Like most Pandits, during the era of Nehru, he would have followed Nehru and during the time of Indira, he would have sworn by Indira. Just like most Pandits now swear by Modi. I think he did admire Vajpayee, and followed the Agra summit with much hope.

I never heard my grandfather talk about the Sangh. Like most Kashmiris he was addicted to News, he knew the politics of the land by heart. A passion for news meant piles of newspaper and every couple of months, he would ask me to carry all the junk paper to the local raddiwalla. And for this job, I could charge and he would pay me ten rupees. This way, every year I would at least make a hundred rupees. And often using them, I would buy comics or a book. My grandfather taught me to love books, he would take me to the library and I was free to read anything I liked. We would often mock fight over the right to read a book first. We read Manto and Sartre.

He once fell from a ladder while trying to change a light bulb. I laughed.

Then I moved out of Jammu to pursue higher studies. I got busy. When the studies finished, I moved to Delhi looking for a job. I remember, he told me Delhi had lot of book stores and book fairs, he gave me a small handwritten note with a list books he wanted me to buy for him:

1. In the woods of God realization by Shri Rama Tiratha
2. Yoga by Patanjali
3. Vairagya Satakam by Raja Bharthari (Bharthari)
4. Sunder Lahari by Sri Sankaracharya (Advita Ashram)

He was much older now and discovering God all over again, I was young and leaving the fold of religion. I promised him the books but never got around to buying them. I got busy. I still have the note in my pocket. I want to drown it in the lake at Harmokh.

His blood started clotting. We took him to Kashmir. He met his old neighbours. He couldn’t recognize the crossing to his house. We came back, he got a clot in his brain. He got operations.

His memory started fading. He wanted me to get married. He confused things. His speech slurred. He thought I was married. He named my imaginary wife – Chandani. He had to be prompted lines while talking to me on phone.

He started fading. He faded into a world of his own. We tried to get him back as often as we could. We played games with him. We would ask him questions from his past. We would ask him his name. We would ask him our names. Of all the answers, some would be more lucid than the other. He would often not answer at all. But, he would rattle out names of his brothers and dead relatives like they were still alive. Often, all this questioning would irritate him. His brows would raise and nose would twitch. He wouldn’t talk, but one could see it all on his face as he grit his gums. One day, when one granddaughter asked him the routine questions, he just snapped and said, “Why should I tell you the name of my brothers? Who are you?” That’s probably the last time he got angry. I remember, in Jammu, he broke the T.V. set once. He did have an angry streak.

He stopped talking. We placed a radio next to his bed. It played Kashmiri songs all day. He became a child. He would run for cover if someone raised his voice. His wife would feed him and clean him. His bed sometimes smelt of urine. Much to my grandmother’s annoyance, I would sometime lie in it while he was being given a bath. The songs were from home.

He was locked inside the house and not allowed out. He would ask to be let out. Newspapers in Jammu are full of lost old Kashmiri men. All the local shopkeepers were told to keep a watch on him. Inform, if he steps out. One day he sneaked out, father followed him, keeping a distance. He took the route to raddiwalla and managed to reach back home safely. He stopped walking.

He was now often ill. Doctors and hospitals. 

When I received the call. I knew it was serious this time. I wanted to be there when it happened. I was ready to let him go, but I wanted to see him off. I kept flying back to him. In the hospital, I thumb wrestled him. Seeing us fight, a woman from the nearby hospital bed claimed, “Pandit Ji hasn’t lost memory. He is obviously here.” I know, I was just tricking his instincts. Or, may be he was tricking me. I wasn’t there when it happened. I cried in a long time. The last time I had cried, he was fighting my mother over something that now seems inconsequential.

A few months back, a Muslim man from Srinagar called to offer condolences. An old colleague who read the “First Death Anniversary” message in the local newspaper.

I remember the last time my grandfather laughed. In his lost days, just before he stopped talking, he would laugh on a joke my father cooked up. My father would press the long Kashmiri nose of his father and utter an old Kashmiri saying:

“Bragya nas chaey hej”
Stork, your nose is crooked!

Grandfather would reply with a toothless smile:
“Nat kya chu syod“
What is straight in this world?

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The [edited] piece got published at thewire.in, 18/06/2016

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passings

Winters are not easy on elderly. Bhabhi, one of my grand aunts, passed away recently. Last month, thanks to a chance visit to Jammu, I met her for the last time. It was obvious she was in much pain. Cancer isn’t easy on body. And extreme diabetes, blood pressure, don’t  make it any easier either. You live on a diet of medicines, drips and biscuits. You live on warmth of relations. That helps till a point. Till it all again comes down to a diet of medicines, drips and biscuits.

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.

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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Of Chakmak, hah taas, Kana-Mana –Tuu and more

Guest post by Arun Jalali Ji. He run an interesting site on Vidyabhavan School (Batyaar-Alikadal & Safakadal- the baud school). Besides that he sends out some wonderful e-mails about his childhood days spent with friends at Ali Kadal , down town Srinagar.

