There are some photographs in Brian Brake’s 1957 Kashmir collection that I feel deserve individual attention. This one because comparatively Babri and Hydrabad are simple.
The thought occurred to me a few years ago when I showed a few images on this blog to my Nani. Among these images was an old photograph of Mosque of Shah Hamadan and just for the fun of it I quizzed her if she knew which place it was.
Her answer was quick. With hands held in a namaskar she said, ‘ Kali Mandar’.
I knew the history of this place, both the oral and the written one, about the fights, about how this spot stood for both a mosque and a temple and probably a Buddhist shrine too, but this knowledge didn’t make me realize what this place would have meant for people who lived in Srinagar during a particular era. Most of the old western travelogues I read simply referred to it as the Mosque of Shah Hamadan. Discussed it’s architecture and importance is discussed. In one book, ‘Houseboating in Kashmir’ (1934), an angrez woman, Alberta Johnston Denis, probably finding ‘men only’ policy of the shrine incomprehensible wrote:
Shah Hamadan was holy, according to the Mohammedans of Kashmir; but whatever he may actually have been, in their loyalty to him, at least, they were intolerant. To this day, this is evidenced in the inscription, elaborately carved on the verandah over the entrance, which, translated, reads: “This is the tomb of Shah Hamadan, who was a great saint of God. Whoever does not believe this, may his eyes be blinded and if he still does not believe it, may he go to Hell.”
In one of these books, I did read about Pandits who while going about their daily business, would pass along this place, stop at a particular spot where water could be seen oozing out and bow down and wash their hands and face. The pull of a hidden holy spring. A spring of strange stories, stories of Kali Nag, an ancient spring, that apparently sprang up just at the moment when Ram killed Ravan, a spring that kids are told holds broken bits of ancient sculptures, a dark spring they say turns you blind if you look into it. Stories of flying chappals and falling gods.
An interesting account on birth and survival of the spot is given by Pandit Anand Koul in his book ‘Archaeological Remains In Kashmir’ (1935):
Going up by boat, one’s attention is arrested farther on by a large building on the right bank between the 3rd and the 4th Bridges, which is called Shah-i-Hamamdan.
There is on this spot a spring, sacred to Kali. There was a Hindu temple over it which was built by Pravarasena II (110-70 A.D.) and was called Kali-Shri. The Mahall, in which it was situated, is still called Kalashpur, a corruption of Kali-Shri-pur. This temple was destroyed by Sultan Qutb-ud-Din (1373-94 A.D.) and, with its materials, he built a khanaqah. The later got burnt down twice and was rebuilt.
Soon after the conquest of Kashmir by Sikhs (1819) the Sikh Governor, Sardar Hari Singh, ordered the demolition of the mosque, saying that as it was a Hindu shrine, the Muhammadans should give up their possession of it. He deputed a military officer, named Phula Singh, with guns which were levelled towards the mosque from the Pathar Masjid Ghat, and everything was ready to blow it away. The Muhammadans then went to Pandit Bir Bal Dhar [a hero, a villian based on which Kashmir narrative you hold dear] who, having brought the Sikhs into Kashmir, was in great power, and requested him to intervene and save the mosque. He at once went to the Governor and told him that the Hindu shrine, though in the Muhammadans, was in a most protected condition and the removal of the mosque would be undersirable as it would simply lay it open to constant pollution by all sorts of people. There upon Sardar Hari Singh desisted from knocking it down.
On the wall fronting the river the Hindus have put a large ochre mark, and worship the goddess Kali there.
The spot captured by Brian Brake in around 1957. A spot that is now claimed and hidden by a tree gone wild. Claimed by a grayness that now fills the recent photographs of Kashmir. A place very simply once claimed in speeches made in Indian parliament floor as proof of syncretic culture of Kashmir.
In the homes of the ignorant the wise pandit was lost;
And the swan was lost among the crows.
