Santosh in Kashmir
7 June, 08.
A Kashmiri, was lying on the ground in obvious pain.
A Punjabi had hit him.
He now sat and spit out tinges of blood.
In the background someone can be heard exclaiming:
Ha yemis’ha Tchu, yaara, khoon ye’vaan!
The Kashmiri was a forward and the Punjabi a defender.
Or maybe it was the way round.
Anyway, the game resumed.
Last night, I was watching on TV a Santosh Trophy quarterfinal league match between J&K and defending champions Punjab, and it turned out to be shocker. Santosh Trophy, India’s premier football tournament whose history goes back to the year 1941, is this year being held in Kashmir and is being sponsored by J&K Bank – possibly the richest institution in the J&K state since all the state coffers are with them. Football isn’t new to Kashmir, in fact, Kashmiris had their first “impure” brush with a football in around 1905 thanks to the head of a Christian Missionary School. Kashmiris are perhaps among the first in India to have learnt the game from the British; and yet, the rest of the story is only of neglect and general apathy.
The stands looked entry but the sounds of the TV suggested there was a healthy crowd in the Stadium. Srinagar field looked a bit green, if not too green. The TV coverage was sloppy as usual: at the moment of a corner kick, the camera looked more interested in making one read a banner hung in the crowd, and as usual there were no ‘action-replay’.
Scoreboard reading nil-nil after sixty minutes of play may not seem like telling of an exciting match, but those who know Indian soccer can certainly call it a hard fought match. I wanted my home team J&K to win. Although the goalie looked a little sloop,
I thought the team was playing fine. But then in the 68th minute, Punjab scored and all hell broke loose. Horror. It was Kashmir all over again on TV.
The camera was now panning on a section of the crowd that you thought didn’t exist, and there was much screaming and yelling. The camera zoomed onto a boy in the stand laughing and yelling, raising a fist in the air. Some other faces looked worried and sad faces. I thought I heard a cry peculiar to Kashmir. The game stopped. A few men in Khaki were looking towards stand, a few of them looking aggressive waving a laathi. The camera zoomed in on to a stone lying on the football field, stayed put for a few seconds. The cameramen, who had earlier trouble covering corner kicks, were now in their elements; it seems they were covering a more familiar subject.
This wasn’t the end of it.
The crowd started to surge forward. They broke the fences. The players started running. The Punjab players started running, the J&K player were walking back calmly and almost looking sad. Or may be it was a sad scene. A J&K player in white jersey ran in the direction of the fleeing Punjab players in yellow jerseys. The crowd running amok had by now captured the field, perhaps wondering what now.
Zee Sports breaks into an Ad:
How is the situation in Kashmir?
Tense.
Bengal has the corner.
And then they start telecasting some motor racing event where the graphics are in French.
My thoughts went to the “Kapil Dev incident in Srinagar” that my father often recounts. Indian Cricket Team was playing West Indies in Srinagar, and the crowd gave a feeling to Kapil Dev that he was in Pakistan. Finally, my thoughts went back to a scene from the football match: hands of that sleepy looking Sikh goolie of Kashmir team, missing the ball in a comic fashion and a defender kicking the ball out of danger area, saving what would have been a shameful goal.
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According to the Press Trust of India (PTI), a clash between the media persons and the organizers for alleged misbehavior by the latter distracted the crowd who started pelting stones towards the area of commotion. Quoting an official it says “The match will resume for the remaining 22 minutes at 0800 hrs tomorrow at the same venue”
Hope they won.
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Kashmir eventually lost the game.
During my trip to Kashmir, the subject of this particular football match did crop up in an entertaining conversation with the Kashmiri driver of my rented vehicle. The fellow turned out to be an avid football fan and according to him: the real cause of the trouble was the fact that Punjab scored the goal from the half line. The outrageous goal shocked the local crowd who believed that the ball was in the non-offensive half of the field at the time of the play – hence it should have been a ‘no goal’.
Hence the trouble.
