I’ve made a pact with the Lord about becoming the most perfect man on earth . . . remade so that I might compose perfect poems on the beauty of God. . . . I am the Great Weaver from Kashmir.” Well, then. “I think you might have lost your marbles,” says Dilja.
A Food Bazaar
While the income of the native is very small, the purchasing power of his money is extraordinary. here eggs are 4 to 8 cents per dozen: good-sized chicken 10 cents: ducks 4 cents: rice 2 cents per pound: milk less than 3 cents a quart: and other staples in like ratio.
This rare photograph and info. is from ‘Our summer in the vale of Kashmir’ (1915) by Frederick Ward Denys.
-0-
Update: This should be Qaziyar Market, Zaina Kadal.
‘What is you name nikka?’
The little one just looked on. Not a word. Not an emotion. Just a blank stare. Had he been a grown up, it would have been an uncomfortable scene. But here it was just a kid getting asked a question in familiar tongue by a stranger.
On the highest terrace of Pari Mahal if you feel like having water and you do manage to find the local watering hole, a rusty old tap, the water you are likely to taste comes straight from the mountains. Here standing next to the tap my Chachi tried rather unsuccessfully to strike a conversation with a little Muslim kid. Her daughters, my little nieces, looked on, a bit embarrassed and a bit amused.
‘He doesn’t talk much.’
A young woman approached with a broad open smile, her voice full of joy, of life. She reminded me of Posha.
‘You are Pandit? Where do you live? You live here? Yes?’
I have met these women. Heard about them. Common Kashmiri Muslim women: they don’t hold back. Taez- Balai. Fast. Talk, emotions, tone, laugh, scream, cry, love, they are always beaming with a certain energy.
‘No, we don’t live here. Not anymore. Just visiting.’
‘Tohi kyet aasiv rozaan? Where did you used to live?’
This was no woman. She was a girl. The quick question. A quick answer.
‘Javhaer Nagar.’
And then they talked about this and that. About children.
In the summer of 1990 my Chachi’s family moved to a room in Udhampur. I couldn’t understand why would anyone choose to live in Udhampur when everyone was living in Jammu. I came to answers slowly. And the answer was just too simple. Jammu was full. The great theater had no tickets left. Those who arrived late found the entry really tough, there were people already watching the show sitting in aisle. For a few month stay, for some families, having to undergo discomfort and humiliation in Jammu was just out of the question. When months became years, question was not a option. Some years later, at the time of her marriage the Baraat came all the way to Udhampur from Jammu. Her brother now have places of their own in Jammu.
My Chachi’s family had moved to the new locality of Jawahar Nagar in the late 1970s. A lot of Pandit families, including my mother’s family, had moved to new locations, more modern developed localities, in the 70s and the early 80s. In these places often the interaction between Pandits and Muslims was low. It was going to take time to built new relations, new friendships and new enemies. My mother still remembers a certain Khatees Ded, an old Kashmiri Muslim lady who cried her heart out, holding onto my Nana’s arm, the day he moved from old neighbourhood of Kralkhod to a new locality – Chanpore. My mother makes it sound quite dramatic – ‘The entire neighborhood came to see us off. Khatees Ded kept crying. She had raised my father. Took care of him when he was young. He was like a son to her. He grew up in her lap.’ The scene must have made quite on impact on her. From her stories I can say it wasn’t a perfect place with the perfectly peaceful people, a paradise of angels, it was more of an earth with real people, but people who knew each other for just too long. Had I, by choice, ever moved out to a new world, the woman in my case could have been Posha, daughter of old lady Mogul who had a Yendir in her little wooden balcony. Posha who yelled ‘Aazadi’ in those processions whose pictures unsettle some, not many. Posha whose little son miles away from home didn’t reply to ‘T’che kya chuy Naav?’ while sitting among strangers . Posha my little caretaker.
-0-
We tell our stories to anyone. My grandfather reminds a security man that he used to live in Kashmir. While he talks, my father checks on his pulse.
-0-
An old postcard (from famous Mahatta & Co) capturing the old ruins of Pari Mahal
-0-
Near Chashma Shahi, at the foothills of Zabarwan mountains, Dara Shikoh, Shah Jahan’s eldest son, the sufi one, converted an ancient Buddhist monastery into a school of astrology and dedicated it to his master Mulla Shah. Pari Mahal or the Palace of fairies, was a place steeped in magical stories. Walter Rooper Lawrence, who visited Kashmir in 1889 as the Land settlement officer, wrote in his book The Valley of Kashmir (1895):
Strange tales are told of the Pari Mahal, of the wicked magician who spirited away kings’ daughters in their sleep, how an Indian princess by the order of her father brought away a chenar leaf to indicate the abode of her seducer, and how all the outraged kings of India seized the magician.
