Kashur Kot

A town torched

2012-01-06T19:58:00.000+04:00

There was sound of a huge bang that morning, like someone blowing up a cartful of dynamite. Just before the cockcrow. Most of the townspeople were asleep. The dawn prayers had thin attendance, mostly because it gets very cold in January. By nine o’clock a military patrol was out, doing rounds of the main marketplace. Suddenly gunmen emerged from a narrow alley and shot random bullets at the party before quickly disappearing in the maze that old Sopore is. Taken rather off guard, the security detail ran back to their barracks only to emerge again as Frankenstein’s monsters, spitting hell fire. In the next fifty odd minutes, they murdered fifty five people in cold blood. And burnt the town down.

Even after all these years nobody knows for sure what transformed the BSF party into the heartless creatures that they became -- that cold January morning. Hapless people, trapped in flames, had only two choices to make and both, it turned out, cost them dearly. Stepping out of their shops meant getting bumped off on the spot. Those who hid in their shops were roasted alive. Many people who were killed on January 6, 1993, were buried without their families being able to see them one last time. The dead bodies had faces -- that smiled, loved and beamed a few hours back -- too disfigured to be kissed a final good bye. Monsters seldom heed tears.

An unfortunate bus, half-full with passengers, on its way to Sopore got caught up in the frenzy. The driver, oblivious to the savagery of the 94th battalion BSF, was flagged down. Soon charcoal gray powder blew into the vehicle. Terrified passengers froze in their seats, their hands still inside their Pherans. A stash of gunfire lit the bus up. The ill-starred men and women banged at the window-panes, begging to be let out, but their screams met no saviors. The nearby shops were burning in maroon fire with real people in them. A hundred thousand books in the local women’s college were turning to dark dust in the library. The foot soldiers of the world’s largest democracy looked on with a ghoulish glee.

Entire families were wiped out on that January morning 19 years back. A respected Sufi Pir [spiritual man] lost six members of his immediate and extended family. His two grandsons, two nephews and two cousins. The old man was unwell in his bed when news of the doom came. Women began to pull their hair out and grown-up men wept inconsolably in his mud-and-brick three storey home, often frequented by devotees. Later when the corpses of all the six young men were lined up in the lawn, someone asked the Sufi if he wanted to come out and have a last look at the lads. ‘Oh yes’, the old man said and as someone walked him outside he whispered in the most feeble voice, ‘I had a dream last night and they told me that we shall take you to hear things I never imagined. I think this is the Taebeer [interpretation]’.

I feel somewhat uneasy writing this, recalling mostly from memory, from the pastiches of ugly nightmares of growing up in Kashmir of the 90’s. Ofcourse I was too young to comprehend how people in flesh and blood could get so godawful and burn fellow humans alive. It smelled of fear and flesh. We heard the wails coming from a distance. That evening the smoke’s twist was awfully slow.

In memoriam
To my fellow townspeople,
cut to merciless death on January 6, 1993.
We remember you.

© Sameer

Mommy

2011-12-28T17:08:00.001+04:00

In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
~Tennyson

Mom’s anniversary. Fourteen years have passed since mom exited our lives. The scriptures say that there is a paradise in the skies complete with gardens and yew trees where the good and the kind are send for some paradisiacal foot massage. The word Paradise comes from the Persian root word Pardis which means an exquisite garden that is enclosed between walls. It is not an open space, perhaps. I just hope they allow the tenderhearted in.

There is no Eden on God’s green earth. There are only memories, which are like these mini-drawings in our heads. No amount of wealth or intelligence can bring back those who accidently wander to the pastures beyond the known. There is an eerie discomfort about it which pokes you in the most improbable places. There are times in life when you laugh without meaning it. Nothing comes back. All we can do is honor people. And miss them in our most private, personal thoughts.

We grow up and branch out in life. We traverse alien shores and pretend to be independent. The heart, though, stays captive to old thoughts, floating about in familiar pastures. No matter how refined your dining experience becomes, you reminisce about eating in your old kitchen, hurriedly, wanting to join your waiting friends for fun. No amount of perfumed candle light can ever knock one’s sock off like the popping of Izband [rue seeds] in a Kangri [fire-pot].

Graveyards have so many tales in them. We, the un-dead, may never traduct them. Mom lies interred in a beautiful, simple grave, in a green triangular meadow, by a quietly flowing river, in countryside Kashmir. In summers a lot of Viburnum flowers drop from trees and fall on her tombstone. It is bittersweet to visit her. I think it snows over in winters. I have no ways of knowing since I decided to find my peace elsewhere.

A million stars in the sky. Never ending snowflakes. Hundreds of dewdrops to greet the dawn. Hundreds of bees in the purple clover. Hundreds of butterflies on the lawn. But only one mother the wide world over.

Boy, I just hope the paradise story is true.

Mom,
28 Sep 1955- 28 Dec 1997
RIP

Sameer

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T09:53:00.001+04:00

There is a merry tinkle about Christmas that makes it a very very delightful occasion. When I was kid, I was enamored with the idea of a fat old man, white as snow, sledging his way from the North Pole, where he is believed to have a secret gift factory. I’ve forever imagined Santa’s red coattails fluttering as his sledge speeds up.
And his beard, flowing white, not fox orange, dancing in the wind.
I was unable to fathom how such a fat man could slide in through a narrow chimney. But I loved the idea. Who does not love beautiful myths?

Christmas has always been about snow. And old Santa’s reindeer with those weird antlers. It is that time of the year when you don stocking caps and eat cakes and sing carols. To humankind! Though commercialized by sinister market wolfs now, Christmas still has a feel-good factor that is irrespective of your faith-meter: you may be religious, secular or completely godless. I've hardly known a bloke who does not like the distilled spirit of goodness, that Christmas is.

For some strange reason Christmas makes people smile a lot, for it engulfs the whole world in a congenial conspiracy. Suddenly the irrational becomes rational. An unwed mother 'Virgin Mary' gives birth to 'Christ'. The unpalatable becomes palatable as north star appears. The unreal welds into real. Three wise men show up.
And hymns float. Snow falls. Lore is fact. Hearts hammer.
A lone bell begins to tintinnabulate. People re-meet.

Frankly I am not very religious. I am culturally Muslim and spiritually liberal. I like Christmas for all its sweet secure spirit.
I want a million coniferous trees to grow. The lights to glow.
The bells to toll. The cakes to bake. The hymns to pop.
The love to spread.

We -- irrespective of our color and belief system – are wired to celebrate the good and the beautiful. Encore.

Sameer

The return of Chilay-Kalan

2011-12-21T13:51:00.001+04:00

It is cold as a well digger’s arse in Srinagar. The valley has just slipped into the nippiest part of winter, locally called ‘Chilay-Kalan’, which lasts all of 40 days. There is something about the 40-day Chila [epoch]. If the Tabligi jamaat [band for spreading faith to the faithful] somehow gets hold of you around this time in Kashmir they are likely to whisk you away for a period of 40 days. And you will never ever be the same, I swear. Apart from mosque Hamams, Harisa pinds [joints] are just about the best places to recline and indulge in a free-flow of the juiciest gossip in town.

So in every sand and brick home, little kids – each cheek a shade cherry -- are wrapped up in layer upon layer of woolens and kan-topas [monkey caps]. They move around like miniature astronauts, muttering away in Kashmiri-accented Urdu [but mind you, no Kashmiri, else you sound like a Groos]. Grown-ups hug the ubiquitous Kangri, to not let it go even for a heart-beat’s span, periodically handling the fire with a stoker, tied to all wicker-and-clay Kangris. There is no fighting the CRPF when you wake up in the morning to fight the frozen-oven tap. The wintry lull is not without a reason.

With little news happening, except for the cut-and-dried-and-shrill news-bytes offered by the intensely-yours old man of Hyderpora, the mike-wielding gang is a worried lot. In absence of political news they occasionally dash off to the shores of Dal to report the ice floes [called Tula-katur] to their ignoramuses in New Delhi. The lake freezes over in parts every winter and long years back, someone drove a Jeep on it. That is folk-lore. There are ice-roads in northern Canada, Russia, Scandinavia and elsewhere where truckers and motorists drive regularly but let us not digress too much from our fore-shore. Oh, Harzatbal rises like a florescent dome in glacial climes.

Despite the night temperatures dipping dangerously during the wintertide, the call for prayer [Azaan] always comes on time. In the countryside it is immediately followed up by an utterly pleasing cackle of coots, shovellers, pochards and wigeons. The songbirds tweedle upon treetops, singing in an almost melodic fashion, who knows, songs of winter and the joy of warmth. Deep in the pine jungles of Kashmir, which hide European Hoopoes and dark secrets in them, little indigo columns of smoke can be seen coming up from the Kothas [pit-houses]. It smells of simple wood-smoke at day-break.

When my generation was growing up in Kashmir, during the era of tea-colored bullets and power-less wintry nights, we thought in our juvenile abandon that Chillay Kalan must be an old, fat, Karakuli-wearing spook who exits his mountain cave at the onset of winters to bring all the frost and icicles and snow. Just like Santa Claus minus his goody-goody image. Now it does not snow like it used to in our childhood. For the contemporary and politically conscious breed of Kashmiris, Chillay Kalan must be someone like Farooq Abdullah. Theatrical. All bark and no bite.

© Sameer

Devil is in the diary

2011-12-18T13:49:00.001+04:00

The valley, it appears, is cold as blue blazes. Shakespeare wrote in Henry V in 1598 that I felt to his knees, and they were as cold as any stone, and so upward and upward, and all was as cold as any stone. Friends say that water lines have frozen over in Srinagar. The bitter chill of December is permeated only by the political happenstance, something never in short supply in our neck of woods. That also keeps journalists in constant business.

This Chilay-Kalan it started off by a yawning -- but perpetually paranoid -- security grid greatly alarmed by the sudden emergence of a blank diary and a calendar – all of six pages – printed by the same old nemesis of the establishment: the government’s tormentor-in-chief, that old man, who has by now developed an uncanny knack of frightening the largest democracy in the world with just about anything. Even a sneeze.

And this time it has been blank pages of a small pocket diary with innocuously elucidative quotes thrown in. Perhaps something like: Do not drink, all ye faithful, for you see, liquor can be spurious these days. Now when there is a talk of opening pubs in the city, where the chatterati and holidaymakers can giggle away to glory, such incendiary material like a pocket diary and wall-calendar with calligraphic verses can seriously disturb peace.

You never know what invisible ink Mr G might use. Why take chances? So orders were issued to appropriate all the goddamn calendars. There is a possibility now that J&K Bank might fast-forward its 2012 edition of calendars with 5th December, marked in red, with an exegesis: Birth anniversary of Jenab Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah. One of the policemen, manning the house-arrest, could be given a copy to slither it under Mr G’s door. Just to ensure that he is cheesed off, proper and sour, in the 80-something Chilay-Kalan of his being.

The little debate on rowdiness notwithstanding, walloping a few photo-journalists here and there while they go about their professional duties, beating up a few dozen Moharram processenists, tearing down pages of wall-calendars, impounding blank diaries as if it were black hash, does not constitute hooliganism. Lo and behold if you show that silly mirror of yours to us, you might just be carrying out the worst form of hoodlumism. Why. Because we say so!

Pugmarks of a leopard were recently seen near the chief minister’s summer residence at Gupkar. A doctor who lives next door had his dog attacked and killed in the dead of night by the big cat. Experts were called in the next morning to figure out the phenomenon. They spent many hours examining and cataloguing the pugmarks in the foothills of Kohi Suleiman and concluded that in all probability it was a huge leopard that had wandered off the adjoining woods. Thank you, wildlife geniuses.

Grapevine has it that the leopard made a hasty retreat after noticing that it had crossed the perimeter -- into the turf of the original lion.

© Sameer

Abdullah of all seasons

2011-12-06T13:43:00.001+04:00

Whenever Doctor Sahib opens his mouth there is snowball's chance in hell that you won’t be surprised. The latest verdict, it appears, is loud -- as is expected from the older cub (they can be cubs only for there is only one lion): We badly need to have big screens back in Srinagar and open up the goddamn beer shops. Pronto. Tourists, you see, when they come to Kashmir have this tremendous urge (it could be the weather) to see Shahrukh Khan halt trains with the nail of his left little finger in cinema. Guests also want to eat butter chicken but often find no beer or Bagpiper available. This must change!

The tourism minister naturally adds to the chorus. 2011 saw 700,000 tourists visit Kashmir. Imagine millions of bottles of whisky – cheap, desi and malted – they might have consumed and the revenues thereof -- quickly collected by the state. In neighboring Jammu, where booze is freely available, by the way, excise duties et al on liquor comes to Rs 60 crores a year. Whatever the gain to the exchequer, tipple-tax may indeed be helpful in a state where the CM blows up Rs 12 crore on his chopper sorties alone.

All handicraft stores might need to display monkey-caps from now on – prominently. And journalists must wear bright clothes while clicking Haryanvi holiday-makers, enjoying boat-rides in the Dal. Else you could be mistaken for some obnoxious weed and dredged away into oblivion. The state government has -- till now -- efficiently, one must add, spent upwards of Rs 160 crore on the Dal clean-up project. Now the lake is as speckless as Veena, the neighborhood bombshell. All indicators suggest that ISI did not try to sabotage the project.

If one were to take Doctor Sahib seriously, we could be shortly in for a round of ‘controlled democracy’. Given his insouciant image, and apart from the fact that Sheri-Kashmir in a very un-socialist gesture put the dastar on the golf enthusiast one fine morning (since Farooq was more pliable and hence acceptable to India, his younger apolitical sister opines), Doctor sahib thinks he has a divine right to distribute over-simplistic gyaan on the workings of democracy in his capacity as India’s wind and biogas minister.

Other than the annual NC sound bites that Sheikh was a tall leader and how we are all grateful – and shall remain so – because he was for harmony and all that, the governor also had some nice words to say. Sheikh Sahib, Raj Bhawan noted, was among the notable leaders of his time who had worked closely with Jawaharlal Nehru. What they won’t say or choose to carefully blot out: Nehru put the Sheikh in prison for 23 long years and Indira Gandhi let him out, only to walk into a trap.

By the way has Doctor Sahib being listening to Kolavari Di, oflate?

© Sameer

A patij for Omar

2011-11-24T15:43:00.002+04:00

This autumn was consumed by a game of dumb charades in Kashmir. Newspapers wildly speculated whether or not AFSPA shall be rescinded in two counties. The chief minister, initially gung-ho about the revocation, soon figured out that the Dhoti-Wallas in South Block, are no walk-over. The defense establishment in Dominion Column is apparently less likely to be swayed by Twitter bravado. While the importance of being on the Unified Command is not lost to many, but like then the Queen of England, the CM of J&K is largely token.

Whether or not the dreaded law is finally removed, poor Mustafa Kamal was removed for attempting to be Kashmir’s Digvijay Singh. Known for his acidic quotes, he promptly blamed the prince – his nephew -- for his banishment from the court. Ironically in Omar’s maatamaal, the royal offspring of a monarch use the full style of His Royal Highness Prince(s) to their respective names but Gupkar clearly is no Buckingham palace and historically the monarch’s second offspring is considered bit of a threat to the throne. No surprises here.

Talking of politics and intrigues of Kashmir’s first family, Sheikh Abdullah, the patriarch – who has more detractors than acolytes these days – was son of a shawl-trader Sheikh Ibrahim. Born somewhere near the Anchar lake, Sheri-Kashmir married Akbar Jehan, the daughter of a European hotelier Harry Nedou. The Sheikhs had seven children. Two died. The five remaining children have been forever feuding.

Sheikh’s eldest child was a daughter -- Khalida, followed by Farooq, Tariq, Mustafa Kamal, and Suraiya. Sheikh Tariq is no more. He had huge differences with Farooq. Khalida Shah heads the ANC, her husband GM Shah’s party and is considered more of a political foe to Doctor Sahib. Shah’s rebellion against his brother-in-law is legend in Kashmir’s NC and non-NC circles. Suraiya Ali Matto née Abdullah used to teach at the Maulana Azad Government College for Women.

With Khalida and Suraiya out of the fray, only Mustafa Kamal stayed by Dr Farooq’s side, all along. Oflate he is reported to have consumed some kind of a truth herb. The no holds barred son of Sheikh Abdullah fired one after another verbal missile to devastating effect – My dad never signed on the dotted line, who’s Rahul Gandhi, The army throws grenades here, Soz has a small moustache (sorry I made the last one up) and so on and so forth.

Doctor Abdullah must be an embarrassed man. Exasperated he told Doctor Mustafa to go for a walk. Autumn is a great time to peregrinate up the Zabarwan hills. The leaves turn an intermediate color betwixt light green and orange. Near the governor’s mansion the yellow leaves strewn on the roadside give you a uncanny feeling of walking straight into a neo-impressionist painting by Camille Pissarro. Something like Entrée du village de Voisins.

I walked for a bit in the hummock early this month and bumped into this villager, around 70 years of age, feeble, wearing a Sozandar toup (peasant’s cap) and Pheran (loose tunic). He had dried muck on his plastic shoe and looked ruminatively into the multicolor foliage that grows in the Zabarwan around this time.

‘What do you do for a living, I asked?’

‘I used to make wagoo and patij’ (reed mats, made from rice stalks)

‘Vyon mahaz tschu kah hyeva’ (No one buys straw mats these days)

‘Does the government provide any assistance?’

‘Hai toeme kadhan jinab homanee, bae wanhak akh akh patij moel-potran’ (If they could get those out of here, I’d weave a straw mat each for the father-son duo), he said pointing to one of the numerous bunkers that disfigure the insanely beautiful hillocks of Srinagar.

© Sameer

Rain, Eid and Geelani

2011-11-11T15:39:00.001+04:00

A fine rain was falling as I disembarked the aircraft. Srinagar was shivering at 7 degrees centigrade. Rams and ewes, all set for slaughter on Eid, looked forlorn. Meat-market persons in untidy pherans haggled with locals for rates. Half the male population, I noticed, had not seen a shaving blade for weeks, a very Kashmiri trait most noticeable in winters. While it continued to drizzle, queues outside ATM machines got fretful. At least three people entered the cashpoint at one time to witness your transaction. The invasion of financial privacy has a very harmless ring to it, which is very indigenous.

Eid, like other festive occasions in Kashmir, is more about gluttony and less about socializing. So everywhere you go, you get fed like sheep. Ironically you are served one or more of a dozen improvised varieties of mutton (of sheep, generally). All your entreaties and appeals that you can’t humanly consume so much will fall to deaf ears, as the hosts will gang up to stuff more lamb down your throat. Eventually you give up, knowing deep down that your resistance is futile and stuffing one’s face is perhaps too insignificant a crime in face of the famed ‘mohabat’ of your Kashmiri comrades and relatives.

Then Eid came. It appeared disdainfully scornful that Farooq Abdullah and his sonny (in similar shades of Karakul caps) would offer Eid prayers at Harzatbal, with their sidekicks, while the same freedom was denied to the elderly man at Hyderpora. Now in his mid-80’s Mr G wasn’t even allowed to be with his sick brother in his last moments. A day after Eid the leader’s brother passed away in Sopore. It took the death of someone in his immediate family for the police state to relax Geelani's house-arrest. Obviously on ground the world’s largest democracy is running scared of an ex-Jamati, thrown out even by his own party?

To be frank the Karakul cap does not sit very elegant on Omar’s pedigreed head. The AFSPA debate is at its vertex these days. The CM has made a strong pitch, asking for the revocation of the law from more peaceful areas of the valley. Military-wallas, as usual, have put a spanner in the works. They are against the partial removal of the pathetic law even on a selective basis. The Indian army has committed many war-crimes in Kashmir and no one wants to lose the immunity to be tried in a court of law for all the injustices and villainy. And if Mustafa Kamal states the obvious, it is just fair game to guillotine him.

I tend to be slightly antiquated in my appreciation of people. While in Sopore, and since Geelani’s late brother was a neighbor, I got a chance to catch up with Mr G in person. On a rain swept evening, a few days after Eid, I sat face to face with the frail old man in his mid-80’s. In a very cordial conversation, which lasted an hour and was only interspersed with rare laughter by Mr G, he sounded totally sophisticated, extremely well-read -- with a conviction, that is both dainty and devastatingly honest.

One must be forthright though. It is hard not to be impressed by Geelani but when you press him about removal of AFSPA, he would just say the same thing he has been saying since the dawn of mankind. There are things, though, he spells out in such lucid terms that you would mistake him for Gene Sharp. ‘The quest for something that has a profound insight, intellectual message and inspirational value for us won’t be slaked by a road here or a sightseer there.’ The feeble smile stays.

In a rare unguarded moment he removed the Karakul cap and I can report safely that he has not lost a single strand of hair. It is silver grey. ‘You talk in Kafkaesque terms. Are you not afraid to be dubbed as a Utopian?’ I asked. Some wise soul says ‘A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing,’ pat came the reply.

Rain continued to fall outside. It was pitch dark. Sopore would be the last on the to-do list when they finally come around to scrap the draconian AFSPA, I thought as I began to take leave of the padre of Kashmir’s resistance. This has always been the stronghold. ‘I wish you good health, Sir’, I said as I got up to shake his feeble hand.

‘Nothing can exist without a cause. I am only incidental’. Geelani is sharply aware of both -- his age and ideas.

© Sameer

Kashmir's Horcrux

2011-11-01T04:35:00.001+04:00

Hectic parleys are on at the moment to jettison the dreaded AFSPA in the valley. By conservative estimates the army must have beaten about one in every five Kashmiris at one point or the other since this piece of horrible legislation was slapped on us. An unjust law, is no law at all, Martin Luther, the symbol of protestant reformation, verbalized the sentiment of St Augustine in the 15th century. Rings true to this day.

For more than twenty years people have been punched, thrown in the back of military trucks, knocked down by gun-butts, given kicks, pushed around as they got off a bus or simply slapped around for no apparent reason. Just for being themselves, perhaps. No you could not question the moral turpitude of a military-walla from Madras if he clubbed your aging father.