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Remembering Early Childhood Fun Activities That Filled Our Hearts With Joy.

Of

  • Chak Mak
  • Paper Bag Blow out
  • Stamping Fish Bladder
  • Hard Whispering of “Kana-Mana –Tuu” into a Friends Ear
  • Exploding the Tiny Reel Crackers (Taas) in Kangri pot (by friction)
  • Haah Taas (Crackers that would burst by percussion)

This weekend I am trying to recollect some very tiney childhood time passe that would stir us up during our early toon days (1970s) at Alikadal. The beauty of these fun activities was not only in their frugality but also with
timing and the light taste of naughtiness (punch) associated with them. Extreme short duration of these eventful things (sometime as small as 100 micro second) never mattered to us, it would always send us into a ocean of fun or laughter .

CHAK-MAK

During our Toon days, our search for pieces of marble stones and pebbles was a never ending one. The incentive for search was this magical pair of stone that would cause a larger spark when rubbed together. Often these experiments would be conducted during night and sometimes under the Phiran. Greater the size of emanating spark , larger was the quantum of cheer on one’s face. I don’t remember indulging into any competition for one upmanship , but surely we would share our stones with our fellows for them to have fun as well.

PAPER BAG BLOW SOUND

I today feel proud that our toon days were spent in frugality, (please don’t read it as poverty). At least we didn’t spend it in damaging the nature. Today we have plastic bags that may be spoiling our immediate environment but
childhood all we had was handcrafted paper bags ,be it kandur (bakery shop) or the small groceries (buhur) all goodies were packed into small samosa’s, or some time into more expensive Paper bags.

The Fart:- we would collect the paper bags , take them to school , blow air into them and twisting the mouth of the paper sack we would smash with hand; the sound of the released air would cheer us up. Fun at no cost to parental exchequer.

STAMPING THE FISH BLADDER

Today who would believe our words if we make a comment like having derived fun from Kitchen waste. But true to each of us , whenever parents would “dress” the Fish, they would sympathetically keep the fish bladders2 for our Fun. Great pleasure to burst we never cared why the fish would have them. As per our knowledgeable feeling the fish was bestowed with these floatation devices to lend us some moments of pleasure , Typical mode of bursting these would be to place them on a flat stone and stamping with sleeper, but occasionally with hands as well. The sound of the escaping air would give us the pleasure to run the next mile effortlessly.

KANA- MANA- TU,REEL TAAS IN KANGRI POT & HAAH TAAS :

I leave it for all of to recollect these childhood memos, and share with me. I am sure most of us must be remembering these silly actions and look forward to receiving your feelings in a write up form. Do write back on
arunjalalli@gmail.com

visit: www.vidyabhavanschool.com
Under construction:
http://arunjalalli.blogspot.com/

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I do remember playing ‘Kana-Mana-tu’. I wanted to do a photo post about it. I believe my nani introduced me to the game and not in a very subtle way. It was fun.

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A dead cat on the line

And we can watch a thousand faces
Made active by one lie.
-W.H. Auden’s “In Time of War”

I was eight out playing near the gate. I heard the sound.
No matter what people tell you, the sound of distant gunfire is not frightening.
I walked out of the wooden gate and looked around. I saw the spot where my cat had died a few months ago. Run over by a truck. The body wasn’t mangled. It seemed asleep in the middle of the road, a red trickle oozing out of its one ear. For cats death is just a trick. I was just a kid, I thought, had I taken it to a hospital maybe it would have lived. But, there are no hospitals for cats that block the national highway. I think the municipal people dumped it someplace wet. It didn’t even like water. But, it was dead, so I guess it didn’t matter. Toto died.
Unlike any other day, this day I did not sit down to write numbers of passing cars.
Instead, I went back in and dug out my buried sin. The pocketknife, I had stolen from my grandfather’s shaving kit. I dug it out from the empty plot in the maze of concrete plinth. My uncle was going to add another room to his new marital house. I dug out the knife and marveled at its smooth-black-asbestos grip. I put it back in its grave and loitered around some more, maybe to think up one more crazy game. By the time I got back to the house, the news was doing the rounds. I heard: Just around the corner Army had shot some local rogue right in the butt. People asked me, ‘where was you?’ and I replied, “ Outside”. They asked me if I did see anything, I don’t know why, but I lied. They put the words. What could I say. I replied, “ Yes, I saw it all. Two shots straight, aimed at his ass. The guy fell down; they picked him up and put him into a waiting van. I think he lived.” Guess that’s how a lie is born. I must have recited these lines a thousand times. I recited the lines on demand to cousins, uncles and their wives. And I watched a thousand faces made active by this one lie.
After all these years, the lie has died its silent death. But, I still dread the line, “Do you remember the cat that died?”

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