My mother doesn’t expect me to remember this special place she used to take me. ‘You were too young,’ She always says. Back then my mother was a young government teacher, serving in a school at a place simply called Tsrar by Kashmiris. These were the first few and the only ‘working’ years of her life. She was learning to cook. She was newly married. She would travel to work from Chattabal to Tsrar, take a tempo to Iqbal Park, then a short walk to New Tsrar Adda, and then a bus to Tsar. In the bus she would often fall asleep on her seat. One time, after she accidentally head bumped a fellow passenger, she took to knitting in bus, just to stay awake. You can’t read books on bumpy bus rides. Knitting sweaters on the other hand is an enticing option. Soon her hands, in true old school teaching tradition, were always knitting. She kept at it even as he sat upon a class. One time she even came close to getting busted by the headmistress. That time, on being jumped by the headmistress, my mother hid the sweater she was knitting for me under her arms, holding on tightly to it under her shawl, even as the suspicious headmistress asked her to hand over the roll-register, the question papers, the chalk, the duster and finally that piece of paper in the corner of the classroom. My mother just held on to that sweater under her left arm. When the headmistress left, my mother looked out the window and sent a little prayer of thanks in the direction of the wooden minaret that stood over the ancient saint’s last resting place. While she served in that town, she would visit the shrine ritually, almost everyday. On some days, when I had no school, maybe a Christian holiday or a non-gazetted holiday or maybe on a second Saturday, she would take me along.
‘You don’t remember do you? If only could go there again! It was a good place.’
vethavavas tan nani su ti doha Nasaro ton vagara ta syan pani su ti doha Nasaro
nishi rani to vurani khani su ti doha Nasaro
vurabata ta gadagani su ti doha Nasaro
The body exposed to the cold river winds blowing,
Thin porridge and half-boiled vegetables to eat-
There was a day, O Nasaro
My spouse by my side and a warm blanket to cover us,
A sumptuous meal and fish to eat-
There was a day, O Nasaro
I don’t remember. But then… the only memory this place brings to my mind is that of a lunch break spent in my mother’s school staff room dreading the thought of having to eat Girdas that looked menacingly fungal red, felt soggy and but were in fact just mildly painted in red of sweet mix-fruit Kisaan Jam. For the window of the staff room, the town looked grey, the color of galvanized tin and then there was the minaret. I didn’t like the thought of being there. Maybe one of the reasons why in coming years minarets were going to make my nightmares interesting – rows and rows of houses with minarets slow growing from them. Or maybe the fact that I was spending a holiday in a school wasn’t much appreciated by me.
‘I won’t eat that.’
‘You don’t have to,’ a colleague of my mother came to my rescue. ‘You should take more care about what he eats. This is the time to eat. He should be eating.’ And that day I didn’t have to eat those sad Girdas.
After a couple of years working in Tsrar, service was to take her to a village more nearer to our house, it was to take her to a village called Durbal. She would take me to this place too. To the house with a solitary walnut tree. House just beyond a brook that roared like a perpetually angry lion. At Durbal, I came to form an opinion that good walnuts are delightfully sticky when green and fresh, but maybe not eatable. Here, while knitting in class room, my mother came to form an opinion or two about her students and their families and religion. Poor. Simple. Honest. God fearing. Not very bright. Funny. Tough. Once she gave a tough time to a girl student in her class. Went corporal on her, which of course was and may be still the norm in that part of the world. Next day poor girl’s parents reached the school along with half the village. Mother thought she was going to get lynched. Instead, the parents of the girl thanked her profusely and asked her to be even more strict next time. ‘ghaanch kariv sa, take her limbs apart. Make her read.’
Traveling to a remote village for work was a fearful proposition for my mother. Muslims. We were nearing 1990. Things were changing. One time there was some trouble in the city, people were out on streets, roads from village to the city were blocked, and my mother found herself on road, trapped somewhere in some village. That day, fearful for her life, she took shelter in the house of a farmer. ‘There were sharp edged instruments in that house. Sickles and what not. That must have been a Shia family. Shias are okay, I guess.’ He reached home safe and sound that day too.