All that may change now. At least that is what we have been picking up from palace sources. The grapevine is abuzz that ever since Omar’s Range Rover (signal flags with farmer's humble plough shaking rapidly on the luxury bonnet) could not overtake a military lorry -- greatly upsetting the grandson -- the young CM (he is forever young and must be called thus till his children come of age), has decided to put his foot down. On a more serious note AFSPA has become Kashmir's Horcrux: How will they finally destroy it?

There is a little detail though that needs ironing but friends inform that there is no electricity in Srinagar. To scrap the law -- that the UN calls colonial-era, breaching contemporary international human rights standards -- another legislation/notification (God knows what jargon they use for it) needs to be annulled. It is a gift by an ex governor with big glasses and little compassion, following his subjective opinion. Plebians call it the Disturbed Areas Act.

Technically we were all disturbed for the last twenty one years. Disturb is actually based on Latin tumultus or tumult and applies better to physical agitation. In that sense Kashmir has been agitating for several decades. Omar’s grand-dad was also affected by the same tumult until he decided to forgo his defiance that saw him being sent to bars by ‘friends’. Now we are no longer disturbed, the first family thinks. Must be clap or cry.

As 2011 draws to a close and deadlines to get the law removed get stretched, one wonders if Omar’s Delhi friends shall help him relegate the law to where it belongs -- the dustbin of history. Ofcourse armymen with shok-shereen (whistles), shooing people off the roads, in fast moving convoys, will object. The entire defence establishment will fight in down. Soz, even as his moustache gets smaller and smaller, will oppose.

But a law that shields every non-commissioned fellow -- read a mere trooper -- to shoot and kill small children – as young as 9 -- based on mere suspicion to "maintain the public order" needs to go.

There is plenty of law at the end of a nightstick.

© Sameer

Colonel's Legacy

2011-10-20T17:47:00.000+04:00

The body dragging spectacle is on at the moment. People love gory TV. Qaddafi, the tyrant. Mad dog of the Middle East, Ron Reagan once dubbed him. Twitter crowd is rubbing their hands in glee: it is gag time again – bon mot, as they say in French. Each time someone dies or is knocked off by a US drone or NATO’s Brimstone missiles, a great menace is over; the world becomes a better place. And we can move on to the next target.

Mad old Qaddafi. He wasn’t in exile after all. Not in Niger. Not in the Algerian presidential palace. Not in Chad. He was not bluffing when he said I shall stay put in Libya. While alive Qaddafi rambled quite a lot. He confronted the Saudi king, putting His Highness out of countenance, in an important international conference in Doha two years back, the videos of which can still be found on YouTube. Ofcourse no one does that. You don’t talk down to the most important man in the world. Qaddafi was eccentric but in a very fearless way.

The Italians colonized Libya around 1912. They did a lot of shit in the beautiful African country as most occupiers do. If you perchance read history (which is a tad difficult on iPhones, I agree) you might come across a reference to the Turco-Italian War (Guerra di Libia in Italian) of 1911. Italy won the war and occupied Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenaica (roughly what constitutes modern day Libya). The first Libyan to fall to Italian bullets was Abdus Salam Bouminyar, grandfather of Qaddafi. Not a canine pedigree, exactly.

The truth is that Qaddafi was a flip-flop. The west never really trusted him, even after he voluntarily gave up his nuclear programme. With all the oil that Libya has (largest in Africa and ninth largest in the world) and his lifelong fascination to unite Africa, Qaddafi was always bit of a suspect. His female body guards and lapses into pitch-a-tent delirium, not to mention the stupid Green Book he wrote -- came in handy to call him a loony in garish clothes. Who pitches a Bedouin-style tent in the gardens of Baron Gustave de Rothschild's multi-million dollar mansion in the heart of Paris?

As long as he signed cosy deals with the Europeans, they welcomed him with official protocol at capitals and castles. Silvio Berlusconi used to come rushing to Rome's Ciampino airport to receive his ‘friend’ who came bearing goodies — oil and gas. So it appears a bit rich when the French rightwing nut Sarkozy says Qaddafi’s death has started a democratic process. Berlusconi used a Latin expression on hearing the news before quickly adding that the war is over. The Italian leader is a good seven-eight years older than Qaddafi and among other famous things, is best known for his sex party boast: eight is not enough.

Now that four decades of madness has come to an end (to use one of the cool expressions being bandied about) the uncouth rag-tag army of NTC, pushing each other to give bytes to Western TV channels, are no saints. Notwithstanding the praises they seem to be foregathering at the moment, an important 107-page report by Amnesty International late last month revealed that while Gaddafi forces committed widespread crimes under international law during the conflict, forces loyal to the NTC have also committed abuses that in some cases amounted to war crimes. Apparently they summarily executed the original 'Guide of the Revolution' after capturing him alive. No hermits here.

To cut the chase, Qaddafi proved to be a total screwball. But so was Bush. Thank the fathers of American constitution, a US president can serve only two terms. Yes Qaddafi bought soccer teams, spoke mercurially, was quirky sometimes, had simple-minded solutions for the most intractable problems like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Unify both, call it Isratine. Simple). He gave money to Colombia’s FARC and the IRA. Switched-over on the Lockerbie bombing issue. The legacy -- if any -- is both fractured and fragmanted.

In hindsight Qaddafi was a bad juggler. He sought a middle way between capitalism and communism. He tore pages from the UN Charter while speaking at the UN. In Libya he never came down off the high horse and ruled rowdily. Historians won't have problems dismissing him as a narcissist with a bohemian heart. Notably Qaddafi gladdened many a heart back home in Kashmir, much to the embarrassment of India, when he famously supported the idea of an 'independent state' for Kashmir. So much of an idealist in those African robes.

Hugely influenced by the iconic Eygyptain president Nasser, Qaddafi absolutely loved Nasser's pan-Arabist ideas and deep down probably wished to succeed him as leader of the Arabs. Sadly he could never make the transition. He remained a tribal with a golden pistol on him, always. The NTC foot soldiers are currently brandishing the Samuel Cummings small firearm.

©Sameer

Ants in pants of right-wing

2011-10-12T20:42:00.000+04:00

The intolerance of the Hindu right wing just hit a new low. A few goons, boorish beyond belief, barged into the private chambers of the well-known Supreme Court lawyer and a fine gentleman, Prashant Bhusan, and assaulted him. Apparently Mr Bhusan had said that demands for a referendum in Kashmir are legit. In saying so he only quoted the promise made by independent India’s first prime minister, Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru, to the people of Kashmir.

Not only has it become terribly unfashionable to mention Kashmir in India these days but God forbid if you happen to speak your mind and toe a line, that is not in sync with the lunatic right wing, you are doomed. They will quickly send a few school drop-outs with pot-bellies and vulgar feet to your home -- to pee in your garden and threaten you with dire consequences for holding the mirror to them.

As they shout in a loutish, disgraceful manner while kicking an old man, breaking his reading glasses and tearing his shirt apart, you wish to tap the retards from behind and tell them that India published a White Paper on Kashmir in 1948 with multiple references to the issue of holding free and impartial plebiscite in Kashmir. What did this poor man do? He just stated the obvious.

And while you slap and beat him to pulp, reflecting the character of your Sena, do you even know, that the Constitution of India guarantees the right to freedom, given in articles 19, 20, 21 and 22 to him. Had you been to a school, you dimwit, they might have taught you that the framers of the constitution of this country -- that you have now set out to defend in the unwashed shirt of yours -- guarantee the freedom of speech and expression, as one of six fundamental freedoms.

For ignorance that blanks out your ilk, and for taking an eerie pride in beating everyone from poor autowallas in Bombay to respected gentlemen in Delhi, you deserve to rot in prison – because primitive minds sure require some downtime.

© Sameer

Why bother?

2011-10-09T20:42:00.001+04:00

The question we all should be asking is not who killed the NC bloke. People wouldn’t care less about how this guy kicked the bucket. Let me stick my neck out on this one. I don’t frankly think Omar had anything sinister to do with the mysterious death of the NC worker. Perhaps he dealt with the matter in good faith, but since he is wont to donnybrooks and controversies, it comes back at him. Always.

Now TV chaps have a habit of chasing inconsequential things and glamorizing pure poppycock. So day in and day out -- for the last one week we were subjected to this rather weird Rishi character, apparently involved in graft, talking with a new-found piety to poor TV chaps flying light, since it has been a somewhat normal season in the valley. Since nothing substantial is happening in Delhi at the moment, media had a field day in Srinagar.

This entire dramaturgy amounts to nothing. Indian media, when it comes to Kashmir, is mostly corn-fed. Forget about the theatre. I understand where our own unease stems from. Many of us don’t like the arrogance with which Omar talks down to people, notwithstanding his glib TV performances. We understand the disconnect. We know that the manicured lawns of Royal Springs can’t palliate the pain of parents who get sleepless nights thinking about the unmarked graves of Kupwara and elsewhere.

The singular tragedy is that we expect the prince and his courtiers to abdicate power and go on a vacation just because one of their own allegedly died in the castle. How unseasoned is that? Should we really get worked up whether a sitting or standing judge writes the time-line of what happened at Gupkar last week? How about getting started by counting how many accused in the killing of 118 kids -- last summer -- had charges brought against them? Did we not have commissions of enquiry set up after each of those despicable killings?

If 2010 appears too distant a memory, what about events that came to light this year, not too long ago. Apparently a government body endorsed the findings of all those tireless organizations -- which have been crying hoarse all these years -- about the presence of unmarked graves dotting rural Kashmir. But for an exception or two the findings registered nary a blip in the national media circus. And why should it? Salam Reshi, with his deliberate pauses, makes for sexy viewing. Middle class India does not care for rotting cadavers. It wants emotional porn on KBC and Bigg Boss.

The truth be told it is somewhat unfair to blame poor Rajdeep and that greasy hair– Arnoub – and the Times of India boys in Kashmir. The Indian parliament didn’t deem the matter of mass graves fit enough, regardless of the Atut ang raag, to be deliberated upon. Forget about the parliament in Delhi, the JK assembly speaker, a gent with large glasses and a notoriously short temper, simply turned down the demand for a discussion on unmarked graves. No sweat. Matter adjourned.

And as we hoof-it into another winter, there shall be layers of snow soon, followed by Harisa. And skiing tourists. In two months it will be two years from 2010 and who knows what hornet’s nest we stumble upon next. Already Mr G is saying: Show the slum dwellers the way to Jawaharlal tunnel!

© Sameer

Of four-letter words

2011-10-04T15:39:00.000+04:00

Kashmir Assembly

Scene I, Act II
Play: Who shouts louder?

Dramatis personae:
Akbar, the Abusive: Sharp-tongued, wildly gesticulating. Chair.
Moulvi: Opposition member with a huge fan following, throws fans occasionally.
Mehbooba: Leader of the opposition, will trade anything to be the Queen.
Omar: The scion, damned if he opens his mouth, damned if he doesn’t.
And the sundry.

The house is in session. There have been slug-fests -- drop-kicking, jumping on benches et al -- in the last few days for entirely different reasons.

Penultimate day. Enter Akbar in over-sized headmaster glasses. Slightly boorish, hair dyed charcoal black. More black than Prof Soz’s little moustache. Takes his seat.

Akbar: Let the proceedings begin, ladies.

Moulvi: I object. There are men also present here.

Akbar: Don’t rub me the wrong way. I know where you come from.

Moulvi: You are being partisan.

Akbar: How many parties have you changed? I have lost count.

[Laughs a sinister National conference laugh]

Moulvi [red in his ears]: This is such a shame!

Akbar: We have many shame. Oops, damn this English language. Bahut Sharam hai hamare paas. Apni fikir karo. Your party is shameless.

Moulvi: You sound like a farmer, who never went to school.

Akbar: I don’t have farm-houses like some people.

At this Mehbooba jumps to her feet and butts in. Scarf tighly around her face.

Mehbooba [to Akbar]: You must be the most biased farmer ever.

Akbar: Javo ji, kissi aur bagh me javo. I am the gardener here. And I will not let you pluck any peaches.

Mehbooba: Please remember you are not a national conference worker here, like the one killed yesterday. You are the chair.

Akbar: I am Al-baain. Plough. Get it. [Switches over to Kashmiri for easy cuss-word delivery]
Saeri meel chakvo aabas. [We will pour all your ink into water]

Mehbooba: It is clear. You are full of spite.

Akbar: Not a word will go on records, Mehbooba ji. Not a word.

Mehbooba: We haven’t spoken a word. What will you enter and not enter in the record?

Akbar: Shut up, I take no dictations from Muftis or Molvis. Akbar only gives dictations.

At which point Molvi gets supremely agitated and attempts to throw a fan at Akbar but Allah saves the speaker.

Omar: What was that? An earthquake. Lets move out of here.

Akbar: Beth jayiye. Sit sit. Billions of billious barbecued blue blistering barnacles, what a rude bunch I got here.

Akbar continues his rant. Beth Jayiye. By now all courtiers are up. There is noise, commotion. TV guys have got news of the day. They are pantomiming in front of the cameras. As if describing an assembly free-for-all is the most terrible thing in the world to do.

Diplodocus! Duck-billed platypus! Dunderheaded coconuts! Voices from the speaker’s chamber can be heard.

The yapping gradually dims out.

Curtains.

© Sameer

Barrister in the buggy

2011-09-23T17:55:00.000+04:00

Barrister Sultan Mahmood Chaudhry is a heavyset man. Born into a Jatt family of politicians in Mirpur, he went to England like all wealthy Mirpuris do, to earn his law degree. Apart from being a barrister (not a solicitor, mind you) he is friends with the drama queen Zardari, and is PPP’s current points man in Azad Kashmir. Nearer home he is pals with Zahoor Shah Wattali, the boss of real estate group Trison (brother of ex DIG Kashmir Ali Mohammad Wattali). Yasin Malik, when he was still a folk hero-cum-guerrilla commander was arrested for the first time from Zahoor’s home. Do the maths.

To all appearances barrister sahib came to attend a wedding in Srinagar this past week. Given his bulk, matched only by Devender from our side of Kashmir (Okay okay guys, Jammu and Kashmir), it appears that he quite enjoyed his Wazwan at the Wattali household. Not only that -- the ex-PM of AJK (yes they have PMs there) enlightened us about the exquisite beauty of the valley, greatly adding to our cognition. Chopper rides usually have that kind of effect on excursionists.

Barrister also loved the golf buggies in Srinagar’s Royal golf course. This is a very posh place which the rich and nouve-rich of Srinagar (apart from politicians and their sidekicks) frequent. Alas the bourgeoisie can only afford to take pictures near Pari-mahal with the green-as-Pakistani-flag teeing grounds as backdrop. Yasin ‘socialist’ Malik and Nasir Sogami accompanied the portly guest on different occasions in the golf cart. Reporters say that the barrister felt equally at home on -- fairway and rough – across the political divide.

And one evening, as someone played low flute near Zabarwan, a thin sliver of moon appeared on a faraway cloud. The prince charming strode in, blue eyes and all. Soon the blind date happened. The sometime PM of AJK and the incumbent CM of OJK (that is original, not occupied). Notwithstanding the usual tosh of official version: apricots and apple tarts were discussed, sceptics remain unimpressed. It now appears that barrister sahib with those rang-ba-rangeen short jackets of his, mayhap carried some coded message from Zardari which Radha helped Omar decipher.

Often times it gets complex for the muggles to follow the tale, since it is so ridden with mystique. A heavy-duty politician who was the principal of Hogwarts at a time when our wizards went there to learn alchemy, was in town, and flew around like they do in Quidditch. In between he rendezvoused with Death-eaters while the ministry of magic looked in utter disbelief. The jury is still out on the political symbolism of sultan’s tour de force.

No, he thundered, back home in Islamabad, he does not recognize Omar (despite the latter’s Twitter gushing, chopper freebies, mild moments at the Lion's tomb and Nasir, the tour guide’s boyish commentary in the buggy). If not anything, Geelani, old and frail, and cooped inside his home at all times, still gets the Pakistanis to behave.

© Sameer

Thirties

2011-09-18T19:42:00.000+04:00

When I was younger, I used to get these daffy thoughts, especially when it snowed. On a calm wintry night, when the world seemed like a big barren meadow, I expected the candle factory nearby to go up in maroon flames. The snow and the rabbits would illuminate in the glow, I imagined, and we could all sing Happy Birthday to the old Shama factory.

Kashmir is no more the valley of our growing up years. Someone recently told me there still are light cuts back home, especially during winters. Call me a complete quixotic, or a hopeless romantic, I find the idea of a dark, candle-lit night utterly fairytale like. There are some voices from childhood one can’t afford to abdicate.

In rabbit years, I'm dead. Since humans live a while longer, I guess ambling onto the 30’s brings the first whiffs of maturity. The serial infatuator in us shoots himself in the head. At a subterranean level -- axiomatically -- you become more conscious, more aware, more silent, more unfastened and more watchful of where you are going in life. Though I must admit that the child in me keeps me amused, childlike -- 24 X 7.

At last count the world was 6.9 billion and yet there are no more than 6-7 people you come to love and be pals with – for a lifetime. Who knows the millions of rendezvous’ we keep having, perhaps all happen for a reason. We meet the most amazing of humankind and the silliest of nuts in life. We bond, laugh, philosophize, traverse long paths. And yet when the plane hits a turbulent pocket in air, we are alone.

How is it like being early 30’s, an American colleague of mine asked me in the morning? Camus says in the 'The Myth of Sisyphus' that the age of thirty is a crucial period in the life of a man, for at that age he gains a new awareness of the meaning of time. Ofcourse I didn’t quote the Frenchman to the American. Boreham wrote in 'Cliffs of Opal' that Keats ensphered himself in thirty perfect years and died, not young.

By the bye, I share my birthday with New York Times.

© Sameer

The 9/11 decade

2011-09-11T17:50:00.002+04:00

It has been ten years since 9/11. They now call it the 9/11 decade.

I was visiting home that September lounging in the pre-autumn sun, drinking noon-chai with a Bakarkhani. The first plane struck the North Tower. I rushed inside to switch the TV on but continued to dunk my phyllo bread. Soon the second plane cut into the South Tower. I called up my friend who works in lower Manhattan. He was on his way to work, he said, and was standing at the City Hall, just north of the Financial Districts, looking at the burning citadels of America’s capitalistic pride – the two iconic towers. "I saw the second plane crashing," he said in a very ruffled tone. This is major. Major. My Bakarkhani went cold in my cup, I still remember.

The moment was critical – for Kashmir too, much as it was transformative for the whole wide world. Something extraordinarily dramatic had happened. Suddenly rebellion/freedom/resistance struggles became swear words. Everything was lumped together. Everything became terrorism. Raising fists too. So Armitage, quite hulk like, said something about bombing Pakistan back to the Stone Age and the military-wallas ruling the country, got the message. Overnight the moral, political, diplomatic support to ‘Tehreek-e-Kashmir’ became muddy. Taps were shut. Ofcourse there never were any training camps in Pakistan. Kashmiris went to Hogwarts to fetch their wands.

Mighty America was dandered up. You see the problem is that you cannot afford to antagonize the US. There are a few sacred lines you cannot breach. Ofcourse you are allowed to show the chip on your shoulder and complain. You can even cry injustice to a mic near you. Bleeding heart liberals may even hear you out. Amy Goodman could well speak with you for her show -- on phone -- if your English is okay but there is a clear line. A few things are non-negotiable in this world, like death and taxes. The red-line is America. There can be no non-sense happening on their own portico.

Soon war helmets were out. War grammar was read out in the woods and cities. On the world stage a huge churn was taking place. Nothing appeared the same. Kashmiris forgot about the ‘beautiful Kalashnikovs, as one columnist described the guns’ and an earnest re-think started. One can’t say for sure if 9/11 speeded up the transition from an armed to a peaceful struggle but events on that day, ten years ago, sure acted as fillip.

The US went about invading one district after another from Kabul to Karbala -- to ‘cough’ the bad boys out, in cowboy-speak. Nearer home multiple peace orgy’s took place. Vajpayee, Musharraf et al became stars but soon dimmed out on the firmament. Meantime the Americans continued to thrash anyone who came in their way. Poor Saddam was falsely accused of having sheesha with OBL in a Baghdad café and quickly hanged. Pakistan became a frontline state again. Seen hobnobbing with the Americans, the beards in their infinite wisdom thought it wise to finish Benazir off. Everyone everywhere was dabbed in colors of chaos.

One hundred and twenty months later, with over half a million people dead, mostly innocent, nothing much has changed. Cosmetically there are adjustments though. America has a professorial president now who does not sound dumb. There are no box-cutters on planes. Zawahiri doubles up as the CEO of Al-Qaida and their chief surgeon. Karzai rules Kabul, not Afghanistan. Europe is more far-right than ever before. Zardari sleeps in the Aiwan-e-Sadar nowadays. Omar Abdullah watches only NDTV at Gupkar.

Has anything really changed? Is the world a safer place? Presidents Obama and Bush had to be kept behind bullet proof glass at the 9/11 memorial , the other day.

Are the Taliban defeated or exhausted in Afghanistan? Is Pakistan better off or worse than before? What after the last Americans exit Iraq? Is democracy like pizza, home-delivered in 30-minutes, piping hot? Is it okay to fist the air now?

Sometimes questions can be booby traps.

© Sameer

Autumnal music

2011-09-04T09:48:00.001+04:00

Since the powers that be have completely mastered the art of playing musical chairs (Oh-you-are-free-because-democracy-is-in-a-good-mood-today/Oops-stay-home-democracy-is-suspended-tonight) with the old boy, the plucky boss of the Hurriyet snuck past cops and did a disappearing act on the Eid eve. Only to emerge further north. Much to the chagrin of Gupkar, G preached revolution. For the millionth time. The proverbial thorn continues to prick the prince.

An investigation was launched into the great escape. How can someone in his 80’s with a crème color Karakul cap, matching the Pathani dress, with an unmistakably graying beard of a believer, tip-toe his way to freedom? The poor policemen are at pains to explain the phenomenon, while Twitter was briefly abuzz with the talk that it could be an invisibility cloak, a la Harry Potter. The jury is still out on whether there exists a secret tunnel underneath his home or some divine help is at play. We shall know.

