While clearing his bag of old papers to be thrown away, my father found this old envelope. Before I could stop him, he tore it into two. It carried our old Srinagar address. I kept it
Last month my father packed his bags from Delhi NCR and moved back to Jammu. Fourteen years ago, I wasn’t there when he moved in, and I wasn’t there when he moved out. While moving in, none of my stuff had to be moved in but while moving out, he had to pack seven cartons of books collected over my seven year stay in the city.
Once the news of unpacking was passed on, my mind was caught in a strange mathematics. My grandfather spent a major portion of his life at that Srinagar address, about 65 years. At no other place did he live for a longer duration. So did my father, about 35 years. And weirdly enough, so did I, about 8 years. I haven’t stayed at a single place for more that 8 years. Right now, Chattabal is still the place were I have spent a major portion of my life.
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My Address
Today I effaced my house number
the name of the street at the outset.
I wiped away the directions of every road.
And still if you must search me out
just knock at the door
in each street of each city of each country
it’s a curse, a benediction both
and wherever you find a free soul
– that’s my home!
Amrita Pritam, translated from Punjabi by the poet.
From – ‘India: An Anthology of Contemporary Writings’ (1983), Ed. by David Ray and Amritjit Singh.
Based on an account I heard in 2013 from a cousin of my father. The family lost a member in the violence that erupted in 1990 and is now what would be considered right wing in political outlook. And yet, this is the account I got…
January 21st
The house was on Nai Sadak. From the main window of the house you could see the bridge that connected the locality to Maisuma Bazaar, the place that was going to be the epicenter of violence in 1990, the bastion of JKLF. This is the bridge known as Gaw Kadal or the Cow Bridge. The line of sight from the house was such that if someone was standing on the center of bridge, you could see him completely, but further down, the other side only partially visible.
That day inmates of the house were glued to the window as they tried to fathom the sounds. They could see a large sloganeering crowd on the other side of the bridge, approaching their side. On this side, they could see a picket of about twelve CRPF men blocking their way. The city was under a curfew. These men were issuing orders warning the people disperse and move back to their houses. The people were protesting exactly against such orders. The inmates of the house thought maybe the security men were worried about their security. There were a couple of Pandit households in this vulnerable area. The men watching the procession from the window were a bit anxious. But this was Kashmir, even this was normal. They had seen may such processions in their lives. The people in the crowd had probably taken part in too many processions in their life. It was just another average Kashmiri day. The neighbourhood mosque which was under JKLF control was time and again advising the crowd over the loudspeaker to not touch the Pandits and their houses, to maintain peace and to march forward. The crowd continued to move forward.
Suddenly, without a rhyme, shots rang out. At first a tickle of loud bursts. From the window you could see a figure taking position, a quick thinking uniformed sikh man who hinged his semi-automatic gun to the railing of the bridge, and squeezed his finger to unleash death. In the later news reports, this action came to be described as ‘indiscriminate firing’. The inmates of the house, with reflex of a cornered animal, ducked and lay flat on the floor. The wooden walls of the house it seemed had been blown away, it was as if the fire was directed at them. And the firing just wouldn’t stop. It was like rain, like a thunder storm, even maybe like a cloud burst. Ashok Ji, a neighbour, another watcher in the house next door, was a bit slow in deciphering the scene. A bullet flew past him and glazed his ear. The reports were to say that the firing on the crowd was carried out from both ends of the bridge. People were caught in the middle. Initial official reports said about thirty people were killed. Over the years, as the stories grew, the number grew to about two hundred. Out of blood came accounts of people jumping into river and drowning, injured executed at point plank range, people chased and shot dead. The man blamed for ordering fire was given a name: Allah Bakhsh, SSP of J&K Police, with family ties to all the high and mighty of Kashmir state bureaucracy.
When it was over, the entire neighbourhood was drowned in sound of wailing. Up until now, a Pandit was still expected to join his neighbours in grief. And most of them did join. But not after that day. Bloodletting of that day, changed the core of the people. When an inmate of the house showed up at a neighbour’s house to offer condolence, he was chased away. ‘Battov, ye korov telephone‘, ‘Pandits, you telephoned them!’, was intermixed with the wailing sound. People swore revenge. The Pandits were suspects. The rumor blamed the pandits for calling the security men and somehow ordering the massacre. Over the next few days a new phenomena was observed in the city, people climbed up the telephone poles and pulled apart the wires. City was now plunged into a blackout of another kind. Every family was marooned, on its own and drifting in an unending nightmare in which monsters of all kind took life. Monsters that were to haunt Kashmir for a long time to come.
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Das Gerücht, “The Rumor,” (1953) by German artist A. Paul Weber.
Perhaps the person best to understand nature of propaganda, having produced quite a bit.