A classic ‘Kashmir’ narrative. Of students gone rebel. In her class was a kid named Bobby Khan, a last bencher, a brick head, a troublesome menace for a teacher, any teacher. All good classes have such characters. They add character to a class.Years later, one of my mother’s interesting conversations about her school time would always have a line about ‘Bobby Khan who became militant. Died. Not very bright.’ Some years back, I actually managed to meet one of her students, a namesake of Bobby Khan. This Bobby went to the same school as my mother’s nephews, a private school where she taught for some time, a revolutionary new school named after a poem by Thoreau, the kind of school that didn’t think twice about taking its students to see a film like Satyam Shivam Sundaram. Bobby now worked is Saudi Arabia and had come to meet his old friends living in Noida. After the formal introduction – ‘he’s your teacher’s son’ – we had an interesting discussion on music of Cheb Khaled and the beauty of original ‘Aïcha’.
That almost sums up her entire teaching experience, a period of more than twenty years. Of these twenty years, only six or five years were spent at the job because a few years later, we were in Jammu. She was not to teach in a school ever again, nor ever to fall asleep on way to work, nor do any fancy knitting at work. Knitting at home must not be engaging, I don’t remember her knitting even though her knitting kit did reach Jammu with her. Later, as retirement closed in on her, she was to come to the conclusion that it would have been better if she had instead brought a properly fixed attested service-book along with her to Jammu. There were glaring gaps in her service-book. And without proper service-book there is no proper retirement. Retirement time can be one of the busiest time for a government servant. Fixing records. Running around. Getting clearance. One can’t afford to mess with this process or miss a single step. During this phase of her career, she took to recounting an interesting case of ‘retirement-clearance’. A woman’s clearance was put on hold because it was revealed during the cross-checking of documents that the said woman’s birthday fell on 31st February every year. The woman’s retirement plans took a costly hit. Retirement is serious business. So a couple of years before her retirement, with worries like these, my mother thought of clearing her records. At first her brother helped as he was posted in Kashmir at the time. Later her husband, my father went about the job of visiting various offices and head-offices in Kashmir to set her record straight as he was posted to Kashmir. A stamp here, a sign there, something for the kids there, a simple gift for Sahibs big and small. Things were moving. During these trips one of the biggest hurdle proved to be getting an okay for the time-period, a particular period spanning 6-8 months of her career. It turned put that during this period some unknown or known person in Kashmir was drawing salary in my mother’s name while she too was drawing a salary in Jammu. In time, even this problem proved to be a no-problem and was resolved. Both parties were kept happy. Files and paperwork were sorted out accordingly as nothing could be found on digging deeper into the case. Finally a year away from her retirement, the only part of her service-record that needed entries and signatures was for the time that she spent working in Tsrar.
At the start of that year, my father was ordered to report back to work in Srinagar, this was after a gap of about twenty years. Government was pushing for something. He was allocated a department and a division. He got himself a room in a hotel, was shacked up with a bunch of other pandits. It wasn’t going to last. At the end of the year, his division was again going to change and he was going to be out of Kashmir again. But before he moved out of Kashmir, certain service records needed to be fixed, his own and his wife’s. For his wife’s service record he was to visit Tsrar. While in Tsrar a visit to the shrine was mandatory.
On a computer screen, as I looked at the photographs of the place that still looked as if painted in the color of galvanized tin, my mother told me about the call that my father made to her from an office in Tsrar. In the government office at Tsrar, the file bearing my mother’s name had found its way to the table of a woman who claimed to recognize my mother’s name and claimed to have been taught by my mother. My father thinking of it as a good sign. Thinking, maybe the file will closed, finally, rang up my mother, explained the situation to her and handed over his mobile to the woman officer. The two woman talked.
‘We talked. But I have no idea who that girl was. Couldn’t recall anything!’
Mother too had forgotten something. I stared at the pixels that shaped the new stoney minaret that stands over the ancient saint’s last resting place. I remembered things.
ashakh chuy kun gobur maji marun
su zola kari ta kihay
ashakh chuy ganatularev pan barun
su sokha rozi ta kihay
ashakh chuy ratajama tani paravun
su ah kaari ta kihay
Love is death of an only son to a mother –
Can the lover have any sleep?