In other fleeting news, Mufti threw a closing Iftaar party a day or two before Eid. Irrespective of the preference of his guest list, he served a drink of sweet basil, locally called babri byol. Although the actual number of Rozdars (those who do keep fasts during Ramadan) was not immediately known, journalists who nibbled away in the party said that food flew off tables at the speed of light. Given a choice between mutton chops, Manmohan and Mufti, it is anybody’s guess what Kashmiris will opt for.

Post Eid, it looks like there is going to be no harud (Fall) this year. It has upset a great many people, including Chetan Bhagat. A festival of handclaps and free expression, supposed to take place on the banks of Dal, has been scuttled by armchair intellectuals and high-strung hacks. Was it indeed a great way to push for freedom of ideas in a place where the very ‘idea’ of ‘freedom’ is dismissed offhand? There is plenty of law at the end of a nightstick, to borrow Whalen’s weasel words.

Shammi Kapoor’s last remains were scattered in Jhelum and around the houseboats where he serenaded beauty, and Kashmir by extension. Notwithstanding our discomfort with half-a-million jackboots and other such visible signature settings in Kashmir, we love Shammi Kapoor, unanimously. Does he symbolize some long-forgotten virtue of innocence, the poetry of our souls or some balmy nostalgia, we know not? Even if memories diffuse facts sometimes, they seldom die.

© Sameer

McCain in Mughal Gardens

2011-08-20T02:26:00.002+04:00

A little detail has fallen between the cracks ever since India started its latest march to a corruption-free state, led by Shri Anna Sahib Hazare, a piddly man, simple-mindedly honest. This revolution is cheered on by Lord Arnoub Goswami (confident that deliverance is well nigh), and the big media (how shamelessly they boo our revolution, hypocrites). Anyway, far from the maddening crowds of the Ram Lila Maidan, an unexpected visitor dropped by in Kashmir.

John McCain is a very important man. He came close to becoming the US president two years back before Obama spoke one night and DC was flooded with tears of hope, washing away both McCain’s aura and Fox News’ mental virginity. Another matter Barack proved to be all bark and no bite, notwithstanding the Nobel Peace Prize. Despite his failed attempt at the presidency, McCain is relevant and sits on the Senate committee on US Armed Forces, a hugely influential body.

So what brought him to Kashmir? On the grapevine in Srinagar, friends pick up that McCain discussed a basketful of issues with Omar, besides spending a few hours at GN Butt’s World famous (everything is world famous in Kashmir) Claremont houseboat. Previous guests have included US vice presidents (Nelson Rockfeller) and rock stars (George Harrison). The fact that McCain flew in straight from Islamabad (Pakistani capital, not Anantnag), his political secretaries in tow, has made it all the more titillating for the gossiprazzi.

Despite the government press release, the purpose of the meeting is somewhat unknowable. McCain is too high-profile to get on a plane to discuss environment and social issues with Omar. Hence the curio. We called up palace insiders, as we sometimes do, when info is hard to come by and gossip threatens to morph into a conspiracy theory. Geelani sahib, for instance, has already called the meeting an anti-Muslim ‘nexus’ between an evil America, Bharati Samraj and Jews. Why do Jews have to feature in the most unlikeliest of films, one wonders?

Be as it may -- flanked by his secretaries Christain Brose, Vance Serchuk and Paul Narian -- McCain, the iconic American hero, air-force commander, famously shot down in Vietnam in '67, POW, maverick, GOP stalwart, met Omar, son of Farooq Abdullah. The CM was flanked by (who else) Devender and Nasir Sogami. Here is a figmental account.

McCain: Harwan is green. Like Hanoi, Vietnam.

Omar [pleased]: Did you see the Royal Springs, Sir? My dad and I play golf in half-pants there. Nice place.

McCain: I hate golf. Churchill used to say, it’s a good walk wasted.

Omar [little embarrassed]: This is a great time to visit Pahalgam. If you like, Sir, my choppers are waiting.

McCain: I am told you are already facing criticism for blowing up money on helicopter rides -- to hill resorts. I don’t want an American angle to it.

Omar: The opposition here is petty. They gang up with the separatist leadership on me. I have friends. Can’t I take them to see my fief? Please tell me, Sir. Can’t I?

[Devender and Nasir nod in affirmative, suggesting Omar is right]

McCain: I heard the Mirwaiz on FM this afternoon. Retainers in the houseboat said he is a big hit.

Omar [somewhat cheesed off]: No way. He is only popular in areas where Azaan from Jamia Mosque loudspeakers can be heard. In any case radio was our idea.

McCain: Your idea. But why make your foes popular?

Omar: They tend to get very grumpy during house arrests. FM kept one faction of the Hurriyet busy, at least.

McCain: Splendid. What about the other faction? Someone said the old man is more well-versed in religion.

Omar: Well he is bit of a firebrand, Sir. By comparison Anna Hazare appears like a jester in front of him. One cannot trust him with a mike. It is like offering carrots to a rabbit.

McCain: You keep pulling these rabbits out the hat, don't you? Did you switch off mobiles and internet in Kashmir on India’s Independence Day?

Omar: Communication is a distraction sometimes. People had other options. They watched Doordarshan. Flower petals falling on my head as I tugged on the flag halyard. We wanted everyone – adults and kids – to feel patriotic.

McCain [with a sardonic smile]: Don’t they call you the Twitter kid?

Omar: Dad says kids born in palaces should play with real helicopters.

© Sameer

Living

2011-08-11T02:24:00.001+04:00

Eleventh day of Ramadan. Middle East. A glade of earth, as extravagant as it is affluent and filled with contrasts. I don’t know if the mere act of keeping a fast cleanses us spiritually. I don’t even know if it really makes a difference. Yet there is something utterly graceful about resisting what comes naturally to humans. Trying to stay un-moored, even if for a month, in a world and age filled with seduction is in itself an elegant thought.

A lot of charity happens around here this time of the year. Those wearing subtle notes of Yves Saint Laurent fragrance sit with poor workers, smelling sweat, straight from their construction sites, to break the fast together. All the world's racism and xenophobia -- so inherent to humankind -- evaporates, by some magic. I like it when the distinction between the haves and the have-nots fuses in some beautiful symphony.

As such life is never easy. We seek to make it pliable, only to sit back and let things take their own course. We sashay past situations. We get attached to memories, places, people. Often enough it takes extraordinary courage to be in the saddle. On occasions, time slips peacefully by, in a haze of relaxation. Yet at other times, cheer, like a clandestine lover, slips away quietly, from the back door, tip-toeing. Without the sentimentality of a poet.

© Sameer

Harud

2011-08-06T08:22:00.001+04:00

Come September, Srinagar shall transmogrify into Jaipur. The Directors of the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival and Teamwork Productions will descend upon Kashmir to organize an ‘apolitical dialogue’ concerning literature. Makes one reflect, if only in self-amusement, how does one de-link art and literature from politics? And how do you hyphenate the two in a space as political as Kashmir.

News stories from India say the gala literary event will be spread over a couple of days in Srinagar and invites are currently being printed to be dashed off to prominent Kashmiri writers and several Indian authors from the celeb-set. Reports go as far as to suggest that Salman Rushdie will come, which may quite frankly be plain attention-seeking. Blasphemers seldom walk into battlegrounds.

Sanjoy Roy, producer of the fest states that, "The Harud festival will be a great addition to our existing literary and arts festivals in India. It is a privilege to be creating this program with the backdrop of Kashmir and its legacy of literature which has a history of over 2,500 years. We strongly believe that India's multi cultural ethos needs to resonate across the world."

It is astonishing to note that while the organizers scramble about to provide a platform to writers, they choose to either forgo or overpass the silenced tragedy of Kashmir. Is this an effort to mock at the muffled dissent that is so commonplace in Kashmir? When Kashmiris, by and large, cannot express themselves freely, how can a literary fest engage them in a meaningful way?

Talking of a literary tradition that dates back two millennia and attempting to kick-start an apolitical cultural dialogue in Kashmir is akin to lobbing a joke grenade at an audience that is too terrified to laugh. How can one talk about the freedom of speech under the sun when some poor kid is tortured to death at night? Why can’t people be allowed to express condolences, leave alone ideas? Unless the expression is truly free in all forms, how can one celebrate writing and arts?

From times immemorial literature and politics have informed each other. Plato, the great Athenian philosopher wrote Protagoras to use conversation between characters only to make political statements. As Olga Tokarcruz, one of post war Europe’s finest essayist’s writes, ‘There is no literature that can remain nonpolitical in this broad sense of the word, apart from romance novels or pulp fiction, of course. Quality literature, literature that wants to achieve something, is always political.’

Not surprisingly comparisons will be drawn with the Palestinian Literary festival (PalFest). Indeed Harud is going to be nothing like that. The PalFest, that seeks to assert the power of culture over the culture of power, to paraphrase the Late Edward Said, was shut down in 2009 by Israelis in East Jerusalem, prompting the British columnist and writer Jeremy Harding to remark that all cultural events which take place in areas of contention have political undertones. "Talking about what literature is and what it means in a fraught political situation is the most honest thing we can do,” he added.

One may forgive Times of India, once a wonderful newspaper, now reduced to shallow yellow journalism, for headlining Harud as ‘Kashmir Valley turns a page, starts a literature fest‎’. A celeb-set of authors dissecting oral traditions of Kashmir and band-pather et al, complete with a musical jig by amateur artists – with drums and guitars and microphones – playing to a young crowd swaying to them indeed makes great headlines. But it also sends out a message. There is normalcy. While there isn’t any. What is on display is invented normalcy, or semi-normalcy, if you may.

Kashmir is a place where the crises of legitimacy stares you in the face. There are important questions to be answered. Who will be excluded? Will the seditious Arundhati Roy qualify as a speaker, given the apolitical theme of the fest? Will Fatima Bhutto explain culture to young Kashmiris in her American accented English? The White House spokesperson pronounces Pakistan better than her.

If one were to scratch beneath the glossy image – the lush lawns, imposing mountain backdrop, artsy types in Fab India Kurtas, the tourist brochure Dal, good-looking people, famous authors’ with misty Kehwa cups in front of them, Farooq Abdullah's collection of exotic shawls, coffee house perennials – you get the real picture. It is somewhat odd and sadly does not make good headlines. Parents waiting for their jailed children. War orphans with eyes welled up, another Eid without their folks. Mass graves. Section 144.

Every man's memory is his private literature, Aldous Huxley, said one evening. Our memories, over many Haruds, are brimmed over with injustice.

© Sameer

The Lobbyist

2011-07-25T02:19:00.001+04:00

Poor Dr Fai. Imprisoned for being ISI. That all powerful imperium in imperio [state within a state]. Uncle Bush, busy signing his own baseball cards these days, gave the Pakistanis well over $10 billion since 9/11. Pakistanis apportioned the largesse amongst themselves and some of it naturally went to ISI -- being the largest of the three intel service agencies of that country. The spy agency in turn threw some bits to lobbyists in the States, FBI claims. The Americans are basically saying now: oh we don’t give you sackfulls of sugar so that you make candies and market them here. You have to be a registered candy man.

And since we are a little grumpy at the moment, we will squeeze you a bit.

In reality the Americans don’t miss out on these things. They knew all along that Dr Fai was a top lobbyist for the Kashmir resistance movement. They knew that he gave small funds to congressmen. Everyone does that in DC. It is legit. There is a whole philosophical and legal framework to it. Each penny is accounted for. Now of course if the relationship between US sleuths and their Pakistani counterparts hits rock bottom, expect some legal brain in FBI to dust off the rule book of political funding by foreign governments. Notwithstanding the fact that Bush used to exchange texts with Fai.

Since the big media has gotten involved and NYT is following up on the news [which by the bye was swift to call the recent Norwegian bombing a Jihadi plot, before getting an egg on its face] US politicians of all hues are likely to shun Dr Fai like plague. Those ‘Dear Dr Fai’ letters from Bill [Clinton], which were re-printed faithfully by local dailies in Kashmir in the 90’s, text messages with Dubya, the dinner laughter with Dan Burton will all be forgotten. How could they know Fai was ISI? Nobody had a clue till yesterday. Okay we might be exaggerating here, perhaps Arnoub and Praveen [Indian clones of O'Reilly and Lawrence Auster respectively] had a hunch but no one in the US knew. That is for sure.

Fai is a US citizen and the law of the land is expected to deal with him without fear or favor if he really broke any rules. That he was at the helm of intense diplomatic efforts -- at age 62 to promote the plebiscite of Kashmir -- is as well known as Beatles. Whether he actually mixed up with the modern day version of Nazi Germany's Schutzstaffel -- read ISI -- shall be decided by a United States District Court in Virginia. As for Wadwan, a tiny village in Kashmir’s Budgam, where Fai was born, these are very wistful times.

© Sameer

Peace Times

2011-07-12T07:11:00.001+04:00

I loathe myself sometimes for not knowing too much Urdu. Every time I see people bartering couplets in Urdu, especially in Roman script on FaceBook, my envy is rekindled. Heck Geelani Sahib’s autobiography too is in Urdu. The boss of Indian army’s 15 Corps in Srinagar, Lt Gen Hasnain is currently going through the tome. The army PRO confirmed to journalists that Gen sahib is a voracious reader and likes Geelani sahib’s wolfish Urdu. He is reading page 144 at the moment. There are no sections in the book. Any pun is incidental.

Since this is the season of schemes, local journalists will soon get their share of the melon. Land is being finalized in Srinagar to be handed over to the press corps for housing. There will be separate zones for TV and Print guys. However it has been decided (perhaps at Devender’s insisting) that there be only one main entrance to the press mohalla. Sometimes when it becomes imperative to teach the natives a lesson or two in democracy, the gates can be bolted from outside. Simple.

Mufti Sahib has been appearing in papers oflate. That is always a bad omen. He starts off by saying innocuous little things (oh-you-see-I've-never-been-hungry-for-power-types) but soon blurts out something quite unexpected. A more seasoned and battle scarred player than Messrs Abdullahs' II and III, who are more prone to ad-libbing, Mufti is in his element when nothing untoward happens in Kashmir for more than a dozen weeks. A rival mainstream bloke in grey hair with a mic in hand talking in Kashmiri-accented Urdu. He completes the peace picture.

An Asiatic bear attacked someone in Srinagar the other day. The bear is reported to be in a fine shape and was seen making tracks close to the Zabarwan forest range on its back to the wilderness. It is said that in the wild one is more likely to be struck by lightning than to be attacked by a bear but these are strange times. Following an unusually big year for bear attacks, a seminar on how to meet a black, brown or polar bear and come out alive is being conducted in Tagore Hall.

Yes, you guessed it right. Doctor Sahib will make the keynote address.

©Sameer

The Lull

2011-06-27T02:16:00.001+04:00

This is the summer of gay abandon in Kashmir. Close to 100,000 holidaymakers set off for hill resorts yesterday. Each nook and cranny was filled with tourists, local papers said. Everyone clicked pictures on hummocks and horsebacks. With the urban pockets reeling under an abnormal heat spell, the closest get-away is Pahalgam for everyone south of Srinagar and Gulmarg for the northerners. The jury is still out on why the horses in Gulmarg resemble mules these days.

The peaceful summer – and there have been many such epochs before – is not because the recently elected Sarpanchs have lulled their respective villages into some sort of amity. It is not even because the police force has suddenly become efficient since Nasir Sogami – grandson to GN Wai, minister in Sheikh Abdullah’s cabinet – became the new taskperson. It is because peace is often the easiest way to wind up at the goal.

In the slow psychological warfare that Kashmiris are subject to, sloppy stories continue to appear in the Indian press about how we must be on some weed to suggest that we lost 100,000 people in the last two decades. How we are completely off the mark on the exact number of people missing in the conflict or how we blow up the figures about people languishing in jails. The compradors just miss out on a small detail: the sport of statistics is always subjacent to aspirations.

We have never been in the business of numbers. We don’t wish to wear the albatross of victimhood around our necks. At an emotional level not many people would even bother to contrast the government figures of the dead or missing to the intelligence agencies' tally (often fed to whippersnapper visiting journalists) or APDP’s number of mass graves. The sad part is this very perverse and cunning effort to make the sufferer curse himself for the throes he undergoes.

The old man could make extraneous noises from time to time. Ofcourse we won’t throw our expensive phones into river Jhelum, neither would we asunder our classrooms into male and female units but we would still admire him, for someone must have the gall to tell the emperor that he is without clothes and that no matter how many tourists mistake horses for mules and how many schemes you launch, you can’t shackle our imagination. or Nostalgia.

© Sameer

Chiddu and Chilly grenades

2011-06-22T02:14:00.003+04:00

PC or Chidambaram Palaniappan (yes that is the correct way to say it) is 65. None of his hairs is grey. They don’t age in Sivagangai where he comes from. The hair remains charcoal black till 90, by magic. The silk shawl that he throws on his shoulders is vintage Tamil politician style. Last night India’s home minister checked in at the Bobby guest house in Pahalgam. Kashmir is the place to be this summer.

The cub, with an iPad fitted to him, hosted an appams with chemmeen curry dinner for PC. No journalists could be found in the vicinity since the grand Mufti of Bijbehara, in a political masterstroke, had already fed them a sumptuous Wazwan. No one can really run around, let alone, write a news story, after partaking in Tabak-maaz. It hits you bang in the middle of the head, like Absolut Vodka. No Vodka was served at Mufti sahib’s feast.

So it turned out to be a private affair for PC and Omar. Like lovers they looked at each other on a mild Pahalgam evening, with the June moon smooching ebony mountain silhouettes in the distance. The police chief suppressed a half yawn when PC, known for his tough-talk, suddenly took something from of his brown bag. For a moment, Omar held his breath, jumping the gun in his thought balloon: Did he get me an Android?

Hopes were instantly dashed when a chilly grenade, Delhi’s latest gift to Kashmir, was unveiled to the CM. Soon the security grid will have trays of them and the next time the unloyal subjects, bored with Panchs and Sarpanchs, feel like to hurl a naar-Kangir or two at the occupation, cops can throw these lung burning, skin needling bombs back at them. You see, the best thing about a democracy is that it knows how to bring the people to their knees.

Early this morning PC took a chopper to Gurez, high up in the Himalyas, famed for its snow leopard. Journalists, Wazwan hangover finally receding, flocked to hear the CM, over high-tea in SKICC -- that all-expenses paid government watering-hole, which locals call Santoor. Butterflies are abound in the gardens of Srinagar. Non-political tourists amble about the Dal and the hill resorts. Life’s good.

© Sameer

Tunes of June

2011-06-16T12:10:00.001+04:00

June keeps us on very thin ice. Strange things have happened in the past around this time. Omar Abdullah’s hair changed color suddenly from charcoal black to silver. The police chief became more bitter. Even the usually elegant Geelani sahib, never allowed to venture too far from Hyderpora, managed to sneak out to appear in slightly venturesome places such as Sopore. This June is different. An enforcement of silence is in place.

Earlier August used to be the street-fighting month. So each year on August 14 and 15, for many many summers, a tense standoff ensued. Indian military forces planned for the days ahead on how to tackle the lock-ins and protests and black flags and free-and-easy slogans and such resistance paraphernalia. Then suddenly the focus shifted to June, as if by some random raffle. Poor CM has since thrown away his infamous GAP tee.

Strict instructions went left, right and centre this June. Nary a soul should say anything that cannot be retracted later. Surprisingly even Geelani sahib is mum, which is very unlike him. Newly acquired carbonated batons, sackfuls of them, in anticipation of the annual June exercise, lie about in police store-rooms, unused. They might be now distributed to the elderly, under the Sheri-Kashmir Buzurugwar scheme

There was a little faux paus in between. ML Fotedar, an old crony of Madam Indira Gandhi, descended on Srinagar like a familiar curse. These Congress fogies, I tell you. They come to tease their local cousins, whom they perceive weak and temptingly out on a limb. Fotedar winked and someone quietly dropped the R-bomb, greatly discomfiting Omar. Rotational CM. Does that not unjustly take away the privilege of Tweeting about chopper rides, that makes Omar's followers sear in pure envy?
It can’t be rotational. It simply can’t be.

Not entirely satisfied with his R-bomb, Fotedar decided to drop the A-bomb. That always has the desired effect. Assured. Sheri-Kashmir apparently accepted the constitution of India, Fotedar harped, and Kashmir’s accession with India is full and final. Lo and behold soon both fission and fusion happened. Mustafa Kamal, the Digvijay Singh of Kashmir politics, called ML an old conspirator while his party likened him to a snake who hisses and added that accession was only conditional. Not the one to let it pass quietly, ML retorted: Why sleep with the serpent then?

All this might be a trifle confounding and while the last act in this drama is yet to take place, the dénouement is rather uncomplicated. It is a bunch of players basically discussing the famous causality dilemma commonly referred to as "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" It is the middle of June and last I know of, despite the panchs and sarpanchs, Omar’s incessant Tweets and Farooq’s honeyed voice, Fotedar’s ancient machinations and Soz’s little moustache, we still demand our right to self determination.

© Sameer

Happy Birthday

2011-06-09T12:10:00.004+04:00

You were in my heart when I first took wing
silently floating on my mind

like a butterfly in the sky
Fiesta of sunrays at daybreak
upon distant misty mountains
still reminds me of you
When we sauntered across
around our comforts
criss-crossing the peripheries
of pure joy and kinship
Thy laughter and floundering
gathers in my soul
like a robed wizard’s charm
Old times whereupon
I held your finger
to turn new leaves
My soleprints on the shore
look lonely this evening

©Sameer

The pamphlet

2011-06-05T11:57:00.000+04:00

The word pamphlet has Greek origins. Originally called Pamphilus, it roughly translates to friend of everyone. Ever since Abdullah-I’s time pamphlets have been extensively used in our neck of woods. Partly because the then democratic state won't take a book by some poor publisher too kindly and partly because pamphlets were easier to read and circulate. Geelani sahib, as usual, authored a lot of them in his trademark wolfish Urdu.