Walter Rooper Lawrence was the Land settlement officer in Kashmir from 1889 to 1895. In all he spent just about six years in Kashmir but from his mammoth tome on Kashmir, a classic simply titled ‘Valley of Kashmir’ (1895), those years seem to have been well spent taking in Kashmir in all its glory and with all its warts. These were years that he relished all his life, a reason why to Charles Dickens’ daughter, an old lady already and an acquittance of his, he would say that he would like to live his life all over again. In his later year book ‘The India We Served’ (1928), a book much less often read and remembered, talking about Kashmir that was at a crossroad of modernity, changing to modern times, changing forever, he writes:
“It is difficult for me to write about Kashmir, for I have already written a large book on the subject, and just as one scorns to take ideas and advice from one’s own family, so still less can I condescend to quote from “The Valley of Kashmir.” But to live six splendid years in that valley, unspoiled by railways and roads, innocent of factories and coal, and long streets and concrete houses, sleeping in boats or in tents always pitched on green turf under the shade of plane or walnut trees, and always within sound of running, singing water that is a life to live over again. Such a climate, with the sun at its best ! The Capital is well named the City of the Sun, for summer or winter the sun smiles and sparkles in Kashmir. The air is no mere compound of gas, but a blend of dance and laughter, smiling even in drear December when the temperature is below zero: is blue, like the sapphires from Zanskar, but I never knew whether the blue came from the sky or from the rivers and lakes, or from the iris, which is the flower of the valley. And from each of the countless valleys which pass on the waters of the encircling snow range to the fabulous Hydaspes, there is the view of the naked majesty of Nanga Parbat, and the sheen of jagged Haramukh, which seemed to be always to the north. The Easterns have known the magic of Kashmir for centuries. The Moguls knew it, but Kashmir, like Corinth, was not approachable by everyone, and, though twice I have heard august consent given to the making of a railway, the tutelary divinities of this happy valley have intervened. Since I last saw Kashmir, roads have been made, and motor cars now run. But I doubt if even a railway could rob the valley of its strange and unique charm. I have said all I can say of its colour, its flowers and its fruits, and in the days when I first visited Kashmir, the only jarring note the censorious critic could hazard was that the people were Kashmiris.”
In his words, words that might now be branded ‘colonial’, he did give Kashmiris a good character certificate – decent people, at time too wrapped up working up a subterfuge,who were who they were, god-fearing hardworking folks, in-spite of all the sufferings that they had had to suffer. He made an interesting observation that might still ring true:
“I have given my testimony regarding the Kashmiris in “The Valley of Kashmir.” It was the Fashion to say hard words of them, but none, English or Indian, who berated the Kashmiris, knew anything about the villages, and it was only fair that I should say what I could ; and six years continuous camping in the valley gave me opportunities for forming an opinion.”
This is the Kashmir that he saw. Photographs from the book ‘Valley of Kashmir’ (1895). These were taken by Major Hepburn, Captain Allan, Captain Godfrey and Alam Chand, the State photographer.
The following photographs of Kashmir were shot in 1945 by an American serviceman named Robert Keagle who was posted in Calcutta and Burma during World War 2. I came across the collection at the online archive of Digital South Asia Library, a project of the Center for Research Libraries and the University of Chicago. Besides Kashmir, Keagle Photograph collection also offers photographs of Calcutta and Burma. Here we will take a look at his Kashmir collection only, you can check the entire collection here.
Some of the photographs in the collection are quite unique – like the one of a street and a market scene of sub-urban Srinagar of 1945.
“Srinagar street scene”. 1945.
It looks like a typical Tang’adda or the Tonga Station. In the background one can see the houses (with roof tops covered with, not iris ) and a ‘Cheap John’ Paper Mache shop to the right.
The building may not have green cover anymore but these structures can still be seen in Srinagar and the word ‘cheap’ still retains its charm in Kashmir. [The place captured above is Dal Gate Tang Adda (picked up this info. from wallpost of folks sharing this photo on Facebook)]
A ‘Cheap Ways’ provision Store, 2008.
Stores. 1945
A Tailor Shop, 2008
“Hindu temple and associated tank, Srinagar, Kashmir, 1945”
Some of the Photographs are even intriguing like the photograph of a Hindu temple in Kashmir which I can’t identify and whose architecture looks new age ( Plaster-of-Paris Apsaras at the door!) even though it seems to have been built based on traditional Kashmiri Temple style – a water Tank up-front.
Update On Above image:
The above temple most probably is not from Kashmir. [For more check this post on Gadadhar Temple Jammu]
The above image may in fact be of a Jain temple in Calcutta. Found a structurally similar temple in an article about old images of Raj days found recently in a shoebox.
A Kashmiri Muslim with Hookah is identified as a Sikh ( sight of a Sikh inhaling tobacco should have been even more rare back then). In caption to another photograph, this one of a rickshaw stand, the place is identified as Srinagar, Kashmir. One look at that image and the people in that image, you too would have your doubts. Unless Kashmir had Bangladeshi rickshaw puller back then. I think this photograph was actually taken in Calcutta and mistakenly captioned as Kashmir.
“Public transport rickshaws await passengers, Srinigar, Kashmir, 1945”
In spite of these goof-ups, the photographs are a pure delight.
“Fishermen standing up in boats with spears, Srinigar, Kashmir, 1945”
“Scene in Srinigar, Kashmir, 1945”
That view panning Fateh Kadal, Jehlum’s Third Bridge. Electrical wires make their debut and once they come into picture, they never go away.
“View across city of Srinigar, Kashmir, 1945”
In the background one can see the Mughal fort Afghan fort (build by Atta Ullah Khan, the Afghan Governor in 1808 ) atop Hari Parbat.
And atop the fort, a cannon.
“Guards at old fort in Srinigar demonstrate how ancient cannon was loaded to be fired. Srinigar, Kashmir, 1945.”
“Sikh guard poses with vintage rifle, Srinigar, Kashmir, 1945”
Keagle, as a serviceman must have taken special interest in these armed photographs. There are more than a couple photographs of this Sikh guard offering various military poses to the photographer. Yet, natural beauty and this martial beauty, wasn’t the only thing he captured in Kashmir.
“Four young women, dressed in their finest, Srinigar, Kashmir, 1945”
Here are rest of the Kashmir photographs from Keagle Photograph collection. Input and info. are welcome.
Women Clearing Weeds. Kashmir, 1890~. From British Library.
“Photograph of a row of women working in field in the modern state of Jammu and Kashmir, probably near the capital of Srinagar. The photograph dates to the 1890s. Jammu and Kashmir is a Himalayan region in north-western India famous for its mountain scenery and lakes. Kashmiris work mainly on the land, producing crops and tending animals.”
A woman clearing weed at Sanasar in Jammu district. September, 2010