An ambiguous figure who produced anti-Semitic and war mongering illustrations in his love for Germany and
The end scene from black comedy film about greed and money, ‘Magic Christian’ (1969) starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr. The scene has people jumping into a ‘toxic spill’ to claim free (fake) money.
This is how the ‘Great Suyya Experiment’ from Rajatarangini would have actually played out.
As rising on its purple wing
The insect-queen of easter spring,
O’er emerald meadows of Kashmeer
Invites the young pursuer near,
And leads him on from flower to flower
A weary chase and wasted hour,
Then leaves him, as it soars on high,
With panting heart and tearful eye:
So Beauty lures the full-grown child
With hue as bright, and wing as wild;
A chase of idle hopes and fears,
Begun in folly, closed in tears.
If won, to equal illd betrayed,
Woe waits the insect the maid,
A life of pain, the loss of peace,
From infant’s play, or man’s caprice:
The lovely toy so fiercely sought,
Has lost its charm by being caught,
For every touch that wooed it’s stay
Has brush’d the brightest hues away
Till charm, and hue, and beauty gone,
‘Tis left to fly or fall alone.
With wounded wing, or bleeding breast,
Ah! where shall either victim rest?
Can this with faded pinion sir
From rose to tulip as before?
Or Beauty, blighted in an hour,
Find joy within her broken bower?
No: gayer insects fluttering by
Ne’eer droop the wing o’er those that die,
And lovelier things have mercy shown
To every failing but their own,
And every woe a tear can claim
Except an erring sister’s shame.
~ Lines from “The Giaour” (1813) by Lord Byron. A work of romantic Orientalism that looks at contrast between Christian and Islamic ideals. This was also one of the first works in which Vampire made an appearance.
His biography was written by Thomas Moore who went on to make Kashmir famous with his Lalla Rookh. Byron was father of Ada Lovelace, the first programmer.
Not the purple queen of Kashmir
June 2013. Kochi.
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Kashmir in forced exiles and paradise lost
There [in Cashmire’s vale], Heaven and Earth are ever bright and kind;
Here [in Albion], blight and storms and damp forever float,
Whilst hearts are more ungenial than the zone –
Gross, spiritless, alive to no pangs but their own.
There, flowers and fruits are ever fair and ripe;
Autumn, there, mingles with the bloom of spring,
And forms unpunched by frost or hunger’s gripe
A natural veil o’er natural spirits fling;
Here, woe on all but wealth has set its floor.
Famine, disease and crime even wealth’s proud gates pollute
~ lines from ‘Zeinab and Kathema’ (1809) by Percy Bysshe Shelley, husband of Mary Shelley (of Frankenstein fame), and a friend of Lord Byron. This poem was about a Princess from Paradise – Kashmir – forceable taken to Hell – England.
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Kashmir in evil that ignites poetry
The Poet, wandering on, through Arabie,
And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste,
And o’er the aerial mountains which pour down
Indus and Oxus from their icy caves,
In joy and exultation held his way;
Till in the vale of Cashmire, far within
Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine
Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower,
Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched
His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep
There came, a dream of hopes that never yet
Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiled maid
Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones.
Her voice was like the voice of his own soul
Heard in the calm of thought; its music long,
Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held
His inmost sense suspended in its web
Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues.
Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme,
And lofty hopes of divine liberty,
Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy,
Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood
Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame
A permeating fire; wild numbers then
She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs
Subdued by its own pathos; her fair hands
Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp
Strange symphony, and in their branching veins
The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.
The beating of her heart was heard to fill
The pauses of her music, and her breath
Tumultuously accorded with those fits
Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose,
As if her heart impatiently endured
Its bursting burthen: at the sound he turned,
And saw by the warm light of their own life
Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil
Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare,
Her dark locks floating in the breath of night,
Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips
Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly.
His strong heart sunk and sickened with excess
Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs and quelled
His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet
Her panting bosom:…she drew back a while,
Then, yielding to the irresistible joy,
With frantic gesture and short breathless cry
Folded his frame in her dissolving arms.
Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night
Involved and swallowed up the vision; sleep,
Like a dark flood suspended in its course,
Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.
Alastor (1815) by Percy Bysshe Shelley, about a man traveling from Arabia finding perfection, a woman, in Kashmir
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All of these works were the by-product of Bernier’s description of Kashmir traveling in Europe, including the work that directly influenced these poets – by a novel called The Missionary (1811) by Sydney Owenson. Influenced by more recent travelogues too, this story was about a Missionary traveling from Goa who falls in love with a Prophetess of Kashmir named Luxima whose brave ‘Sati’ death causes a revolution.