Curiously during Abdullah-II’s brief and erratic reign Mr G didn’t find it worthwhile to be quite the pamphleteer, choosing instead to drown the fat king in his [G’s] genteel but firebrand Urdu. He speaks it with a minor twitch of mouth and a mild wink, which many don’t notice. The inhabitants of Gupkar road have forever hated the nonchalance.

If you thought the belles lettres in him was dead, you are entirely mistaken. He is back with another pamphlet, this time to bother Abdullah-III. Dubbed ‘For Tourists and Pilgrims’ the one page bulletin comes in three languages and is entirely downloadable on Ipad2. It is asteriated for the benefit of Twitter-baba-log since longish pieces tend to be slightly out of focus in an age of 140-character communication.

Everyone must rack up a few hundred of the fliers and just as you bump into a Sadhu with a chilam or a happy family from Madras [sorry Chennai] gadding about the Dal lake in the evening, quickly slip them a pamphlet which basically talks about friendly info. Do’s and don’ts. About not to sleep walk if you are staying in a house-boat, else you find yourself tangled in the weeds of Dal. Basic stuff.

Since some of the Sadus can’t read and write [not Ramdev types, I mean the lesser mortals] they can well ask fellow pilgrims to read out the Hindi version, although it was quite an effort to translate Mr G’s dense Urdu in the first place. Again nothing rebellious, just simple details. How the grandson goes outbacking to woods near Srinagar and clicks himself near boulders where late Mrs Gandhi once spilled her tea.

It notes other little bits. About how Abdullah-II attends all weddings in the city's elite circle where everyone and their uncles call him doctor saab, doctor saab, giving him an impression that Kashmir is sunny this summer. And how the grandson, wearing democratic shades, just won’t let an elderly person step out of his gateway.

As it were, the pamphlet awaits readers. There is a small rider though:

Ink may be injurious to health in Srinagar.

© Sameer

Martyrs .

2011-05-21T11:49:00.002+04:00

Mirwaiz Kashmir, OK ex-Mirwaiz, Maulana Muhammad Farooq sits on a cottony cloud island with Abdul Ghani Lone, who used to be a wise lawyer-leader on earth. Scads of grumpy people squat about them, a little distance away.

In Kashmir, the milder version of Hurriyet, commemorates their death anniversaries. In a macabre coincidence both leaders were killed in broad day light on the same day, twelve years apart. Suspicious fingers pointed towards the ‘land of the pure’ on both occasions.

The crowd sitting around the two was also felled. Also in day light. On the same day. The poor sods were cut down by the world’s largest democracy. In earthly skirmishes between the pure and the impure, good people often end up in pools of their own crimson blood.

Mirwaiz: God, Lone saab, I have been dead for what 22 years now.

AG: I was elder to you. 69 years to the day before they pulled the trigger on me.

Mirwaiz: I was just 49 when the young man shot me with an ugly pistol, I still recall.

AG: I didn’t even get to see my assassin while attending the day of your remembrance.

Mirwaiz: Do you have any idea why they took our lives?

AG: I am as clueless as an author finishing his sentence.

Mirwaiz: There is a powerful abruptness about death. Did you feel it?

AG: I was never a preacher like you. I felt swimming in a summer dream.

Mirwaiz: I miss Jamia Masjid. I miss people echoing me, repeating what I said.

AG: I don’t know if they still grow honeysuckle in Dard-Hare, my tiny village.

Mirwaiz: I am told there are other clouds like these with people on them. All fellow Kashmiris.

AG: About 30 countries on earth have population less than 80,000.

Mirwaiz: They are celebrating Martyr’s week in Srinagar.

AG: Everyone is a martyr, Farooq saab. You. Me. These poor people here. Your killers. My assassins, God knows who they are. They too could end up on the martyr roster.

Mirwaiz: Who decides martyrdom?

AG: It is an ideological ferocity. How can one even put it in perspective?

Mirwaiz: A magician once said that the people who have really made history are the martyrs.

AG: There was some magic in all of us but it was tied to some jinx.

Mirwaiz: Ah, Lone saab, I don’t get you always. Who’s the new fellow in that faraway cloud?

AG: No one is allowed to go there. I think some big guy. Some wealthy Arab perhaps.

Mirwaiz: Martyr?

AG: Aren’t we all?

© Sameer

Old man and the vale

2011-05-16T22:48:00.000+04:00

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us. ~Hermann Hesse

The Indians totally loathe him. Their counterintelligence footlings in the valley want him to die – either of old age or his heart condition or a pre-dawn fall in the washroom. Sheikh Abdullah’s bracelet-wearing, iPad flashing grandson, who also happens to the modish chief administrator of Kashmir, has no love lost for him. Right wingers in the KP community will give anything to see him guillotined. Our home-grown variety of windbags, boorish beyond question, and often spotted grazing in one of Srinagar’s coffee shops, love to take pot-shots at him [it probably ups their cool quotient].

He is old. Really old. People in Kashmir usually meet their maker at that age. Infact a whole lot of people in their 20’s fell to indiscriminate bullets in the last 20 years, making the median age of a dead man – natural or unnatural – much lower. But the old boy tip-toes all over the mental landscape of his followers and foes alike. He is unafraid while putting forth the most unpalatable things. Makes an eclectic grouping of Indian lawmakers perspire in sheer embarrassment by telling them what no one else has the balls to say: No matter your spin and fake bonhomie, we don’t love you. Period. I mean how upfront can one get.

The media revels in tarnishing him. They call him our naughty neighbor’s hired agent and a devil incarnate. He is a hawk and a vulture, rolled up into one, in most newspaper reports. TV guys love to stick their grimy mikes in his face because he gives them free bytes that keeps them in the show-biz. Yet in private they charge into their well-deserved black forests in cafés with nothing but bitter contempt for the veteran. Local dailies, for the want of a creative alternative, stop at calling him an octogenarian. The vile is widespread.

Ofcourse he makes occasional odd voices. No one is a hermit. He calls OBL a martyr. Nobody should. Since America says the bogeyman drank the blood of innocents (they live in America alone) and since the big media also says so. And he offers to pray for the world’s most wanted man. Now that is a blasphemy too many. It gnaws away at our case vis-à-vis the elusive Azadi and I disapprove. But how can I take the right of a person who wishes to manifest his stance, even if it is advantage Gupkar?

At some point in time people need to be flexible. It leads to solutions, the rule-books say. But the old fogey is not pliant at all. With so many folks breathing down his neck and with so many tractable minds ready to sit down and break bread with the powers that be -- to usher tourists in – we can perhaps live with the idea of an ageing man in grey beard unwilling to suck up or bootlick. Even in an age of such adversity and Tweets.

Bad press or iPads have seldom scared the unflinching.

© Sameer

OBL

2011-05-02T23:43:00.000+04:00

So they finally liquidated him. So he was for real. So he was putting his feet up in an Abottabad château and not some mountainside fox-hole. So the videos were real. So the tapes were bonafide. So the Pakistanis knew all along. So the intel was passed onto the Americans. So the boss of special ops ringed-down the POTUS, currently in a re-run mode. So the orders came directly from the Oval office, the earthly equivalent of Apocatastasis. And the kill of the century!

President Zardari was jolted from deep sleep in the middle of night by a phone call. It was Barak himself. Poor Zardari initially thought it is a rude joke, as Americans are sometimes wont to, but then -- May is not April. The joke was on him. How could he hide a bottle or two under his bed and snore away so peacefully? The most wanted man on God’s green earth was living an hour’s drive from Aiwan-e-Sadr. Phew that was close.

Kashmiris got the news with a mix of disbelief and shock as they began a new week. They shall be discussing OBL in government offices and shop fronts over the next few days. Expect a strike call, by some militant outfit. My hunch tells me that Indian TV channels cannot be expected to feed them anything barring silly, Pakistan-bashing stuff around OBL (About how he was recklessly playing chess with some Pakistani notable in the Abottabad compound while a sly drone tracked him down and such related nonsense).

Ah, OBL. The ultimate boogeyman of our times. The Americans cunningly made him into this world wide CEO of some shadowy vague evil organization. In hindsight he was a wealthy Wahabi who hit it big in the Afghan jihad with his big money and radical outlook. The latter day Lord Voldemort like appellation bestowed upon him was a total American creation. His involvement in 9-11 could never be firmly established though it is hard to give him the benefit of doubt. OBL was perhaps more symbolic than the phantom, as Fox would have it.

Commentaries and videos and tweets on OBL are not expected to stop anytime soon. They will work you up and jerk you into frenzy. Ground-breaking stuff this. The world’s most wanted man meets his fate. Punsters will have a day out. The jokes have begun on Twitter, already. Script-writers are currently scribbling away the unfolding high-voltage drama. Go, go, go style. Gunships booming. Targeted op. Special ops rappelling down apache choppers. Surgical precision. Garrison town.

For those with a penchant for trivia or conspiracy theory here's the take-home: OBL was shot in the head and buried at sea. The Indian Ocean is one big grave today. It has a famous, if slightly insubmissive, resident.

© Sameer

A lamb-less state

2011-05-01T01:02:00.001+04:00

This past month no rib, chuck or rack of lamb was available in Kashmir for most parts. That means a lot. It really does. We have sacrificed a great deal in twenty years. Taking our naati-phol [shank] away from us is taking it to another extreme. There is a limit to what one can renounce. Once again we proved that pushed against the wall, we can confront anyone, including the butcher-baradari, handle-bar moustaches and all. And none of us died out because of the lamb-less state.

The jury is still out on the latest turn-out in Panchayat polls. Come election time the hilly heart starts to vacillate and people swarm out of their huts and hearths to vote. Ofcourse Messer’s Geelani sahib and co feel quite bad about such fickle-mindedness, which in all probability is short-sightedness without pajamas. Sociologists admit that human memory is still short-term and God knows Panchayat-ghars were notorious make-shift interrogation centers not so long ago.

It has never been about elections. The otherwise highly competent election commission of India has been holding hocus-pocus polls – barring a few exceptions -- in Kashmir ever since we signed on the dotted line. Umpteen voting exercises have miserably failed to crack the riddle. The villages may need their headmen but even the headmen need to keep their heads held high whilst passing the village graveyard filled with the young. Queues can be deceptive.

Anticipation is rife as a new summer rumbles in. With the padre of resistance now openly counseling against the futility of stone-throwing, one can only hope that no more stones are hurled on Omar’s musketry, currently oiling their batons and brandishing their polycarbonate lathis [beating clubs] in expectation of a hot summer. Let us make peace this summer – with all kinds of butchers who straddle our little valley.

Let’s hope only daffodils grow in the city and countryside this year.

© Sameer

April showers

2011-04-17T22:55:00.001+04:00

Let the rain sing you a lullaby
~Langston Hughes

Rain in April is an incredibly adorable thought. I often wish to be on some lone hillside, watching the rain fall on our little valley in little driblets of silver and grey. Ofcourse it would mean hawkers quickly putting inverted brown burlaps on their heads and newspaper vendors throwing tarpaulin sheets on sheaves of Urdu papers with pictures of men, with two day stubble, lined up for electing their Sarpanchs [village headmen]. Thankfully there is nothing elective about April showers.

Dreary clouds appear over the skies of Srinagar in rain. Loud thunder-caps cause mushrooms to sprout in many hidden places in the countryside. At night the poor sleep to the pitter-patter of rain songs. Those who can afford electricity sit in front of their television screens, watching cricket or related entertainment. Yesterday the local police chief told them wheat from the chaff on TV. With such efficient cops, you can keep your windows open on rainy nights, without a fear in the world.

As rains continue to fall, another planeload of thinking-heads arrives to confabulate for the millionth time to solve the vexed problem -- that Kashmir is. The ducks in Dal never care for such meaningless powwow and glide dreamily in the lake. Essentially we live in an age of maximalist stances and hardened opinion is like religion. People seldom agree with each other but they shall talk, however incoherently. And it will rain some more and the ducks will glide in the mist.

The Taj group has a new hotel up in Srinagar. They call it Vivanta. Since everything looks picture postcard, boulevard onwards, spring birds will have a new oasis, complete with boughs and branches to perch upon. I like the lovelorn sounds birds make on rain swept days. There is something glumly beautiful about those drizzling evenings. It makes you want to be animatedly existent, despite the oddities of life. Vivanta means alive, by the bye.

© Sameer

Grammar of anarchy

2011-04-10T22:51:00.001+04:00

Once, sometimes twice, each year we keep losing a notable. The rank and file get killed every week. This is the onrush of spring in Kashmir and the jinx continues. Whatever the season, the anarchy almost always stays.

Friday afternoon someone slayed Maulana Showkat Shah, a prominent ecclesiastic. A decade back there would be a handful of Ahli-Hadees blokes in Kashmir. Maulana’s mild manner and tireless work, it is said, swelled their ranks. He was pro-freedom (the whole of valley is), gentle and benign. Why would anyone kill him?

The answer is as much of a riddle as the question itself. You never know who kills whom in this part of the world. Never. There are only blames and counter-blames. The French have a word for it -- jeu du blame – which roughly amounts to the blame-game. The pattern is patented in Kashmir.

Cops will blame the Laskhar in a split-second. Separatists will throw it back, hollering: agents, agents -- which is like an abstract for Indian intelligence chaps in the valley. Both sides may occasionally say: vested interests, which basically means anyone and no one: Indian sleuths, militants, renegades, hired-assassins. No one comprehends the confusing voices. They are unsettling.

In the contretemps of competing narratives that we often find ourselves caught up in, the larger picture often gets blurred. It is such a tragedy that we must lose our distinguished people, like ninepins in this anarchy. Just because the Maulana chose to believe in a set of values dear to him or said something he wanted to, someone bumped him off.

There isn’t a curse more forlorn than cutting the heads of the kind.

© Sameer

The day after!

2011-03-31T19:53:00.001+04:00

So the end was not to the liking of Kashmir. Early reports and the brief clutches of conversations with friends -- journalists and otherwise -- suggest that a day after Pakistan was shipwrecked by India in a game of cricket, a lot of people are down in the mouth. Apparently the timbre of our lives is jazzed up by cricket only.

Last night everyone and anyone – whether or not you have a cricketing brain – chewed onto their nails and prayed that Pakistan win. Ofcourse the chosen representative of the people of Kashmir, the archduke of Twitterville, Omar Abdullah supported India. Geelani Sahib’s affiliations could not be immediately known. He does not have an iPad.

While the two prime ministers tucked into some boneless chicken in Chandigarh, poor Kashmiris popped Izband [rue seeds] and smoked an equivalent of 11 truckloads of cigarettes in Srinagar alone. Kids inhaled juts of passive smoke in their screaming little lungs. But nothing worked. It proved a damp squib.

The media is such a mistress. Especially the TV guys in India and Pakistan. They jerk the hoi polloi into such frenzy that it only becomes a matter of do-or-die afterwards. From the bat-manufacturers in Bijbihara to timber smugglers in the woods of Kupwara everyone called upon in supplication -- for India to lose. The prayers were unanimously rejected.

Perhaps a smart sociologist will explain this almost inscrutable obsession with Pakistan cricket. Then there are moon sightings also, and despite India’s commendable advancements in satellite launches, Kashmiris mostly rely on the ramshackle Roohati-Hilal [moon-sighting] committee of Pakistan. Eid is always courtesy Radio Pakistan.

A million brain-farts and zillion invectives later the realization finally dawned. India had won. Pakistan was trounced and Kashmir felt sublimely god-awful.

© Sameer

We, the Poshlust

2011-03-26T22:35:00.001+04:00

Just when everyone is drunk on cricket and India meets Pakistan in the semi finals of the world cup cricket, how can tiny Kashmir be any exception? Cricket is just about the only safe, neutral, middle-of-the-road topic one can broach in an atmosphere as surcharged as waadi-Kashmir. Anything else is likely to antagonize a potential Geelani or a Yasin or an Omar fan and vitiate things. These days you can’t even tell who is who.

Notwithstanding the overwhelming support for Pakistan cricket in every home of Kashmir, an aspiring bureaucrat lurks about in each alley. Ever since the local doctor turned civil servant, who says the Hippocratic Oath and Ghalib’s prose with equal ease, hit it big, all kids want to imitate him. Besides bureaucrats make people feel powerless and there is something strangely sinister about making others feel inadequate.

The grapevine is that agencies [local for intelligence operatives/agencies which outnumber the dogs of Srinagar] are happy. They couldn’t have asked for a better bargain to amalgamate minds into the mainstream. Sometimes things happen for the good.

Since a lot of kids have been put in jails, for teasing the largest democracy in the world, naturally there is competition brewing in prisons also. Reports suggest that some of those jailed have taken to writing the civil services exam. One such captive, it appears, made it to the last rung of the much fêted services examination. Handcuffs jangling he was brought to the interview panel.

What followed next is pure yarn but one that we need to spin. Yarning is redeeming, many-a-times.

Three member panel and a prisoner-aspirant.

Panelist: What is better – democracy or dictatorship?
Aspirant: Democracy. Especially when they hang you by the feet at night.
Panelist [clearing his throat]: Why do you wish to become a KAS officer?
Aspirant: The guards who kick me now would guard my children later.
Panelist: How can you calculate the number of stones the agitators threw last summer?
Aspirant: Total number of bullets fired (the authorities may have the figures) divided by hundred, Sir.
Panelist [changing the motif]: For some IQ testing now.
What happened, young man, when the wheel was invented?
Aspirant: It caused a revolution, sir.
Panelist: Revolutionists don’t occupy administrative posts. How would you explain this passion in Kashmir?
Aspirant: We are the poshlust.
Panelist: That is a Russian word.
Aspirant: Yes, unique to that language but holds true for us.
Panelist: Elaborate.
Aspirant: It means cliché, smugness, sameness -- all rolled up into one.
Panelist: Thanks.
Aspirant: Thank you, Sir.

© Sameer

Peace Puzzle

2011-03-12T22:30:00.000+04:00

There is some strange congruity between my home coming and the conflict-barometer of Kashmir. Whatever it is, sneers at me! Wherever in the world I come from, someone never flunks to up the ante here. Quite dutifully. The pot keeps boiling. A crippling strike greeted me a day after I landed, followed by a gun-battle, some distance away from home. Clearly it is not over yet, whatever it is: valor, frenzy or our infelicity.

I prattled with the peace emissaries on my flight to Kashmir. In clipped English I understood thus: the pavement to Shangri La is cobbled with uneven stones. Brimstone, if you may. Radha Kumar confided that the peace train is on track but the signals are one too many. Dilip Padgoankar said his nephew studied music in Prague and lives in Dubai now. Perhaps I should listen to a song or two once I am back later this week.

I don’t know if strikes are going to lead us to the Promised Land. Kashmir observers say that symbolism of the self-imposed clamp-down is huge. There is little else we can do to tell the bully that we have forgotten nothing and the self-inflicted wounds continue to fester as the winter tide comes to an end. Many feel that Geelani – the old man with a natural knack of displeasing the Abdullahs in Kashmir -- may be stretching it a little too thin. The jury is still out on us.

You can smell the first spring blossom in Srinagar. Soon, and I am echoing my own thought, Hyacinths, blue and beautiful, shall sprout. Low rumble may follow angry thunderclaps. Clouds shaped like abandoned honeycombs will freckle the skies over Dal. April will slowly meld into May and happy songs will reverberate in the chocolate color meadows of the vale, lush and lithesome. Then June will come.

Since June is a troublesome epoch, I thought March would be a good bet. Already the itinerary of day one has gone haywire. So I shall have to redo the maths quickly and drop some occasions from the scheduler to be able to wrap it up in the next few days.

With reverence due to the revolution, I hope peace holds till atleast the emissaries of peace are around. And till I am able to drink some Kehwa in peace without a rusty bullet ricocheting in my backyard.

© Sameer

The Sabbatical

2011-03-06T20:25:00.000+04:00

Time for a sabbatical. For a little over one week. I am off to India, then to home -- Kashmir.

Waking up to familiar fragrances is -- any day -- a better idea than opening your eyes to an alien land. And looking out at the woody-stemmed, twining leaflets of the scented violet flowers called Wisteria is like watering your sapped-out soul. Hauntingly calming too. After an exacting journalistic rigour, I reckon it comes as a welcome interlude.

So all my bags are packed for destination Kashmir. A very enviable chunk of land, whose people are a little touched but sweet. It is full of butterflies and gossip but I don’t mind such hare-brained distractions, as long as it is naïve. Inwardly you sketch a smile at over- simplistic frames of reference, which is mostly sappy. You know that however hard you try to, you cannot unbelong to them. Slowly you end up loving the quietude of the place.

Still I felt a deep lump in the throat as I packed my bags last evening. I don’t know why we feel attached to -- Situations. Things. Events. Cavort. Laughter. Intimacy. Gazes. Rides. Friends. My head is slightly reeling. That may be a joint I took tiny drags of. The smoke often makes funny, irregular shapes, which make no sense. One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever comes to sit by it. Passersby see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on the way. Vincent would agree.

© Sameer

The smiling Peer

2011-03-05T10:02:00.000+04:00

He was the kindest soul in the town. The affirmation of his dignity was a very subtle, refined humor, which only a very few possess. He wielded it ferociously while he breathed. The most jocular voice in my neighborhood is gone. Our next door grand-fatherly, immensely popular, Abaji met his maker today.

I really miss people I know. To lose them forever is tragic. Worse still I am never in Kashmir. Personally I love satire and I don’t recall well if the old man – with his endless repartees and wisecracks – did subconsciously shape my sense of droll. Whatever the occasion, Abaji would eventually find humor.

One fine day, perhaps in the winter of 1995, a 12-hour gun-battle shook Sopore. The intensity of the encounter was so profound that the entire neighborhood decided to assemble at one place: In Abaji’s elegant little home. While everyone was busy fidgeting or worrying about what comes next [reprisals by the army on innocent citizenry were commonplace], there was one soul who wasn’t bothered a wee tot. Abaji. Amidst the deafening crackle of gunfire he said with an expression that was his hallmark – a cross between sounding deadpan serious and subtle, ‘Khabar kahyi gasan akh gool’ [How much does a bullet cost?]