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You may also like to read about:
The Argentinean football coach who got bashed up in Kashmir (May 30, 2007)
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| A photograph from National Geographic Magazine, Vol 40, 1921 |
Film talk about Kashmir
Someone said:
We are foolish people. when we are people of J&K, then we dont realise that tourism is our major source of income and once its lost we are in danger of sieged by poverty and unemployment but no we are surrounded by wrong notion that central govt. did not do anything for us. Sheikh Abdullah was not central govt. He was J&K’s own person and mostly he and his family members remain CM of J&K.
Someone replied:
While I agree with what you wanted to say through your post, Peace and all.
Nevertheless, I can safely say that you do not know what the problem in Kashmir is all about. You also used the word ‘self respect’. I have heard this word used a thousand times by Kashmiris when they are told about ‘Tourism and poverty and unemployment…’
Their reply: ‘what about the self-respect’ ‘Swabhiman’ and ‘Bharat ke tukdau par palna…’.
Guess we can blame Bollywood for such cheesy dialogues.
Sheikh Abdullah, the great one. Kashmir was crying when he died. You know what they did to his grave many years later. They piled shit on it and people have since desecrated it many times since. You know why. Cause he lost his peoples’ respect. People thought he sold Kashmir to India. And his Son… At first nobody took him seriously. He was a mas’khara. He went roving around town on his scooter with Shabana Azmi as Pillion rider. Then he matured to be a fulltime Joker. I have seen him on local T.V channel singing Dilip kumar song ‘Sukh ke sab saathi, Dukn me na koi, Mere Ram…’ in a temple. Talk full blown Bollywood. Who would take him seriously?
You want people to stop being paranoid. Post 1989. There are generations of people in Kashmir who grew up seeing Army on the streets with guns, cement bunkers on street corners. For them it must be common usage to say something like, ‘ Hey Kiddo! Bring me half kg meat from the shop near CRPF bunker. No! not the shop near BSF bunker… That stuff isn’t good.’
Is this normal conversation? Are these people normal?
Well, it isn’t easy being normal living under the much used term Shadow of Guns. Hearing blasts, gun shots, sirens, blackouts, bunker, fuji…. a whole lot of a new Vocab that normal people can learn. They must be seeing empty depilated houses of Pandits everyday…at night the ones without light. Maybe they think about the price it would fetch, about business and about a no good kashmiri Pandit getting richer and about building a shopping complex over it … again just business. Or maybe some feel genuinely sad looking at those houses. But, then what good is Sadness.
There must be a whole new generation of Muslims in Kashmir who wouldn’t know what a Pandit looks like. They might think I have horns, wooden hooves and a big Saffron Tilak on my head. And a whole new generation of Pandits may think that the Kashmiri Muslims are the one with horns, wooden hooves and a taqiyah.
It all becomes a one big Mobius Strip.
Having said all this. I still don’t understand why was I thrown out of Kashmir. Who is the director of this film that I can fuck? But, it’s no film. It’s life.
A film can have a perspective, a voice, an opinion, a message, a moral, or just a plain ol’story; it can offer an opinioned solution, an Ad, some song and dance, mountains and snow.
A life can only have miniaturized elements of these.
Film offers certainty and permanence where life offers none. Many people attach with so-called Movements of Liberty, rights blah blah…for the same aim : certainty and permanence.
“We live in the trenches out there. We fight. We try not to be killed, but sometimes we are. That’s all.”
~All Quiet on the Western Front
Just like this dialogue, uncertainty of life told in front of camera or in a page of a Novel is a Certain statement. It may or may not be binding in real life but to the work, it’s binding. And to the people reading or watching it. It may become binding or appear binding.
A filmmaker or a writer puts a lot on line when he goes out to state, ‘this is what I believe to be ‘certain and binding’ ’. History and people may not judge them kindly. And in a still developing Nation like India, it can at times be labeled as ‘going against the process of Nation building’. ‘Anti-National’.
So, it’s all quiet on all Fronts, watch the naach gana, occasional news, sip a cuppa Irish coffee and be glad that you are not living in the same Universe.
-A conversation that strangely( or not so strangely) took place at a Cinema Blog