At last, through the branches of a spreading palm-tree, he beheld, at a distance, the object who had thus agitated and disturbed the calmest mind which Heaven’s grace had ever visited. She was leaning on the ruins of a Brahminical altar, habited in her sacerdotal vestments, which were rich but fantastic. Her brow was crowned with consecrated flowers; her long dark hair floated on the wind; and she appeared a splendid image of the religion she professed – bright, wild, and illusory; captivating to the senses, fatal to the reason, and powerful and tyrannic to both.
The Rafi song from Shabab (1954) [movie link], the initial line is from Zauq and rest of the lyrics are by Shakeel Badayuni.
Shabab (1954) was inspired by love story of 11th century Kashmiri poet Bilhana. The original story is available as: Bilhaniyam, play written by Narayana Shastri, then there is BilhaniyaKavya and the Bilhaniya-Charitra. And as Bilhaniyamu, a late-eighteenth-century Telugu reworking of a Sanskrit poem, deemed immoral in Victorian era. The episode is said to taken place in court of King Anhil Pattana of Gujarat, and may or may not have been biographical.
In the story, Bilhana is introduced as a blind man to a Princess he is supposed to teach. The princess is introduced to him as a leper. All this so that the handsome man does not seduce the Princess. But the ploy is exposed when Bilhana accidentally, in a moment of joy, describes in lucid details beauty of book. The veil of deception is lifted. The two naturally do end up falling in love. The King, of course, is not happy. So, ‘Off with the head’, he goes. While in prison, Bilhana composes 50 erotic verses that come to be known as Chaurapanchasika (the Fifty Stanzas of Chauras)[a vintage English edition]. There are multiple versions to the story. In the Southern version, the King is impressed by the verses, and the two get together. In the Kashmiri version, the poet awaits the judgement.
In the film version, to keep with the cinematic trends of the time, Bilhana meets a Devdas-ish end. And so does the heroine.
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Interestingly, there is South Indian film from 1948 called Bilhana inspired by the same story.
[…] the system of the colonial rule that indulges in inhuman exploitation by imposing an artificial peace in the society:
Ghoom rahi sabhyata danavi, shanti-shanti karti bhootal mein, Poochhey koi, bhigo rahi wah kyon apne vishdant garal mein. Tank rahi hon sooyi charm, par shant rahen ham, tanik na dolen; Yehi shanti, gardan katthi hon, par hum apni jeebh na kholen. Bolein kuchh mat kshudhit, rotiyan shwan chin khayen yadi kar se, Yehi shanti, jab we aayen, hum nikal jaayen chupke nij ghar se Choos rahe hon danuj rakth, par hon mat dalit prabudh kumari! Ho na kahin pratikaar paap ka, shanti ya ki yeh yudhh kumari.
(The monster civilization moves, urging peace on the earth,
Let’s ask, why does it soak its teeth in poison.
You sew up our skin, but desire peace and no resistance from us
This is the peace, where necks are severed, but expects us to be tongue-tied.
The hungry should remain voiceless, even if the falcon snatches food from their hands
This is the peace, where when they invade, we should quietly leave our homes
The monsters may be sucking their blood, but don’t want the oppressed to be conscious
They do not want injustice to be resisted; for you, O maiden, either this peace or war.)
~ from ‘Ramdhari Singh Dinkar: Makers of Indian Literature’, Sahitya Akademi.
Bulbul. Gurgaon. 2012. Aug 9.
End should have been yellow.
O bulbul, strange bird!
Your loud call was so very sudden
That my sad heart gave one wild leap,
For in a flash my world was quite transformed
Full of roses, bulbuls and spring verdure
I had been reading a Greek play
My mind absorbed, my fancy feeding
On a king’s story, so true to life,
Where new strife treads on the heels of the old.
Though silver lay on the tree and around,
When you struck your harp, blossoms came
And my winged fancy soared to heaven –
Spring often does bewitch one’s eyes.
The sun shone bright in an azure sky;
A snow-white cloud sailed, not very far.
We stood, enraptured, gazing at the lake,
My love and I, in an island bower.
Suddenly some one knocked at the door,
Fled was the dream and I was awake.
A cold gust rushed in like a raider,
And back I was where I had been.
I have fastened doors and windows;
Icicles on all sides sparkle like glass;
A black cloud blanket wraps up the sky;
A chill wind pierces the marrow of my bones.
The last chinar leaf on the branch
Hangs withered and lifeless like a corpse.
Drunk with power, midwinter has his day,
Even the fire pot we cling to is cold.
You are a strange bird, o bulbul!
How can I forget that in dreary midwinter
You made me roam in flowering meadows?
~ Ghulam Nabi Firaq. Translated by Trilokinath Raina. From ‘mahjoor and after: Modern Kashmiri Poetry’.
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Update:
Bilbitchur. Bulbul.
Jammu. 2012. Sept 8.
The yellow bottomed one.