When he went to perform Hajj just after 9/11, a local carpenter, not too much in demand, came to pay a visit to Abaji and asked to be remembered in Duvas [prayers] in Mecca. ‘Agar haz banay, myani kori khatir onuth akh abaya teti’, [Could you get an Abaya for my daughter?], the poor carpenter requested. Tongue firmly in cheek, Abaji shot back: Temov chahay Abaya banavin band karmit yana Ambreekas hamla koruk [They have stopped making Abaya’s after 9/11]. Yeti aanus bukra-khreeta. [Get her an ordinary Burqa here].

Comicality apart, Abaji was perhaps last of the old-world Sufis. He would do Khatams [Sufi-style private prayers] and Naat-Khwaani [Singing of odes to the Prophet] – an assaymark of Kashmir’s gentle Islam -- much to the chagrin of the new-age hardliners.

Taravees [special Ramadan prayers] are longish and the Imam usually recites them briskly. Leading one such prayer in the mosque many years ago, he turned to the faithful suddenly and quipped: Speed cha theekhi? [Am I going with good speed?]

Gags such as these and many more shall always endear him.

Abaji will make the angels giggle, I am sure.

Peer Abdul Rashid
1937-2011
RIP

© Sameer

Shooting the breeze

2011-02-20T21:56:00.001+04:00

A balmy Sunday noon in Delhi. A fortnight later it shall be oven hot. Bus conductors shall misbehave with all and sundry as mercury inches further north. Fat policemen will get more temperamental over the next two weeks. Mosquitoes will drink middle-class blood and plump out. Some scandal will surface. But that is for later!

This weekend Peahens prance about P Chidambaram’s 19-Safdarjang villa. Two white ambassador cars pull up. A journalist and a peacenik step out and walk towards the bottle-green lawn. The maalis [gardeners], caressing pansies and Icelandic poppies suddenly jump on their feet and bark: Salaam mem saab, salaam saab. [Greetings]. Saar waha chaun mein bêthe hai [The boss is sitting in the shade, over there].

PC, 65, has dyed his hair charcoal black in stark contrast to the elegant Radha Kumar’s coiffure which is muted silver. Dilip wears peppery hair. He is 67. Women don’t age. In any case it is ungentlemanly. The twain shake hands with PC and sink in cane chairs. A thirteen-lined squirrel scurries past.

It makes a chittering squeak.

Radha: Lovely creatures. Squirrels.
PC: Sharp teeth, madam, they can bite.
Dilip: They have red squirrels in France. Mostly active in mornings.
PC: Ah! Your French ways, Dilip. Did you know there is a Kashmir flying squirrel?
Dilip gesticulates in negative.
Radha: I think the Kashmir squirrel is under threat from loss of habitat.
PC: Everything is under threat up there.
Dilip: Knock on wood, Sire, I foresee long queues in Kashmir.
Radha: We read hope in between the lines.
PC: Panchayat polls are around the corner. May there be lines and queues on all hill tops.
Dilip: The Azadi gang may break the formation.
PC: Heck, why can’t you get them talking?
Radha: I emailed Geelani.
PC: Hope he checks his mails, regularly. Does he have an email?
Dilip: Yes. Stones.for.you@geelani.com
PC: Expectedly.
Radha: Yasin is yet to get back to my mail.
PC: He is the mildest of them all. Get him to chat atleast.
Dilip: Apparently he is preparing to stop eating for a day.
PC: Oh, what happened to him now? Is he upset?
Radha: Gandhi-giri.
PC: Impossible blokes. They will drive us nuts, I swear.
Radha: But why have you barred Geelani from exiting Delhi?
PC: Our snoops saw him writing something in furious Urdu in a garden bench in Delhi. Who knows he might read the riot act in Kashmir. So we decided to extend his holiday here.
Dilip: Fantastic idea. Hyderpora is no Tahrir, after all.
Radha: Farooq was helpful. He made an appeal.
PC: Appeal to?
Dilip: To the Azadi bandwagon. To unzip their mouths.
PC: Well, the grapevine is that no one takes him seriously in Kashmir, not the least separatists.
Radha: We made some serious recommendations. Did you have a look?
PC: Enjoy the winter noon, Radha. What is the squirrel-like hurry?

© Sameer

Freedom's first morning

2011-02-12T21:53:00.001+04:00

You have freedom when you're easy in your harness.
~Robert Frost

Revolutions are heady. It is many battles fought together-- for soul, for dignity, for liberty. Nothing matters more than the collective will of people. And their aspirations. You need no guns and tanks to spawn it. Courage and concord are very potent arrows. Good enough to knock down mighty powers riding high on pelf. A tyrant’s subjugation lasts only as long as the fear remains. When people loose fear, thrones shake. And eventually crumble.

There is a certain romanticism about bandying with one’s countrymen. Burning camp-fires under open skies. Huddling with friends on cold nights upon dirty pavements. Waking up groggy to a balmy sun and brushing your teeth with the index finger. Doing congregational prayers in jeans and tees and playing songs of bounty and yearning. The morning of freedom is often sweet after dark nights of injustice. Like first love.

The times, they are a-changing, the songster Bob Dylan crooned yonks back. Indeed. Times are transmogrifying. The youth are fiercely tuned in. Vigilant and unarmed, they need no leaders. The street is their battleground. Audacity is the new spokesperson. Tankfuls of soldiers are irrelevant. Egypt displayed it so beautifully. An indelible impression was cast on everyone who followed the peaceful spectacle – on TV, internet and over radio stations.

Ofcourse freedom is never free. Three hundred brave souls fell to the bullets of Mubarak’s thugs. But people remained steadfast. There is something extraordinary about the human will. It stays indomitable and unbendable in the face of great adversities. Confronted with threats and warnings, it refuses to cower down. There was confusion and false-starts in Tahrir square. Everyone wept during roadside prayers. Then like a shy bride, freedom came.

The bright, youthful citizenry of Egypt made the impossible, possible. Perhaps every generation needs to exorcise its ghosts, some of whom are imports from the past. To borrow a Jeffersonian maxim: Every generation needs a new revolution. In 2011 it is montage revolution. It happens by word-of-mouth, by mass mobilization, by text messages, by placards, over laptops and on Al-Jazeera.

When they blared wild honks in Cairo, thousands of miles away, euphoria gripped Kashmir. Like the Egyptians, we are a very emotional people. And we are subjugated. Whether or not we draw parallels betwixt Cairo and Srinagar, whether or not we manage to pull it off in our lifetimes remains to be seen.

As they say we shall see.

© Sameer

The symbol

2011-02-10T16:48:00.002+04:00

The year is 1984. On a crisp February morning the space shuttle Challenger made its first landing at the Kennedy Space Center. It was a heady time in Kashmir too and Farooq was at his flamboyant best, ruling his fief, riding to Gulmarg on a thap-thap motor with the poor DIG trailing in a police jeep, pure Bollywood style. Little Gujjar girls hiking the alpine forests, wet firewood on their delicate heads, would stop in their tracks to see the prodigal scorch rubber. That kind of peaceful times.

In Delhi a mild-mannered man was being walked to the gallows. Convicted of killing a CID inspector in Kashmir, a claim as contested as Darwinism, Maqbool Bhat was to soon turn into folklore. His life was no less than a Bollywood potboiler. Unprivileged, idealistic, strong-headed, philosophical, bank-looting, freedom seeking, jail breaking, controversial but avowedly secular. February 11 was to change him into a resistance icon forever. Somebody like Che Guevara. Briskly, with the gait of a soldier of fortune, Maqbool climbed the last steps to his gallows-tree. Trehgam was a distant cry. Tihar loomed.

Five miles further uphill from Kupwara, the northern most township of Kashmir lies Maqbool Bhat’s picturesque little village. Everyone is poor in the hamlet, including the family of Bhat. Children often aim at walnut trees in the neighborhood, sending thick clubs flying on bunches of green walnuts. Someone then collects the scattered raw walnuts in the loose end of Pheran. The gang sits quietly on some mound, away from prying eyes, to remove the green husks. They hurriedly extract the kernels [gooj]. Hands often get stained in the process. Very pastoral.

Exactly twenty seven years after their favorite son was hanged by India -- a journalist friend told me -- they still sweep a little, low-ceilinged room that they still call ‘thotha’s room’. Thotha is dearest in Kashmiri. Many young men who crossed over to Pakistan in the late 80’s were quite appealed by the folksiness and lore around Bhat. Though coming from a peasant stock, Maqbool Bhat sought knowledge. He went to St Josephs School in Baramulla and continued his education in Pakistan when he first crossed the border clandestinely in 1966. Quixotic in life, death helped uphold the romance about him.

He remains -- till date -- the only Kashmiri hung by India and hence evokes very strong pro-Kashmir sentiments in the vale. There aren’t too many pictures of Bhat available. India did everything to efface him. None of his belongings were ever retuned to his folks. Universal statutory law would demand the body to be retuned to the family. That never happened. They have two graves in Srinagar and Trehgam dug for him.

From among the top leadership of Kashmir, separatists as well as unionists, Maqbool Bhat’s legacy is the simplest and perhaps the poorest.

© Sameer

Unidentified

2011-02-02T21:45:00.001+04:00

Inexplicable things keep happening in our stomping ground. When everything looks calm and peaceful, mysterious men appear from nowhere and slaughter a few blokes, before disappearing into the dark of night. Only the dead know who their executioners are and corpses seldom speak. Nary a word. Friends and family weep quietly on sad evenings, while neighborhood dogs bark in a fierce readiness, outside. Anonymous assassins roam the streets.

The blame game had already begun. Two poor girls have been killed in cold blood in Sopore. Kashmir’s apple plot is cherry red again. So many times the dwellers of this tiny township have been at the receiving end of a lot of shit. Bludgeoned and beaten, over and over again, they are now faced with a faceless foe, which knocks at the door at sundown and even as you stand up to answer it, a barrel stares you in the face. Then there are merciless gun-shots.

The cops quickly declare the killer outfit. Another matter two years after the Shopian double murder they are still at pains to explain how grown ups went down under in ankle deep water and died. Talking about the latest killings, the CM, wet behind the ears, tweets about his state of sorrowfulness in a spate of incessant tweets in which he also discusses how charged he feels about test driving a new Range Rover. The separatist bandwagon condemns but stops just short of passing the judgment of conviction. Too little, the Twitterati boo.

The tragedy of it all is that too many people appear to be caught up in the contretemps here. The state brutally represses people and mocks at their defiance. It indulges in psyops, defames the leadership and attempts to confuse. The Azadi association on its part is pusillanimous when it comes to blowing whistle on its own treasonists. Insincerity of virtue is perhaps a side effect of the conflict.

As for the online passengers: Small boats sometimes carry dubious cargo.

© Sameer

The flag bearers

2011-01-21T17:40:00.001+04:00

Srinagar is cold in January. As cold as charity. Chilay-Kalan reigns supreme, like a polar bear in a blizzard. Only two things keep the mercury rising in the middle of winter: Srinagar’s smokey Harisa pinds [joints] and the nutty right-wing BJP’s sudden brain-fart to hoist the Indian flag on Lal Chowk’s clock tower.

In a bid to out-flank the monkey-cap wearing BJP workers, the usually tranquil Yasin has made his own plans to lead a march to Lal Chowk on January 26. Old boy Geelani had to do his Hartal maths carefully this time and came up, as always, with a bright solution: Hartal on January 26 but, hold your breath, transport can ply [a blasphemous thought a few years back].

This January anyone wanting to march with Yasin can do so without any logistic problems, unless ofcourse the government decides to throw a spanner in the works. By the bye you have the option to come clad in Pheran and Kanger. Yasin is a bohemian and doesn’t mind such faux pas. Plus Kangeris can be put to good use. Just in case.

So equipped with the right degree of cautious conduct Omar darted off to Delhi. To Papa. To the man of all seasons. To Sher-i-Kashmir’s prodigal, if slightly off-color, son. The light-weight minister in the mighty federal government. The father and son sit in the manicured lawns of 11 Teen Murti in Lutyens Delhi. Over Earl Grey evening tea and cookies from Defence Bakery they converse on the way out of the flag imbroglio. For a mid-winter cease-fire plan.

An excerpt of their pie-in-the-sky conversation:

Omar: Everyone wants to plant a flag.
Farooq: January is the season of planting carrots.
Omar: Enough carrots, papa. Time for sticks. I can’t let them go planting.
Farooq: Spoken like a true blood.
Omar: Blood reminds me of summer and stones, papa.
Farooq: They have started calling us anti-national.
Omar: Heck. No one remembers what grandpa and you did for them.
Farooq: We kept the tri-color fluttering in Srinagar for decades.
Omar: And now this Gadkari comes from nowhere and decides to walk away with our glory.
Farooq: Tapael eiyes [untranslatable]. We are the flag-bearers. Not some half-moustache knicker-walla.
Omar: But won’t I look less patriotic if I stop them? What will Sonia ji think?
Farooq: If you don’t, the Azadi brigade has an issue ready for season 4 of the Summer Intifada. I can envision Geelani making snappy statements in his gown.
Omar: So who makes ‘this’ statement?
Farooq: Well. You are the CM.
Omar: You are more prone to high-octane dialogues.
Farooq: Is that a taunt?

The CM breaks a cookie into two and puts one half-moon piece in his mouth.

After an awkward pause.

Omar: Lets say, you pack a fair punch, pops. What are you going to say?
Farooq [a trifle pleased]: That we are more Indian than the Indians themselves. And our sole purpose of intercepting Gadkari is because we care. We don’t wish him to face what Murli Manohar Joshi had to.

[In 1992 in an effort to prove his ultra-nationalism Mr Joshi attempted similar defiance in Lal Chowk but the flag-pole broke as he tugged on the halyard: Reference New York Times, Jan 27, 1992. Headline: Airlifted Hindu Nationalists Fly India's Flag in Kashmir].

Omar: I think you may need to be a little less dramatic.
Farooq: Farooq doesn’t care.
Omar: They will never make you the president of India. No consensus.
Farooq [uneasy]: You guys always put me in a spot. Mustafa is the best candidate to say all this. I am more of a strategy guy.
Omar: So what do we do about Yasin’s march?
Farooq: Conduct a police recruitment camp on Jan 26.

© Sameer

Snow memories

2010-12-30T22:56:00.002+04:00

Snow beneath whose chilly softness
Some that never lay
Make their first Repose this Winter
I admonish Thee
~Emily Dickinson

A little bird whispered that snow is falling in Srinagar. The idea of snow flurries swirling around your legs is an incredibly delightful thought. Nothing warms cockles of the heart like the magical, almost surreal spectacle of a million unassembled snowmen falling from heaven! God’s way of asking us to reclaim some of our lost childhood -- and the innocence thereof.

As it continues to snow outside, the world appears subdued and fragile. Kangri is a cherry on the top. It is a very cozy, snuggled down, unwinding feeling. Nothing -- at all – beats it! There shall be places in Kashmir tonight with no electricity, I can imagine. And the candles burning in familiar kitchens elegantly put to shame all the candle-light dinners in swanky lounges, we expats frequent.

When I used to be in school the only fight people knew of was the snow-ball fight. One of the greatest joys in the world is to throw small orbs of snow at one other. The idea is to be quick on your feet and kneel down to make snow balls and aim them at your friends. Ofcourse your pals are equally determined to shoot their snow-balls at you. There is a sudden, sharp boyish rush to it. The pink of cheeks and salmon-like palms notwithstanding.

Peering from inside the windowsills to watch the snow pile up in the backyard is the stuff fairy-tales are made up of. When no potholes are visible. Just running miles of endless, clean snow. Snow that came overnight. It falls on old fences. Upon little eggs in the eagle’s high eyrie, while the bird-lings cheep happily. Wildbirds strut their stuff, exposing their iridescent plumage to God’s cottonwool.

Snow makes an almost medieval swirling descent. It is often humbling to see the flakes fall headlong on still waters of the distant pond, kissing the stillness. It snows on locked temples with cold deities looking a shade surprised. And on the countless sand bunkers that despoil our beauteous landscape. In every orchard and onto each lee. Snow falls on fresh moist graves with small kids in them. On abandoned army helmets upon the lonely hillside. In wetlands. Old chimneys. On our suffering. Our aspirations.

Snow falling soundlessly in the middle of the night will always fill my heart with sweet clarity, Takemoto used to say. In the nineteenth century Guy de Maupassant likened snowfall to a curtain of uninterrupted white flakes constantly sparkled down to earth -- this wrinkling wave, a sensation rather than noise, entanglement of light atoms which fill the space, covering the world. It appears no different in the last month of Circa 2011.

The snow-man has bits of charcoal for eyes and long after the children have forgotten about it, the figure stands outside, arms spread, like Jesus. It watches the tiny snow-globs come dancing down from the night sky, in hushed whispers. To fall on deer-backs. Upon naked trees. On defunct electric lines. In secluded terraces. Upon wet dog-snouts. Caressing the ladyfinger like icicles. On parched humans. Never failing them.

It snows on, in the eerie silence of the long wintry night.

© Sameer

Mouj

2010-12-28T22:52:00.000+04:00

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
~Tennyson

Mom’s anniversary. Fifteen years have passed since mom exited my life. The scriptures say that there is a paradise in the skies complete with gardens and fountains and yew trees where the good and the kind are send for some paradisiacal foot massage. The word Paradise comes from the Persian root word Pardis which means an exquisite garden that is enclosed between walls. It is not an open space, perhaps. I just hope they allow the tenderhearted in.

There is no Eden on God’s green earth. There are only memories, which are like these mini-drawings in our heads. No amount of wealth or intelligence can bring back those who accidently wander to the pastures beyond the known. There is an eerie discomfort about it which pokes at you in the most improbable places. You laugh without actually meaning it. Nothing ever comes back. All we can do is remember people. And miss them in our most private, personal thoughts.

We grow up and branch out in life. We traverse alien shores and pretend to be independent. The heart, though, stays captive to old thoughts, floating about in familiar pastures. No matter how refined one's dining experience becomes, you can't help reminisce about eating in your old kitchen, hurriedly, wanting to join your waiting friends for fun. No amount of perfumed candle light can ever knock one’s sock’s off like the popping of Izband [rue seeds] in a Kangri.

Graveyards have so many tales in them. We, the un-dead, may never traduce them. Mom lies interred in a beautiful, simple grave, in a green triangular meadow, by a quietly flowing river, in countryside Kashmir. In summers a lot of Viburnum flowers fall from the trees on her tombstone. It is bittersweet. I think it snows over in winters. I have no ways of knowing since I decided to find my peace elsewhere.

A million stars in the sky. Never ending snowflakes. Hundreds of dewdrops to greet the dawn. Hundreds of bees in the purple clover. Hundreds of butterflies on the lawn. But only one mother the wide world over.

Boy, I just hope the paradise story is true.

Mom,
28 Sep 1955- 28 Dec 1995
RIP

© Sameer

Chilay-Kalan with a Karakul

2010-12-22T22:49:00.009+04:00

It is cold as a well digger’s arse in Srinagar. The valley has just slipped into the nippiest part of winter, locally called ‘Chilay-Kalan’, which lasts all of 40 days. There is something about the 40-day Chila [epoch]. If the Tabligi jamaat [band for spreading faith to the faithful] somehow gets hold of you around this time in Kashmir they are likely to whisk you away for a period of 40 days. And you will never ever be the same, I swear. Apart from mosque Hamams, Harisa pinds [joints] are just about the best places to recline and indulge in a free-flow of the juiciest gossip in town.

So in every sand and brick home, little kids – each cheek a shade cherry -- are wrapped up in layer upon layer of woolens and kan-topas [monkey caps]. They move around like miniature astronauts, muttering away in Kashmiri-accented Urdu [but mind you, no Kashmiri, else you sound like a Groos]. Grown-ups hug the ubiquitous Kangri, to not let it go even for a heart-beat’s span, periodically handling the fire with a stoker, tied to all wicker-and-clay Kangris. There is no fighting the CRPF when you wake up in the morning to fight the frozen-oven tap. The wintry lull is not without a reason.

With little news happening, except for the cut-and-dried-and-shrill news-bytes offered by the old man of Hyderpora (still intense) the mike-wielding gang is a worried lot. In absence of political news they occasionally dash off to the shores of Dal to report the ice floes [called Tula-katur] to their ignoramuses in New Delhi. The lake freezes over in parts every winter and long years back, someone drove a Jeep on it. That is folk-lore. There are ice-roads in northern Canada, Russia, Alaska, Scandinavia and elsewhere where truckers and motorists drive regularly on frozen waterways and ice roads but let us not digress too much from our fore-shore. Oh, Harzatbal rises like a florescent dome in glacial climes.

Despite the night temperatures dipping dangerously during the wintertide, the call for prayer [Azaan] always comes on time. In the countryside it is immediately followed up by an utterly pleasing cackle of coots, shovellers, pochards and wigeons. The songbirds tweedle upon treetops, singing in an almost melodic fashion, who knows, songs of winter and the joy of warmth. Deep in the pine jungles of Kashmir, which hide European Hoopoes and dark secrets in them, little indigo columns of smoke can be seen coming up from the Kothas [pit-houses]. It smells of simple wood-smoke at day-break.

When my generation was growing up in Kashmir, during the era of tea-colored bullets and power-less wintry nights, we thought in our juvenile abandon that Chillay Kalan must be an old, fat, Karakuli-wearing spook who exits his mountain cave at the onset of winters to bring all the frost and icicles and snow. Just like Santa Claus minus his goody-goody image. It does not snow like it used to when we were growing up. For the contemporary and politically conscious breed of Kashmiris, Chillay Kalan must be someone like Farooq Abdullah. Theatrical. All bark and no bite.