Love is venomous stings of a swarm of wasps –
Can the lover have any rest?
Love is a robe dripping with blood-
Can the wearer even utter a sigh?
-0-
20 miles south west of Srinagar, perched on a dry bare Hill, the tomb of Nund Rishi at a place called Charar Sharif.
2010
-0-
Lines of Nund Ryosh from ‘Kashmiri Lyrics’ by J.L. Kaul.
Near Ramboh village in Baramulla District, three miles from Tangmarg, on way to Gulmarg, the shrine of Baba Reshi is situated at about 7,000 ft. The tomb (Ziarat) is of an ascetic actually named Baba Payamuddin (Pam Din) and to whom the Chak Dynasty Rulers of Kashmir paid courtesy visits during the Mughal period.
Born around 1411, he is said to have died around 1480. This Reshi, a highborn son of a nobleman but turned ascetic after observing hardworking ants too closely one day, was a disciple of Baba Zainuddin Rishi (born Ziya Singh or Jaya Singh, some say) of Aishmuqam who was one of the principal disciples of Sheikh Nur-ud-din (Nund Rishi) – the first of the Reshis; the disciples, his four Jewels: ‘Buma’ Baba Bamuddin Rishi, ‘Nasar’ Baba Nasruddin Rishi, ‘Zaina’ Baba Zainuddin Rishi and ‘Latif ‘ Baba Latifuddin Rishi.
In his later years, on the direction of Zainuddin Rishi, Baba Payamuddin moved to village Ramboh, and like others of the order, performed miracles, helped the common people and spread the name. Baba Reshi famously built a daan, a fire place at this place. People came from far and wide to plaster this daan, to offer sacrifices. They still do. All to have their wishes granted.
In the 90s, this place also faced fire.
On way to Gulmarg, I had no idea we were going to make a stopover here. So it came as a pleasant surprise. After visiting the house that wasn’t there anymore, it came as a pleasant surprise from my parents. My mother couldn’t stop gushing about the place. I guess she has inherited the devotion to this place from her mother who must have been here often thanks to Nana’s job at Gulmarg.
Inside the shrine, in the center of the hall, there is some wonderful woodwork around the tomb of the saint. As I walked around the tomb, circling it, appreciating the art, ‘Is it walnut wood?’, noticing something strange, I came to a sudden embarrassing halt. There was something wrong with the place where I stood. One look around and I realized that I had been circling in the outer circle and had unwittingly walked into the women section. There were women sitting all around. The right side of the hall seemed women only. Women praying, crying. Baba Reshi is famous for granting ‘child wish’. According to an old tradition of this place, the children thus born, taking a vow of celibacy is attached to the shrine for life and at any given time forty such saints (Reshis) are supposed to serve the shrine.
I traced back my steps and this time started to walk the other side. My mother took up a corner and did her own bit of praying and crying. I walked into the inner circle, taking a closer look at the tomb, ‘Is it a tomb?’, again I realized something wrong. This time it was the direction. Circling, left to right, I found myself facing a teenage boy coming from the other direction. The boy, praying under his breadth, was cleaning the woodwork using his fingers, measuring the woodwork inch by inch, picking up pecks of dust. An old practice, I have seen Pandits do it at the new shrines of old saints, at Jammu.
After spending some more time inside the shrine, as I started to step outside, I noticed an attendant at the door was handing out something wrapped in Newspaper to the people walking out of the shrine. Prashad? Prasadam?Something sweet? Something to eat?Tabarruk? I too streached my arm for the handout. Walking a distance outside, I opened the paper packet. Inside I found broken down stones and rocks. Others found ash, dust and soot.
Later someone told me a funny little anecdote. A couple of years ago, a small group of Pandit families had come to visit the shine on the urs, death anniversary, of the saint. A group of separatists was also present. After the common prayers, the separatists raised their hands and asked the saint to grant their wish, ‘Kashmir bane Pakistan, Let Kashmir be Pakistan’. The crowd said, ‘Ameen, Amen’. The Pandits shaking their sideways, under their breath added, ‘Zah ti ne, Zah ti ne, never, never’