© Sameer

Confusion in the times of conflict

2010-12-05T22:47:00.005+04:00

Sometimes in our confusion, we see not the world as it is, but the world though eyes blurred by the mind.
~Anonymous

We are as confused as a hungry baby in a topless bar. We find it hard to differentiate between a yellow school bus and a white police wagon, especially on weekends. As a principle we don’t like to fight in the cold because we aim better in June. But dejection is quite commonplace in our neck of woods. Since that perfidious damsel – variously called Azadi – didn’t show up this last summer, we are a little glum. Naturally we react! On the brighter side we have hope that she might do a half-Monty next season. Hence at the onset of our winter hibernation the ritualistic bus burning.

It is not the plebs alone who are confused. Sheikh Abdullah’s descendants are equally confounded. Dad Farooq shaves two times a day, picks out a new shawl from his fashionable wardrobe and preens in the mirror for hours. Then he air-dashes to various Moffusil towns of India to declare that the dreaded AFSPA shall not be repealed in Kashmir. Sonny Omer sings a different jingle in Srinagar. He says AFSPA must go. As it were – on the most important issue at hand -- the first family of Kashmir is at a serious cross-purpose. Adding to the theatre of absurd is another of the Sheikh progeny who says that the appointment of interlocutors is plain meaningless. The CM nephew disagrees. Confusion prevails.

The thermometer of army’s tolerance is directly proportional to the dip in mercury. The army spokesperson in Kashmir said that the CM -- boss of Unified Command -- has basically given in to Hurriyet speak. In plain words Omer watches too many Geelani videos and has now begun to make some of the same demands, chiefly the removal of AFSPA. He said something about merger-accession also but that does not particularly bother the army. It mostly wants the harsh law to continue. Sensing that they may have over-stepped their brief, the army’s highest officer in Kashmir promptly said sorry to Omer but the confusion didn’t end here. The junior minister of defence in Delhi butted in with his wisdom: The army can speak. So why the apology!

As Sunday markets go, Srinagar’s BD market near Polo View is famous. Kashmiri hawkers are quite enterprising and they lay their hands on the best pre-used stuff from across the globe. You can buy clothes which they can’t even think of in Delhi’s second-hand markets. Gloves from South Africa often vie for attention with caps from Norway. The market is chock-a-block on Sundays and if the currently visiting Track-II diplomacy team drives by, they may well mistake the bazaar for normalcy and hence Kashmir’s acquiescence to status quo. In a park – nearby -- the parents of those missing in the strife quietly assemble on some Sundays, seeking the whereabouts of their beloved.

The conflict in our hearts. And the confusion, thereof.

© Sameer

Harvest and hankering

2010-11-30T22:43:00.002+04:00

Can we not light up a fire
and see each other’s gaze?
Can we not make noise
like those good old days?
Can we not break into a song
when first snows alight?
Can we not be awe-less
and fear not the night?
Can we shut out the guff
rulers let fly at us?
Can we summon to mind
poems of harvest and hankering?
Can we paint wistful meadows
in bold colors of concord?
Can we sit and laugh
in the midst of this curse?

© Sameer

The hecklers

2010-11-25T22:41:00.000+04:00

Aesop, the Hellenistic slave, narrated a profound tale in the winter of 6th century BC. The story is simple but the message remains relevant 2700 winters later. A Bee, queen of the hive, buzzed her way to Mt Olympus to present Jupiter some fresh honey. Jupiter, delighted with the offering, promised to give her whatever she wanted in return. The Bee thought for a while and then said, “Please give me a stinger, so that I can hurt whoever might come to take my honey.”

Jupiter didn't quite like the Bee's desire to hurt people, but he had made a promise and had to keep it. So he answered: “I hereby give you the stinger you want, but use it at your own risk. For you may only use it once, and it shall break off in the wound you make. Thus you will die from the loss of it.” Right-wing Kashmiri Pandit groups have taken recourse to the stinger, over and over again. Cloaked in nothing but nuisance value, the loss is, in plain words, their very own.

I don’t frankly admire the Mirwaiz too much. I think he reeks of an elitist with all those expensive caps and well-pressed Kameez-yazars [Pathani dresses] but he is an important voice, however rapidly he talks on TV. The fact that some goon in ill-fitting pants will awkwardly lunge at the spiritual head of a huge section of Kashmiris is such a travesty. What compounds the pain further is the sight of neo-Nazi style fellow Kashmiris, cheering the mobsters on. Hell what have we become?

Heckling and assault on dissenting voices has become the new bench-mark of the largest democracy in the world. If instant 2-minute TV fame is your idea to spend a dull Thursday afternoon, then all you got to do is this: Rush to the nearest Kashmir seminar in town and behave like an undomesticated mare, kicking away at everyone. Bare your teeth menacingly and go ahead and smack the speaker. In no time the robot-like cameramen will have your attention. And Eureka: You are a nationalist. An ultra-nationalist, if you please. Friends can see you on telly. Simple.

One wonders if this is the educated, liberal, brainy, respected Pandits who once inspired awe. Not to mention an overwhelming majority of Kashmiri Pandits do retain their secular ethics and cultural upbringing. Somewhere in the melee (post the exodus, which is such a shameful chapter) several second generation KPs mingled with the rougher crowd. Soon they would become the flag-waving, uncouth sloganeering jokers in the pack. What is transpiring at the moment is part of the same transmutation.

Lately it has become quite fashionable to dub anyone ‘enemy of the state’ as soon as something displeasing is said. Ofcourse there are heart-aches, ofcourse there is displacement, ofcourse there are serious agreements but a passado at everyone who holds a position contrary to your own makes you a crack-pot. To shoot a man because one disagrees with his interpretation of Darwin or Hegel is a sinister tribute to the supremacy of ideas in human affairs -- but a tribute nevertheless, the literary critic Steiner said sometime back. One only agrees.

© Sameer

Wintry tales

2010-11-14T22:28:00.000+04:00

Only the curer whose love makes me drunk
Only that hand, if it wants can cure me!
Requirement is not a test of my tears
Eyes, not carriers of rain laden clouds!
~Shahi-Hamdan, Amir-Kabir

The Alvand mountains in the Hamdan province of Persia are lush green. One fine morning an old poet who lived nearby decided to set off for Kashmir. It was 14th century, historians agree. He rode a horse and came. And we were never ever the same. He made Sufis of us all. Despite what the likes of G Parthasarthy and Arnoub Goswami and his bald guests will have you believe, we still are a soft-touch lot, which gets quite dewy-eyed at the drop of a hat. We cried both when Sheikh Abdullah ceased breathing and Benazir was slaughtered in broad day light. Each year on Herath we seriously miss out on the wet wall-nuts that Kashmiri Pandits used to stock. We are nuts, I agree, but our heart is in the right place.

So we decided to lock horns with the ‘biggest democracy on earth’ and its military apparatus for five whole months. And boy, what engagement it was? We let the dust gather on shop fronts and government offices but we didn’t budge. Even a wee bit. With no major movement on roads we plastered king-size graffiti on highways. Armed with nothing but a moral rage our kids picked up stones from the roadside and took aim at the democracy. Ofcourse a democracy has hidden fangs and it lunged at us – again and again. A lot of young people who went out to tease the democracy are no more. They sleep forever in the apple fragrance of countryside Kashmir and beneath the bustle of Srinagar.

And as autumn gives way to the bitter chill of winter there shall be mehfils [gatherings] again and people will celebrate Eid and other associated occasions of merry-making and quite unbeknownst to all – snow shall fall. A million flakes will descend on cold nights upon forgotten graves and tall pines of Gulmarg. Skiers will slide over soft, cottony, clean snow. One of the two Abdullah’s might take a quick chopper sortie to the mountains. TV OB vans shall follow to get images for the jingoistic middle-class, which but for the lack of an expression are likely to bawl: Swarg hai Kaashmir [Kashmir is paradise]. Indeed. A jinxed one at that.

The roughhouse seems to be abating because there is a certain critical point till which eye-lids can not be batted. Eventually eyes get strained and blinker. The democracy is running worried and not without a reason because every intelligence index suggests that people might put up a fight – if only next summer. So there are efforts being made to reach out. A three member panel is wandering about with a tent which they pitch in towns and taverns. Only the already converted see them. Ideally we should have held them in a dreamless embrace but we are walking on eggs here.

Bohemian love songs reverberate in Srinagar this time of the year. At Syed Ali Hamdani’s Urs [anniversary] last night people thronged to seek blessings and peace, I am told. The bloke was neither born here, nor is he buried in Kashmir. Born in Hamdan, he died in Khatlan [modern day border of Uzbekistan and Afghanistan]. A poet, Hamdani visited briefly to help us fathom love and tolerance. We soaked up both his philosophy and message.

And now we stand accused of being intolerant. Pity.

© Sameer

Autumnal nightmares

2010-10-31T14:00:00.000+04:00

Srinagar is a busy outpost this autumn. The interlocutors have just wrapped up their maiden visit and promised to be back next month. In Delhi, sources confirm, they told Palaniappan Chidambaram (PC), India’s sharp-as-a-tact home minister, that he requires to arm himself with just one thing before flying into the valley: A topcoat. PC nodded gravely. In the autumn of 1964 Nehru’s chief troubleshooter Shastri landed at the Srinagar airport without a coat, clad in a Kurta-pajama. The shivering gentleman was immediately given a military coat by the army top brass at the tarmac. History. Such a mindful mistress.

October 30 afternoon. Srinagar is a ghost town. Omar, in a two-day stubble, is waiting for PC to descend at the airport. He has had recurring nightmares in the last few days. An old man in green Karakul appears in his dreams. The figure attempts to snatch the plough from Omar. The young CM doesn’t let it go. He calls out for Devender in his sleep. There is no response. Devender is a heavy sleeper. Omar sees stones chasing locks and hummingbirds dropping bird-shit all over the boulevard. He lets a sleep-scream out: Papa. Farooq is raising the roof in Delhi: freedom of expression is dangerous.

The ivory-color Air India [again renamed, I hear. Indian airlines to Indian to Air India again] touches down. PC appears on the door. Fresh. That discerning look in the eye. Omar quickly gets on his feet. He looks at his Swatch. There are firm hand-shakes and condensed pleasantries. They disappear into Omar’s waiting SUV. A million sirens blaring. Lights blazing. The security detail jumps in their respective cars. The cavalcade takes off.

PC to Omar: You don’t look good. What happened?

Omar: Nothing, just having these nightmares.

PC: What do you see?

Omar: Geelani trying to snatch my plough.

PC: OMG. Terrifying.

Omar: In another dream he appeared with a key around his neck.

PC: Key?

Omar: All locks open with that key here.

PC: Ah, yes yes. Such a sad story.

Omar: No one listens to me. It looks like a joke now.

PC: We didn’t book him for that speech.

Omar: No point, Sir. He has been saying that since ages.

PC: Do you think we can gag him with tax threats?

Omar: I don’t think so.

PC: You know Nalini is a tax lawyer.

Omar: You mean Mrs PC.

PC: Yes.

Omar: We are asking shopkeepers to vacate government property?

PC: You will be unpopular.

Omar: How popular do you think I am?

PC: Don’t loose hope, please.

Omar: Arundhati Roy is not helpful.

PC: We are concerned.

Omar: Concern too is not helpful.

PC: Before we could even think of what to do about her, international media got interested.

Omar: Ah, autumn makes me gloomy.

PC: Put some Kashmiri music on.

Omar: You want to listen.

PC: Music is moonlight in the gloomy night of life. Was it Sartre?

© Sameer

October 27, 1947: Dakota in my dell

2010-10-27T13:56:00.000+04:00

Autumn wind rustled in the terrified vale. In the chimneys of Srinagar, nestling birds shuffled. A DC-3 Douglas Aircraft Company Transport Airplane (called Dakota in brief) was heard in the sky around 8.15 in the morning. The dull camouflage paint suggested that the propeller-driven plane belonged to the Royal Air Force (gifted to the newly formed Dominion of India). Commandeered by Biju Patniak (who later went on to become the CM of Orrisa), the DC-3 had 17 soldiers of 1-Sikh regiment on board. The bumpy flight had just crossed Pir Panchal and was going to significantly alter the course of history in the subcontinent. Its first attempt to land on the ramshackle Srinagar airstrip was not successful.

Lt Col Dewan Ranjit Rai, the commanding officer of the party was getting edgy.

He asked the pilot to fly low on the airstrip again, this time, to ensure that no raiders were around. Also since the first hasty attempt to land was abortive, Plan B was to turn back to Delhi. Instructions from PM Nehru’s office were clear: If the airport was taken over by the enemy, you are not to land. Taking a full circle the DC-3 flew ground level. Anxious eye-balls peered from inside the aircraft – only to find the airstrip empty. Nary a soul was in sight. The raider party – also called Tariq’s raiders (after Gen Mohammad Akbar Khan of Pakistan’s 13 Frontier Force Rifles, codenamed Gen Tariq) were busy distributing the war booty amongst them in Baramulla.

Four days ago the fiercely combative Afridi tribals with active help from the Pakistan army, galvanized by reports of the mass murder of Muslims in Jammu, attacked Kashmir. Codename: Operation Gulmarg. Everything went according to plan for the Pakistanis. A few hours after the daredevil blitzkrieg was launched on October 24, 1947, Muzaffarabad fell. On October 25 the tribal militia, backed by regular army troopers, reached Uri. By evening the tiny town was captured. Mirpur and Poonch looked vulnerable. The Maharaja’s troopers were absolutely no match. The Pakistani onslaught was ferocious, sudden and swift. By the morning of October 26, 1947 the advancing squad was knocking at the doors of Baramulla. By afternoon the most important township in north Kashmir was taken. The same evening a feeble Hari Singh fled Srinagar, anticipating savage raiders – any moment -- to drag him out of his Hari Niwas palace to impale him.

Ofcourse the moment never came. The uncouth raiders in the words of Gen Mohammad Akbar Khan (Brigadier-in-Charge, Pakistan, in War for Kashmir in 1947) himself: ‘Delayed in Baramulla for two (whole) days for some unknown reason’. The loot and orgy in Baramulla continued well into the morning of October 27, 1947. Around that same time the DC-3 hovered over the airspace of the still independent Kashmir. Later Indian claims that its forces landed on the Srinagar airport -- only after signatures on the Instrument of Accession by Maharaja and the Indian government were obtained -- is riddled with some confusion and disputed. Be as it may the Dakota quietly touched down, almost unnoticed at 8.30am. For the first time -- ever -- India was in Kashmir to help. Sometimes in history friends can cook up a storm.

A total of 704 sorties right from the morning of October 27, 1947 till November 17, 1947 meant that the tribals were totally routed by the more professional Indian army. PM Nehru was ecstatic. On November 2, 1947, the PM spoke to the nation from All India Radio. Nehru was pointed: [Quote] We are anxious not to finalize anything in a moment of crisis and without the fullest opportunity to be given to the people of Kashmir to have their say. It is for them ultimately to decide -- And let me make it clear that it has been our policy that where there is a dispute about the accession of a state to either Dominion, the accession must be made by the people of that state. It is in accordance with this policy that we have added a proviso to the Instrument of Accession of Kashmir. [Unquote]

The matter went to the UN which announced a ceasefire of hostilities, pending a plebiscite. Pakistan still holds onto a part of Kashmir. The Indian army continues to increase its footprint in Kashmir and at present constitutes the highest military-civilian ratio anywhere in the known world.

63 years later, the battle for Kashmir wages on.

PS: Col Rai was killed in Kashmir a day after he landed. Gen Tariq was jailed under the Rawalpindi conspiracy case but was later released and went on to become the chief of national security under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

© Sameer

Harud

2010-10-26T13:51:00.001+04:00

Kashmir witnessed the season’s first sprinkling of snow. Clean as Geelani’s Khan-dress. Since I don’t get to be in the valley for most parts, I feel quite nostalgic about getting into a Pheran in Harud [Fall]. There is something quite timeless about being home around this time. I might be missing an exact expression for it but it is a very mixed feeling. Harplike. It hits you bang in the brow, mostly on autumn dawns.

And you want to steal apples. Suddenly.

Harud itself means loads of work. Farmers get real busy this time of the year. The grangers of our destinies [read our leadership] too get over-worked around the same time. So here is a quick stack up of what is making news in Kashmir at the onset of this autumn~ the year's last, loveliest smile.

Geelani: At 82, this man is to Kashmir what Omar Mukhtar was to Libya at 69. Ofcourse the latter was executed by Italian fascists in 1931 making him a Muslim resistance icon. India might never want to make an icon of Geelani but the old fellow – singularly -- gives the second largest growing economy in the world, and their kissing cousins in Kashmir, sleepless nights. Minus his calendars, he totally rocks. Unselfish and uncompromising. Most Kashmiris do not read his pro-Pakistan booklets but unanimously adore his oh-so-grand-fatherly demeanor.

TV: Kashmiris do not read. Urdu newspapers are skimmed through by the 40+ crowd and the retired gentry. In absence of any major source of entertainment and sans a book culture, people turn to the idiot box. Every single TV journalist, belonging to, reporting in or speaking on Kashmir – articulation is no criteria -- is a huge hit. Journalists are alternately dubbed as pro-India, anti-Kashmir, pro-Omar, anti-Tehreek and so on. On TV everyone loves Sajad Lone’s speechcraft. And all Kashmiris unanimously hate Arnoub Goswami. Personally I reckon he totally sucks – oily hair and all. Greasy loser. Who uses oil these days?

Deal: Deal means a different thing in Kashmir. It is not like closing a deal. You ‘get’ a deal in our neck of the woods. And deals are as rare as nuns in bikinis. Curfew and Hartal -- both competing weapons in the ‘longest conflict in south-Asia’ come with a set of deal periods. It can stretch from a few hours to a few days at one point in time. You learn to respect the deal by stocking things up, meeting friends, visiting a sick relative in the hospital, buying vegetables before any one of the two pronouncements is made: Thou shall not move. Halt, the oxygen taps are shut. Consequently everyone awaits their slice of deal.

FaceBook: When you are confined indoors for longish spells and the world looks like a big Kokur [chicken] coop, the best thing to do is to open a FaceBook account and lord over the world. Kashmiri youth is doing exactly that. Everyone and his uncle is clued in to all things Kashmir and beyond, thanks to the power of FaceBook. From the confines of baithakis (drawing rooms) they engage in political debates (sometimes constructive), post pictures (sometimes disturbing), make pro and anti pages and put links up (sometimes eye-opening) while the curfew continues. A lot of gossip mongering and mediocre stuff too happens but that is just the dross. FaceBook is one good indoor addiction amidst the outdoor fury.

Interlocutors: No one thinks they can make a difference. The set of three have their task cut out: Engage with Kashmiris. And not just the separatists or the already converted (read the NC and PDP chaps). One dialogist I know asked for a suggestion a night before she flew into the valley. I recommended a warm coat. Kashmir is a very complicated puzzle and though I earnestly wish that ordinary people help them solve it, I fear it is still sometime before that might happen. Given the Kashmiri argumentative nature I thought we could have completely overwhelmed the interlocutors with our list of arrogates and aspirations. Shut mouths rarely get heard.

The Valley upshot:

What's cool: Early snowfall in the hills, Danyi-thaepri [rice crop artistically thatched away in small chalet like formations], Eid anticipation, Kashmir Pandit Sangarsh Committee, Chinar leaves, Arundhati Roy.

What's not: Traffic jams, Masarat Alam, Three-week long curfews in countryside, Text ban, Roots in Kashmir.

© Sameer

Azadi -- The Only way!

2010-10-23T13:44:00.001+04:00

We may be different political beings but we are all human beings.
~Syed Ali Geelani
Delhi, October 21, 2010

The auditorium was filled to the rafters. Geelani sat calm as a mid-summer's sea. I don’t quite subscribe to the man’s politics but you can’t help grudgingly admire him. Apart from sounding total convincing, he is frighteningly intelligent. He speaks in a disciplined, clipped dialect and makes Haryanvi cops jostle with one another to pluck their cell phones out and click him. The Little Theater Group audi, next to DoorDarshan, located in the heart of Delhi, was Kashmir’s very own Broadway this Thursday. Syed Ali Shah Geelani was the sole protagonist.

Even before Geelani got up to speak, those perennial dorks from BJP’s student wing ABVP and their ideologically intolerant brothers-in-arms which go by fancy names like Panun-Kashmir (our Kashmir) and Roots in Kashmir began their distasteful sloganeering (Crude swear words, cusswords, expletives all). In the melee some buffoon attempted to throw paper missiles at Arundhati Roy, sitting next to Geelani. Something was hurled at the rostrum but it missed the 82 year old leader. Trespassers have such poor mental trestlework.

Kashmiri volunteers immediately threw themselves around Geelani. Students formed a human shield. The man betrayed no emotion. He continued to beam a beatific smile – in intervals -- as if scoffing at the frenzy subliminally. Eventually two men helped him to the lectern. Geelani began on a wispy note and just two minutes into his speech, given in flawless, genteel Urdu, interspersed with Kashmiri-accented English, everyone was in raptures. There was rapt attention. He constantly shook his head (could be age) and recalled historical dates like a farmer’s calendar. No wonder he churns those calendars with such ease back home.

Over the next few days the Kashmiri papers – and FaceBook videos -- are likely to shed light in some detail on what Geelani said at the convocation. The Indian TV has already given it a rotten spin: Kashmiri students heckle Geelani. That is such a cunning slant. The Hindi news channels in this country, and some English channels, their camerapersons (they look like car mechanics) and anchors (IQ levels seriously negative) should all be put on a bus without brakes and send on a paid-vacation (with free Samosas and Chai). The future generations will be grateful. With the kind of TV happening, India may soon be a nation of morons.

In dense Urdu Geelani talked about justice, basic human bonds and democracy. Ofcourse he repeated some of his standard fustian statistics but his speech was never drab. There is something uncomfortably scrupulous about him even if you tend to disagree. He looks injected with truth serum. The manner is uncharacteristically poetic. The inflections are fresh while the delivery is clear. I thought the top cops – revolver grips shining in holsters -- standing on the exit doors were so cued in to Geelani’s one hour long speech that their subordinates, who usually won’t dare stand near their bosses, shoved their way to catch a glimpse. ‘What democracy are you talking of, Geelani thundered? It was never exhibited in the valley. Before 1990’s if they caught you listening to Azad Kashmir radio, they would put you in jail, along with the culprit radio, he told a giggling crowd, which comprised of journalists, intellectuals, writers, students. And sulking badgerers.

I don’t know how big Geelani’s influence is in present day Kashmir or how to measure it in the competing narratives but he has for sure transcended into something big. He does not carry that Jamaati-chief tag any more. He has gone beyond the Hurriyet boss appellation now. I reckon Geelani defines Kashmir’s defiance.

You may loathe him, love him or harangue him, but there is no denying his indomitable spirit. As a parting shot, almost chokingly, Geelani said: You (India) could aspire to be a superpower, perhaps surpassing America some day but frankly we don’t care. Aspirations can’t be abolished. Even by a superpower.

Some spunk this old man has.

© Sameer

The three tenors

2010-10-20T17:39:00.001+04:00

Top cops in Kashmir would be a little less antsy tonight. The assistant commissioner of police, City, was still sleeping when I called him a moment back. The fugitive at large, one who dished out mini CD upon mini CD in flawless Urdu, calling for revolution, was finally nabbed at his maatamal (mother’s folk’s home) yesterday. Heck, Maatamal has been a weakness with Kashmiris. Conversantly when dour teachers (who used to be called master jee’s in good old days) wanted to pull you up for being too chatty with your bench-mate, often invoked thus: Khala ji ka ghar samaj ke rakha hai kya [Is this your mom’s sister’s home?] So quite Omar Mukhtar-style they descended from all directions and bundled away the runaway robin from his Maatamal.

Notwithstanding the sudden harud (autumn) loss the melody isn’t expected to stop. The three tenors are getting ready in Delhi. The home ministry is expected to have a quick rap session with the interlocutors before they land in Srinagar in an effort to get everyone talking to them. Whether on not Kashmiris talk to them is un-germane. Radha is the most elegant of the lot. She has grey hair and a kind heart. Padgoankar loves foie gras (duck liver pate) and all things French (they gave him the Legion D’Honneur a few years back). Ansari, an Aligarh alumni and ex-IGNOU professor, revels in discussions on economics of human resources and education. Anyone can go talk to them. They don’t bite.

Along with Bhim Singh (the indomitable Rajput who rode around the world on his motorcycle in the late 60’s a la Che Guvevara) LK Advani is pretty upset with Omar’s recent assembly speech. A psyched out BJP usually means advantage home turf. However there has been a mixed reaction to Abdullah-III’s now famous turn of phrase: ‘We acceded. We didn’t merge.’ While Bhim Singh et al have reasons for being jumpy, the separatists aren’t much pleased too. So in keeping with the tradition of spoiling the party for National Conference, the padre of resistance, clad in a gown he has gotten much fond of, uttered the ‘Emperor-has-no-clothes’ lexeme: Oh, and Omar’s speech was scripted in Delhi.

Ironically many say that BJP felt more slighted when someone told them that the somewhat suggestively-named National saffron mission wasn’t infact what they thought it to be. The mission was a Rs 370 crore grant to Kashmir aimed to enhance production of the golden crop of Zafran (saffron). Party workers had bought crackers surmising that a large chunk of Kashmiris had finally understood the futility of throwing stones and shall soon be lining up to join the saffron mission – of abrogating Article 370. BJP now believes that there is something sinister about the amount of grant money of Rs 370 crore. It reminds them of the avowed dislike of Article 370.

On a more nostalgic note October reminds me of autumn. Fall in Kashmir is pleasant. The airs change as if touched by the flapping feathers of a bottle-green angel on his way to the moon. There is mild breeze in the mosque spires, the undulating nets of fisher folk and the quiet branches of the majestic oaks. The leaves, an angry shade of crimson, fall off the trees in abandoned Hindu temples to strew the ground beneath. It is also time to reap the rice crop. The sight is the most breathtaking -- neat rows of assiduous men and women, hunched back, collecting their fruits of labor. They sing songs of love, joy and bounty together. Trousers tucked. Aloud. Hip to hip. Sermons can stay hinged upon mosque knobs sometimes.

The blue-necked cuckoos don’t stop purling. Even in conflicts.

© Sameer

Bub, bunkers and beyond

2010-10-12T10:42:00.002+04:00

There is an unseasoned mutiny in Mulk-e-Kashmir this summer. The boatsmen in Dal have revealed to intrepid journalists – clad in bullet proof vests – that the usually calm carp fish have been nibbling away at their oars of late. The defiance, it seems, has drained into the lake. A little ahead of the weed-infested Dal, an entire company of CRPF with chest-nut color guns in their hands, fingers on the trigger, chased a few hundred street urchins through a tulip garden, completely squishing the flowers in the process. As a result the Zabarwan foothills are stippled with mutli-colored floral boot-marks.

The only mills working in the city are the ubiquitous rumor mills and the word on street is that the Gregorian calendar would soon be replaced with a standard Geelani calendar. Heck that Gregory XIII was a pope anyway! Meantime the newest chairman of JK bank is mulling over the 2011 calendar with special green-color numeric for Hartal days and red color numeric for Curfew days. Parleys shall be held with Geelani sahib, when he is a little less angry and Omar, when Devinder, his chief of staff, goes on a sabbatical and leaves him alone, God willing, for a day or two. Besides there are chances that -- with autumn fast approaching -- the CM may finally take his sunglasses off. Eye to eye contact is always better than an eye for an eye.

Kids having a field day till end-September this year [three months of unlimited holidays] thought in their juvenile abandon that the summer holidays [locally, 15 dohan hinz garma-chutti ] might stretch forever. Alas it was not to be! Early October the education minister clad in an ill-fitting suit strode out of his Kokernag home to his Srinagar house and called the media men – who assemble quicker than you can say Jack Robinson – to cut short the forever vacations. Uniforms not washed for 100 days quickly went into buckets, much to the chagrin of teenagers, and lo and behold, the lawyer-minister from Kokernag was giving student attendance stats to media men – who assemble quicker than (okay the joke is stale now!) – the next evening. Only his son didn’t attend school, choosing instead to go by the now-famous Geelani calendar.

Apart from sad politics over body-bags in the last few months there are glad tidings too. Out of more than 1600 small and big bunkers located all over the province (mud and cement, brick and sand, trench and pillbox types – but all unanimously ugly) 16 bunkers shall be removed with immediate effect. Mostly unaesthetic these sandbagged formations pervade the mental landscape of people, apart from littering the stunningly beautiful (but seriously jinxed) geographic landscape of Kashmir. Called Bankers by most locals, these bunkers have a small slit for the gun barrel, serving a constant reminder to the hoi polloi that the Maginot line is not to be trodden upon in Kashmir.16 such monstrosities shall go now! We must smile!

A deadpan face-off is going on (which merits another blog, actually) between Gupkar and Hyderpora. Betwixt these two residential locales the destiny of five million people is calendared -- week after another week. These days the Blackberry Czar is at odds to break the deadlock set up by the Padre of Resistance. There have been numerous brainstorms and smear campaigns but nothing seems to be working. Be as it is, the government has now begun to fast forward Urs holidays, originally scheduled for later this month to Hartal days.

Talk of doing away with the Gregorian calendar, altogether.

© Sameer

Plucked young

2010-09-16T19:26:00.000+04:00

Last night my cousin called up. His voice was chocking and amidst sobs he said that his friend, a teenaged chap, Muddasir, is no more. The kid was shot dead, at point blank, for, perhaps being the median age of a protestor. In Kashmir if you are too young for a beard, you are a sitting duck. They can plunge a poisoned bayonet in you and ofcourse you can’t even squeak.

I’m told Muddasir, an avid footballer, couldn’t run when the hail of bullets came. You don’t have a centre-forward position in a street as narrow as a grid of a cross-word puzzle. His mother who had looked at him longingly only a moment earlier -- who knows perhaps anxious about his career in the strife torn valley – was stupefied into a statute. Guess it is difficult for parents to outlive their children.

One wonders why the joy of parenthood is being taken away? How many more parents must weep in the crook of their arms at night, silently? You cannot have glib commentators in TV studios spinning old wives tales for us. You cannot have ruthless men in Khaki, instructed to put the fear of government in people, stomping around looking for their next prey. Has it suddenly gotten so inhuman that nothing but the smell of blood satisfies their predatory instincts? Is democracy suspended, north of Pir Panchal?

A lot of flowers grow in countryside and towns of Kashmir this time of the year. So everytime a kid is killed in cold blood, friends do the most innocent thing one can ever imagine. They go about the neighborhood plucking away all the most beautiful roses and hyacinths and tulips and chrysanthemums and while their friend is being taken away for burial, they rush to the top floors of their homes and shower their departed buddy with flower petals. The coffin carries no less than a flower in it, plucked away, young.

In memory of
Muddasir, our little town’s best footballer
And all other flowers that didn’t deserve to fade away.

© Sameer

The brown boot

2010-08-15T23:31:00.000+04:00

Hans Christian Andersen is one of 17th centuries' greatest story-tellers. I especially like his fairy tale 'The Red Shoes' which the Danish author wrote in 1845 [around the same time the Brits fought the Sikhs in north India. The Dogras, till then Sikh loyalists, cleverly turned British supporters overnight and got Kashmir] about a girl Karen who becomes a victim of her own red shoes. Yesterday a cop [variously described as a nutcase, drunkard, contentious et al] threw a leather brogue at the duke of Gupkar.

He missed. There was frenetic activity at 1 Gupkar road at night. Farooq Abdullah shaved for the second time in one day and jumped into his waiting SUV and drove from his home at 7 Gupkar, a 45 second walk, to Omar's bungalow. Palace insiders gave this account.

Farooq [hassled]: Where is Omar? Where is Omar? Tell him Farooq is here. [Dr Sahib prefers to use third person for himself, like Gaius Julius Caesar]
Omar [clad in a Zara tee-shirt and Bermudas]: I am coming, tell him not to create a scene. I am already stressed out.
Farooq: Any leads on the shoe case?
Omar: They are looking into it.
Farooq [loosening a big-stoned ring on his index]: What is your guess?
Omar: You may have an idea. I told you I want to resign and go someplace nice and quiet and cool – to unwind. Now face this!
Farooq: Come on Omar. I have faced bigger challenges in life.
Omar: But you never faced a shoe.
Farooq: The cop, they say, is not in a sane frame of mind.
Omar: I heard him shout – Hum Kya Chahtey: Azadi [We want Freedom] very distinctly. He didn't sound like a madman.
Farooq: Do you smell fish?
Omar: The butler is making tuna tonight.
Farooq: I mean – do you rule out the hand of Muftis in this?
Omar: It has to be someone's foot dad. Remember, it was a shoe.
Farooq: Now who is being non-serious? And you think I act casual.
Omar: Well no one from PDP turned up at the stadium.
Farooq: Good riddance. Continue with it. Send them no invites. Why should they eat at government functions in the day and then criticize us in TV debates at night.
Omar: I don't care, dad.
Farooq: Well I do. I think our naughty neighbors could be involved in this.
Omar: They have floods. Apparently they got no time to brain-wash disgruntled old policemen at this time.
Farooq: Someone threw a shoe at Zardari last week.
Omar: Just because someone tried to knock him down, it doesn't mean they will pay someone to try it on me.
Farooq: Who do we blame then?
Omar: Divisive elements. I prefer keeping it vague and low-key.
Farooq: It is a big deal – already.

[There is a knock]

Knock, knock.
Farooq: Who is it?
Voice: Devender.
Farooq: Devender who?
Voice: Devender, Omar's advisor.
Farooq [with that Omar-you-and-your-so-called-experts look]: Come in.

Enter Devender, chest heavy with some intel he wants to share.

Omar: Speak Devender. It is OK.
Devender: Bandipore is Carnival-like! Thousands are marching to Ahad Jan's home.
Omar: Who is this Ahad Jan, now?
Devender: Err...The cop who threw the foot-wear projectile at you.
Omar: Dad says he is mad.
Devender: He bagged the President's bravery medal in 1990.
Farooq: Wayeh Khudaya, kom pagal gaye agadey. [God, we are faced with crazy people]
Omar: Whatever. Devender, mind a Tuna dinner. The fish is meant to be eaten raw. Just flame-kissed with lemon.
Devender: I won't mind.
Farooq: Devender, where is the shoe now?
Devender: Err... [At which Omar cuts him short]
Omar: Dad how about some Ortiz Bonito del Norte tuna.
Farooq: I have no appetite tonight.

© Sameer

PS: The palace conversation is pure pasquinade.

The domino effect

2010-08-02T02:21:00.003+04:00

It is awful to follow Kashmir these days. Each voice in the tiny valley carries a hint of sob. Every hour brings in more sad tidings. The roar and the smoke of clash seem to be getting louder by the hour. Curlicues of Barbwire and Dannert wire appear ineffective. All efforts made to describe the strange shape of this furor have gone wrong. Without attempting to be all too worked up, it is safe to assume that the Tehreek [movement for Freedom in Kashmir] is on an auto-pilot.

There is a limit point upto which the human mind is capable of remembering names and ages. So many kids have fallen to ugly force in the last couple of weeks that the threshold has not only been submerged, it is completely blanked out now. Since the mind is programmed to seek answers, partly to beat the tedium and partly to comprehend what is going on, opinions are abound. Like moths on a starless night. Everybody – from the harried CM Omar Abdullah to the underground fugitive Masrat Alam – is incriminated. Vox Populi is filled with bewilderment.

The right to protest is a fundamental right under Article 19 of the Constitution of India. Throwing stones is not. Setting fire to government property is not. Clearly someone is not abiding by the law of the land. But that is not the whole picture. The rules on the use of force against unlawful crowds are also clear. Section 130 of India’s Code of Criminal Procedure, is clear: ‘If the assembly cannot be dispersed otherwise and it is necessary in public interest, then the executive magistrate can order armed forces to disperse the assembly. Even then, every officer must use as little force, and do as little injury to people.’ In Kashmir the line between natural rights and legal rights is often quite blurry.

At this moment a fear of the awkward looms. No one knows what happens next. The protests come along as asymmetrical. Bricks don’t come from Pakistan, as prime- time TV anchors with prim faces smeared with foundation cosmetics would break down for us. The weekly Hartal [strike] calendars issued from some hideaway, much electronegative as they are, continue to be followed in letter and spirit. The traditional opposition to the ruling coterie, Hurriyet, appears as naïfly as the common man. Omar is politically sidelined – trying to assert his authority by taking turns subsequently to preach on TV, order probes, dash off to Delhi (as and when summoned) and express -- what can be at best be called a cross between impuissance and an inability to do anything.

Three full fortnights of strikes have passed by. While it strikes one as windy and impractical, given the fact that the axe falls first on the less privileged, the effrontery is seriously alarming. The curfews are getting punitive. Phones in more sensitive pockets of the valley are jammed for well over a month. Text messaging doesn’t work at all. Six million men and women of Kashmir are finding it hard to grasp what they can do and what they are allowed to do. No one talks about the silver minted look of Omar anymore. As if on cue, everyone is looking up at the sky. The clouds appear shaped like stones.

© Sameer

Scarlet puddles

2010-07-30T12:30:00.000+04:00

Woodlets are cold once again
Nights are drawn-out again
Death rattle is here again
Burying grounds are busy again
Scarlet puddles have formed again
Bowmen appear on trees again
Wildly shooting at dreams again
Each bird is a foe again
Birdcalls are grievous again
Darkness at dawn again
Nighttime at noon again
Clouds bursting once again
Old men crying yet again
Savage wilderness once again
Hop-skipping puddles time and again

© Sameer

The naked dervish

2010-07-27T12:28:00.008+04:00

When I was growing up in Sopore – a tiny whistle stop town – there was a lot of violence. The militants of Sopore used to be the fiercest and the security forces perhaps got an additional briefing or two before they were dispatched off to this front-line township. There was a lot of hostility in those days between the Indian army and the locals, much to the glee of militants.

Night-long gun-battles were routine. Since Syed Ali Geelani, then in his 60s and fiery best, came from a hamlet near Sopore, his iconoclastic following was at its pinnacle in Sopore. Winds of mutiny blew rapidly from Wular. I was very young but I remember vividly. There was only one solace to a large number of people in this mayhem: Ahad Saab Sopore. The naked dervish.

Ahad Saab upset a lot of believers because he walked naked. Stark naked. Even in winters when it snowed for days. I must have seen him all of a dozen times – walking always -- and let me admit, as a child I used to freak out at his very sight, not because of his unclothed state, but because of his gaze, which was quite intimidating. He would look at you with blood bellowing in his ears.

I froze in my school bus when he walked past. Ofcourse I would be baffled about how he managed to survive the freezing temperatures, when everyone wore a Pheran [loose warm tunic] and held a Kangri [fire pot made of clay and wicker]. It was only much later an American professor explained that there is a state known as Fana-al-Fina (forgetfulness of annihilation). It is a very deep, mystic concept of unconsciousness. And it drives Wahabis all bonkers.

A lot of people used to visit Ahad Saab and they did things which the vocal Islamists promptly clubbed with polytheism. The home of the mystic was like a carnival where people would come, get-together, reflect, weep, talk and at times sleep. In absence of any other outlet to give vent to their emotions, they found Ahad Saab’s abode a spiritual watering hole, where they went – again and again – for some sort of spiritual communion, perhaps.

Sometimes the public opinion was split in the middle: visiting the dervish was blasphemous, some would suggest, yet people kept pouring in. Sufism has its own intellectual culture, the physical artefacts of which are these mystics, his followers felt. And the one man who never spoke while his detractors and acolytes clashed was Ahad Saab.

Inspite of the growing trend of pan-Islamism which has swept across the Muslim lands and engulfed Kashmir also, the valley still has at its heart a very syncretical ethos. Dastageer Saab, a very reverend saint in Kashmir writes about Tasawwuf [spirituality] and Dervishes: A mystic can do nothing and is nothing in his self-being. But Lord gives him a helping hand. [The Sultan of the saints: mystical life and teaching of Shaikh Syed Abdul Qadir Jilani]

And yet you will meet people in Kashmir who vouch for numerous inexplicable things and occurrences that Ahad Saab was capable of. I don’t wish to negate what is attributed to the ascetic but there is no doubt that he was a common focal point who tied so many human beings together.

Ahad Saab died last night. Naked. The peripheries of his soul never felt bound within his body. He tore clothes and shrieked when attempts were made to put a blanket on him in sub-zero temperatures. People came from far and wide to have a look at his face. Hear him speak. Yet he would rarely open his mouth. There is something companionable about silences, sometimes. ‘But he is naked and he looks unhinged to me. Looks awkward. Isn’t this be-adabi [indecency]?’ I asked someone long years back.
‘Love is be-adub’, pat came the reply. Sufis.

Ahad Bub
Patron saint of Sopore

Ideating on a Hartal morning

2010-07-24T12:25:00.001+04:00

National Conference (NC) is to Kashmir what Congress party is to India. With minor absenteeism the party has mostly ruled Kashmir since 1947. On its website NC has put out the last testament of its founding father Sheikh Abdullah in text animation which states that '…People’s hearts can only be won by love, justice, truthfulness and sincerity. Not with subsidized rice, army and offering largesse.’ Paradoxically Kashmir has been witness to a frightening shrinkage of agricultural land (hence reliance on imported and subsidized rice), more army men than government employees (4,50,000 men and women in government service compared to roughly about 6,00,000 troopers) and last but not least we are extremely liberal of spirit while doling out freebies and bribes. Any one in Srinagar will tell you that. Thence stands belied the last testament.

That does not mean NC has no relevance. It is a completely democratic party. Out of the JK’s 87 assemble seats, NC has men and women on 28. That is roughly about one-third. It also has a central working committee comprising of 22 wise men who actually call the shots in the party. With the situation in Kashmir getting more complicated than Kandahar, these wise men decided to get their heads together for a Chintan Baithak (introspection meet) of sorts last week. Sheikh Abdullah’s eldest son Dr Farooq Abdullah, naturally, is the President and gets to sit on a low-chair. His eldest son Omar Abdullah is the state’s chief minister (CM) and gets another low-chair to the right of his dad. Nineteen other gentlemen have to hunker down on the carpeted floor. One guy sits in between the two chairs separating the former and the current CM. God knows why? Sheikh Abdullah smiles benignly from the wall.

It was a closed door meeting held for 420 minutes (7 hours). Eight resolutions were passed. So Omar stays as CM, all ministers (whether inefficient or not) will continue as ministers, Sheikh Nazir (relative to the CM and CM’s dad) will carry on as the general secretary and ofcourse Dr Farooq Abdullah will continue to be the President of NC (what if they won’t make him the President of India). All the men were agreed that there is a need to strengthen the party. Dr Farooq Abdullah gave a personal assurance to his crew that they will get to see more of him, henceforth.

As soon as the get-together started to get a tad boring (with usual uninspiring speeches), the unexpected happened. Dr Sahib pulled a rabbit out of the hat: Autonomy! Give it to us Now – pure and unadulterated as it existed for six years -- between 1947-1953. There is a longish history to the eight magic words. Let us cut it short here for the sake of brevity. NC after partly shelving the Autonomy in 1975, revived it in 1994. A resolution was passed (unanimously) in the JK assembly in 2000 adopting the Autonomy report (Autonomy committee was headed by Maharaja Hari Singh’s son, Dr Karan Singh). India wasted no energy. The government of India out rightly rejected the wish. [Who knows they might have a change of heart this time?]

At this the meeting was announced concluded. The delegates filed out one-by-one into the lawns to their gaping white ambassador cars, fitted with red lights. Into the city, with no soul on any thoroughfare, drove the twenty wise men. Window panes rolled up. Sirens blaring. Dad and son retired for siesta. No chips on their shoulders.

© Sameer

The deer in my dream

2010-07-22T11:01:00.003+04:00

I keep having this dream whenever I sleep just before the cock-crow. It is kind of recurring. I see a green jungle, thick and beautiful, with all kinds of wights. There is a little cottage in the densely wooded forest, covered by the bark of trees. It is like a million romantic movies. There is a powerful abruptness about the place.

I am standing outside the cottage, looking at the fish plonk in the rill that passes by. All of a sudden a gilded deer ambles by and walks towards me, hesitantly. I am unsure about how to react. Something about its eyes attract me. The eyes are like Persian almonds, big and sea-water like. The Iranians call them Chaqalu bâdom.

The deer waffles a bit, looks around, and then with the gait of Megan Fox walks upto me. I let go off my hesitancy and pat it playfully. It is lithe with legs suited for the rugged woodland terrain. I detect it is vulnerable and weak too. The deer appears to be looking for riding out the harsh jungle. I offer my little cottage. We become friends.

I get to hear noises in the jungle that I never imagined. Some days the clouds hang so low that you could see the grey twist of the mist right outside the cottage. The deer continues to stay. I would take it to the streamlet for a bath. I fed it out of my hand. When it was stormy in the woods at night, I would leave the door open.

Writers have very strange vagaries. I used to read poetry and scribble my fictive parables on cold cold eventides with only the deer by my window. A swarm of wasps would travel past. Occasionally a ladybird, blobbed in a hundred places, would slide by. The deer was getting tidy all through. Its eye shone.

And then one fine morning it was gone. It is hard sometimes to nurture a flower and water it each day and then find it suddenly plucked away. I don’t quite know what happened to the deer. There are creatures that lurch in the jungle. I missed the deer, in my dream, I recall. It shouldn’t have been gone. It still had plenty of growing up to do.

I didn’t get time to look for it. My dream broke. The tender smithereens of the broken dream lie all about my mental landscape.

© Sameer

Striking it out!

2010-07-17T16:18:00.006+04:00

7 Race Course Road, Lutyen’s Delhi. Lush as a freshly watered golf course. Pea fowls spurt about in the laws of the Prime Minister’s bungalow, spreading their iridescent blue-green plumage. Dr Manmohan Singh walks out of his study, clad in a spotless white Egyptian cotton Kurta-Pajama [lose-fitting traditional Indian attire]. He wears a turban, the color of a clear noonday sky.

Indu Shekhar Chaturvedi, PS to the PM, walks in front. She leads the PM to a hotline. It is a secure point to point communication system that connects the head of the government to whoever he wishes to speak to. K Muthu Kumar, OSD to PM, steps ahead and presses a secret button. He hands the phone to the PM. Dr Singh clears his throat a little.

PM [in a soft voice, whisper-like and silken]: Hello. Hello. Is that Mehbooba Ji?
Mehbooba Mufti [turning pages of an Urdu newspaper]: Yes, and who is this. What do you want? [The pitch is both idle and shrill].
PM [hand on mouth-piece of the receiver]: What is this Muthu? Can’t you inform them in advance? [Removes his hand from the receiver and clears his throat again] Mehbooba Ji, this is the Prime Minister.
Mehbooba [Bored like an average Kashmiri on a Hartal afternoon]: I don’t like people joking with me when I am going to go into a sulk.
PM: This is Dr Manmohan Singh, Mehbooba Ji.
Mehbooba suddenly remembers the satiny voice. OMG, the PM. She jumps to her feet. Aquiver like a pea-hen.
Mehbooba: I am so sorry, Your Excellency, I was drawn away by the latest Hartal time-table in the newspaper. I couldn’t realize it is you.
PM [a tad relaxed]: That is fine, Mehbooba. How is Mufti sahib? Where is he?
Mehbooba calls her dad [hand on mouth-piece of the receiver]: Mufti Saab, Jalti yiyov haz. Zehra haz badlav takdeer. [Mufti Sahib, come quick. Our fate is likely to change]
Mehbooba to PM: Mr PM, what is it about?
PM: What?
Mehbooba: Why do you wish to speak with Mufti Saab?
PM: Err…No, I was generally enquiring about him. Courtesies, you see. I want to talk to you.
Mehbooba [a, shade dejected]: What would the PM of a mighty country want from a small regional party leader like me?
PM: Well, you know, Mehbooba. I don’t know the language of politics and how to say these things but since you have been such a nice girl, I [stammers], I was just wondering if it could be possible for you to attend the ‘All-party’s meeting’ called by our BlackBerry farmer in Srinagar.
Mehbooba: Sir, I don’t want to sound rude but I don’t like Blackberries at all. Besides we have another full week of strikes here. I was just reading in the newspaper.
PM: Beti [daughter, affectionately] How can you not attend? What is democracy without opposition? We will look plain silly.
Mehbooba [by now an agitated Mufti Saab is around, keenly listening into the tête-à-tête]: We have a considered opinion sir and let us submit it to you, here on this hotline. We think the BlackBerry farmer sucks. His tale is over.
PM: Mehbooba, dear-o-dear, we know that story. Who do you think writes the script? So pray, be a good opponent now and go to Srinagar tomorrow.
Mehbooba: His Excellency, papa has something to say.
PM: Mufti Saab, aap baat kyo nahi samajtey [Why don’t you understand?]
Mufti: Dekhiye, Wazire-Azam Saab, yaha haalat mukh-talif hai. Hartal hai. Nahi Ja sakte. [Look, Mr PM, it is different here. There is a strike. We can’t go]
PM gesticulates to his aides, all of whom are looking peculiarly at the phone. The gesture suggests: What now? They ask him to hang-up with an alibi.
PM: All right Mufti Saab, please try and re-consider your decision.
Mufti: Hartal hai. Saang-bari ho rahi hai. Kahi pathar laga, to. Nahi Ja sakte.
[There is a strike. There is stone pelting. What if we get hit? We can’t go]
PM: Have a good day.
Mufti: You too, His Excellency.

Mufti turns to Mehbooba: And you thought New Delhi wants a change of guard.
Mehbooba: Heck, I thought why else should the PM call me.
Mufti: They back the Abdullahs at present.
Mehbooba: Drop it papa. Did you check the latest calendar?
Mufti [with a wink]: Is there a strike day for mainstream politicians’?

7 Race Course Road:
PM to his aides: They kept repeating Hartal and Hartal.
First aide-de-camp to PM: Apparently a new Hartal time-table is out in Srinagar, Sir.
PM: What the heck? Don’t they have any relaxation hours in the Hartal?
Second aide-de-camp: Yes sir, for a few hours, on Saturdays.
PM: Interesting. And how do they re-impose a Hartal?
Third aide-de-camp: Throw stones.

© Sameer

News Hour by Arnoub Goswami

2010-07-09T23:02:00.001+04:00

Welcome to News Hour. This is Arnoub Goswami, live from Mumbai, from my studio, blue as tobacco smoke and you are watching the most watched TV show in India. We are debating the current unfolding events in Kashmir tonight.

[The camera zooms into Arnoub’s strangely smug face, highlighting his greasy hairdo. Soon there is a close-up of his face and the image stays for nearly an hour. Arnoub has recently watched the archival footage of famous TV anchors in history and tries in vain to imitate them. There are fake pauses. There are intellectual pretences. End of it he looks totally daft]

Arnoub: With me tonight in the blue studio is only one man: Arnoub. We broadcast live from Mumbai and since no one politically significant lives here, I am joined by guests from Delhi, Srinagar and elsewhere. Remember it does not get bigger, bluer and better than this. So stay glued. We’ll be back in a moment to ask tough questions and call them all on carpet, especially the ones from the land of carpet-sellers. Watch out.

[Commercial break]

Arnoub [in a CU (close-up) shot, taking the whole frame]: We have tonight with us Mirwaiz Umar and Sajad Lone from Kashmir. Dr Chandan Mitra and Rajeev Rudi join me from Delhi and here in our blue studio in Mumbai I lord over them. We begin Round-1.

Arnoub to Mirwaiz Farooq: Mirwaiz, do you pay these agitational kids who throw stones? My channel has access to your landline logs and it appears that your domestic-help actually helps you transport stones from his ancestral village in South Kashmir, an anti-national place, since stones are in short supply in Srinagar.

Mirwaiz: This is non-sense. I don’t know what you are talking about. I….[at this point Arnoub, the judge, jury and the executioner rolled into one, cuts Omar short].

Arnoub: I want to bring in Chandan here. Chandan, What do you make of the stone ferrying?

Chandan Mitra [Chewing on something sheepishly]: I think there is a lot of juice in the transcripts’ that your channel has so painstakingly accessed. That is not only a clear indictment of the mobsters who target our brave Jawans in Kashmir but it also goes on to prove, Arnoub, your own dexterity and ability. I salute you tonight. Like I saluted you last night. My God. How incredibly ingenious!

Arnoub: Thank you, Dr Mitra. At Times Now we try to be popular, never populist. Let Sajad answer my next salvo.

Arnoub [grinning] to Sajad: Is it true that the kids who get shot provoke the cops? Also is it true that paid stone pelters push little boys to the frontline on purpose so that even as our troopers, exercising extreme caution, fire below the belt, the boys invariably get shot in the chest due to height variation. Answer me Sajad. The nation deserves an honest answer.

Sajad: As long as you stop looking at it as a simple law-and-order problem, you can't picture it right. Height variation. Extreme caution. You must be kid…[at which point Arnoub decides to interrupt Sajad].

Arnoub: Nobody is a kid here. We are all adults and we are talking adult business here. We are talking real guns here, not toy guns. [The anchor looks straight into the camera and as if on cue the cameraperson does an XCU (extreme close up), exposing the gleaming side-arms of Arnoub’s glasses. Arnoub has a glitter in the eye that says: Good boy, Arnoub, point scored].

Arnoub to camera: We have heard the view from Kashmir, which is both fragmented and frustrated. When we come back after the break we will hear again from Dr Mitra [who will finish his mushroom soup by then]. Rajeev Rudy will also enlighten us with his views on Kashmir.

[Commercial break]

The prank resumes. The prankster repeats the cycle.

The conscience aches. One wishes to weep into the crook of arm. At the banality of it all! Will the silly anchors ever fathom that the fury is many decades, many centuries deep?

© Sameer
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PS: All situations in the blog are fictitious. Artists invent lies, at times, just to tell the truth.

What next?

2010-07-08T11:19:00.001+04:00

Our sorrows will never be sad enough
Our lives will never be important enough
~Arundhati Roy

Kashmir is a beautiful cage this morning. The inhabitants behind the grilles are strung out and edgy. Their luxury of innocence has been taken away. A peek through a crack in the windowpane can invite a ‘stray’ bullet. There is no venturing out of the home-cages. The bylanes are fitted with death-traps that resemble mousetraps. And they have been put in place in Srinagar and Sopore and Anantnag and elsewhere. We have become the townmouse and the countrymouse, like the Aesop fable.

There are curfewed dawns and curfewed noontides and curfewed evenings. Hazarding a guess – whether it is full moon or moonless tonight – is impossible. Our gaze has been curfewed over. Ill tempered spectres prowl about in the backyards. And there is no sound except jackboots mashing something, someone on the curfewed road. The sick can’t cry. A girl, from north Kashmir, withering with stomach ache, died in the wagon while her aged father tried to convince the mechanical creatures ‘imposing’ the curfew to let them pass. In utter vain.

Is the dead girl a martyr? A martyr as in bullet and blood martyr, we know not. The supremely disconnected TV anchors, sitting in plush studios in New Delhi, perhaps know better. There is a bespectacled host, son of an ex-army officer, who in particular knows all the answers. He is the Bill O'Reilly of the silly Indian TV circus. His mouth turns in such a disgusting manner that every phrase he manages to mutter comes out phoney. It is lame and dumb. And it comes from the ‘free’ media of the world’s most orotund democracy.

There are no newspapers on newsstands in Kashmir today. The local press has been curfewed over. Their pens rendered unsuitable. Dissent and debate is part of a democracy. While India's self-righteous leaders never fail to highlight its democratic credentials, they remain ignorantly indifferent to the misery of more than six million people, who have been cooped inside one of the world's biggest prisons. The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime, Max Stirner the German philosopher once averred.

One wonders what is next: What after the curfew outlasts its utility? What after the last flag march has been conducted? What after the doors of the cage are re-opened? What after the last guard goes away? What after the last body is fished out? What after the inferno burns out? What after your scream solders onto my scream?

A long wordless hug. Zero-tolerance. Probe. Mid-terms. What?

© Sameer

Persecution -- what are you tonight?

2010-06-30T23:42:00.000+04:00

Persecution has a shape, and a weight and a texture. This summer it is unmistakably evident in Kashmir. Mornings fetch sad tidings here. The beautiful garden that is Kashmir appears run over by strange creatures. When a crisp blue suddenly gives way to dreary evenings, it is sadness beyond comfort. That has become out subroutine. Kids engage the cops, who in turn shoot them in the head or heart, tempers fray, the government shuffles a tad, strikes follow, there is furious sloganeering and curfew. The action shifts to another corner of the garden. Evil emissaries’ prowl. With whips in their hands. They smell of funk and coconut oil.

I am summering in Kashmir and it is kind of bittersweet. Hopping out of the home is a challenge. My media accreditation cards allow me to drive a bit but I am not to venture near the war-zone. That is where the action is: young men – aged 20 and less – try and engage the CRPF in a battle of wits. A devil-may-care ferocity looms. The police train their guns on the kids. 11 boys were killed in this fashion in June alone. And the spiral continues. The government calls the kids rioters. While the claim cannot be substantiated given the government’s track record of speaking nothing but untruth on Kashmir, one finds it hard to put an exact expression to this fury.

Mosque loud-speakers are blaring out old cassettes. They ask people to get out of their comfort zones and gather. God knows how the magniloquent songs of revolution survived these two decades to mysteriously emerge now when no one even cared to remember the lyrics. I don’t frankly fancy the verbosity of the songs but I must concede that the Azadi sentiment hasn’t exactly withered in Kashmir. It lies torpid and in a state of suspended consciousness. People go out and even vote in between the dormant years but it never really goes away. That is the take-home twenty years later.

The strike is now supplemented by a curfew. There are fetters around the garden. Imagine a life where you are kept within bounds, your phones are jammed and your expression is severely gagged. People still find ways and means to sneak out and forgather near their homes. They exchange back-fence talk and speak in exaggerated tones. Someone says that the cops are coming. Some places the crowd simply melts into the alleys. Other places the mob sticks like glue. A confrontation ensues. There is sound of tear-gas shells exploding. The shells come down like handfuls of nails flung hard by a seriously riled sky. Then there is wailing.

The cycle repeats.

© Sameer

Red is my orchard

2010-06-26T09:19:00.000+04:00

There is mild rain in Sopore. This is a small borough with lots of apple orchards and apricot trees, that are salmon pink this time of the year. There is shrieking this evening. The distant wails come to me in mockery of the pounding of my heart. Two kids, ages 14 and 17, too young for beards, were put to death a few hours ago. Shot dead from point blank as they attempted to knock themselves out with cops. Irrational exuberance – the government press release shall in all probability suggest. Instant martyrs – the townspeople have already picketed in.

A bunch of kids attacking a CRPF/SOG vehicle is a good enough alibi for the jackboots to open fire on them. Standard operative procedure can be thrown to wind when harsh non-indulgent laws exist. In case of extreme provocation there is an option to aim at legs or in the air. Like today in Sopore, and last week in Srinagar, the guns are targeted either at chest or in the head. If the idea is to instill fear and intimidation in people by firing live ammunition with an intent to kill, then apparently it is not working. There should have been no Sopore today after what happened in Srinagar a few days back.

Clearly the government has got it awfully wrong in Kashmir. Cornered like a wild Chimp, it lunges at little boys who chase it. The official version notwithstanding – any confrontation between stone-holding youngsters and massively armed troopers – is disproportionate. As a result any death resulting out of such a face-off puts a serious question mark on the government’s cavalier attitude. It becomes a savage cycle thereafter and incidents such as these further provoke the hostility of people. The separatists simply tap the alienation.

As I blog it is evening time in Sopore. Two more homes are chopfallen in the cursed paradise. Little sisters’ running barefoot after an irate mob that carries their dead brothers’ is nightmarishly painful. Their eyes were like alien moons. They are simple, poor people and they don’t deserve to die like this. I don’t have an exact expression for my regular journalist friends in New Delhi or London as to why these kids fell today. I don’t know what frenzy is this. Is it a jinx around our necks or have we become somewhat unhinged in our heads? I can’t fathom.

Pray just don’t tell me there is yet another probe. That sounds like an expletive now.

© Sameer

Where are my fireflies?

2010-06-22T09:16:00.000+04:00

As a rule night comes early to Kashmir. The lowdown from ground zero is that violence has now been completely institutionalized. The largest democracy in the world and its Blackberry czar in Kashmir seem to be clueless about how to deal with their single biggest problem -- the street kid. Less than three weeks after the prime minister of India dropped by for a two day spring vacation, assuring the natives that their human rights will be respected henceforth, three young boys were sent to their graves. Their human rights scattered in Srinagar bylanes, with their teenage blood.

Accountability is a slut in this city. Top cops I conversed with say their men come under a hail of stones from irate mobs and they only fire in total defense. The paramilitary troopers cooped inside their sad bunkers lead a drab life and shoot when slightly provoked. Add to this the countless intelligence agencies at work, trying to help the government maintain law and order, and the riddle is complete for you. Kashmir is a police state. No dissent is brooked. The idea is to hold the popular sentiment down with jackboots. The panic button is perpetually on.

Across the other end of the Kashmir conundrum are the pro-freedom blokes. Having exhausted most of their options the separatist chariot is kept trundling by strikes, locally called Hartals. A human life is worth a day’s Hartal. Period. During the strike period the elite stay indoors to water their well-manicured lawns, those with no gardens to till read Urdu newspapers to the last tittle and the more outdoorsy sit on shop fronts, exchanging small-talk. Kids in several hot-spots throw stones at cops with a recklessly irresponsible defiance. There is a curiousness to it: All this looks perfectly normal here.

The civil society is somewhat split over the frequency of strikes. Hartals in Kashmir are unique in that they are very political in nature. Historically strikes have been the prerogative of workers. We have refashioned Hartals to fight an economic and nuclear power, which doesn’t really give a rat’s ass about clenched fists. How else do we protest, a senior separatist leader asked me quizzically? I had no ready-to-offer answers. As long as a strike remains peaceful, the society can be expected to support a legitimate cause. Any inconvenience caused to people is an expected spin-off. You cannot overdo it.

The narrative flickers at a riotous speed in the valley: From killer troopers to trouble-making teenagers to well-heeled separatist leadership to the bacchanal mainstream polity. Everyone has a strong, almost poisonous opinion of one other. They appear like strings of a beautiful musical instrument and when you try to strum it, it sounds like a vuvuzela horn.
The melody is lost.

As I blog, I can hear gun-shots piercing the waxing gibbous night. A fierce encounter is ongoing somewhere near the riverside. There are no fireflies tonight. Only tracer bullets.

© Sameer

One more tear

2010-06-20T23:07:00.000+04:00

One more smokestack is smokeless tonight
one more child put six feet under
One more mother is wringing her hands
one more son is inhumed tonight
One more joy is trampled upon
one more lad is overhung tonight
One more bullet to the heart
one more woeful home tonight
One more sombre evening
one more starless sky tonight

© Sameer

Home

2010-06-16T23:01:00.000+04:00

There is a certain informality about Kashmir that is both whisper-style and soul-baring. I’m home and everytime I come, it is raining like stair rods. It was tipping it down as I pulled into the vale, green as an impressionist piece of art by Frédéric Bazille. The mise en scène was broken only by troopers’ dourly standing guard. A very few people were on roads. The strike call given by the padre of resistance, this old fellow called Syed Ali Geelani, was being observed with all conviction. A kid had been shot in the head for no apparent reason. Kashmir may be the proverbial paradise but it is a very cursed one at that.

I absolutely love rains but folks say it has been raining here for more than a couple of weeks now and the farmers are a worried lot. When it rains in Kashmir it pours. The driblets tap-dance on all the rooftops in the neighborhood making it very agreeable, especially at night. You can hear the rain. It is near songful in Kashmir. I’m however willing to suspend my romance for rain – albeit temporarily -- to the country people’s concern for their crop. There is talk of special prayers being planned to make peace with God. And propitiating heavens is no mean feat. God has gotten irascible these days.

The absence of sound at night in Kashmir appears a little extraordinary to someone used to the clamor of citified life. It is peaceful here, I must concede. There is nary a bark. Only total, complete muteness like that of a graveyard at midnight. It takes you a few days to get acclimatized to the stillness. Eventually you get on with it and begin to appreciate the simple life. Why do you need street lights or night-life? Slowly you get used to the uncomplicated lifestyle. Only that it gets a little laidback and languid.

Regular narrative in Kashmir is replete with talk of separatists and their ingenious ways. The padre of resistance was recently heard profusely thanking people for making the last strike a success. Yasin is planning court arrest over the weekend. There could be some fisticuffs and more action. Such activity is grist for the rumor mills which go into overdrive. Local news agencies lose no time in sending texts of sad tidings to people, who in turn take a perverse pleasure to read the contents aloud to whomever is around. Everyone is a citizen journalist and the ubiquitous cell phone is a harbinger – of whatever is not right with us.

Some of what we love still remains. I listened to Wanwun. Wanwun comes close to madrigals. These are melodies of mirth sung in unison, usually in marriages. Beautiful women with still beautiful voices tell the stories of love and happiness in a very sing-song fashion. Chorus. They form a human chain with arms flung over one another and swing like an ancient rhythm. Their carols curl and pop in the rainy air. The pitch rises and falls and steadies with each note. The thrumming of Tumbak-naris (small, hand-held drums) turns the atmosphere euphoric. All hurt vaporizes.

God, I was missing on the homemade opera. I am glad to be home.

© Sameer

To my old bed

2010-06-10T22:59:00.000+04:00

I smell wild wood trees
possessed by buccaneers and bulbuls
criss-crossing each other
along heaving paths
I see bee-eaters, their iridescent wings
like violin bows upon the track
fringed with tall pines
like sharp arcs into blue Eden
I hear sounds being chargrilled
in the timberland, so green
surrounded with dug-outs
as deep as war sorrows
I walk into my vale
self-same over the years
cacophonous and comforting
if only to fell happily
into my old bed

© Sameer

PM in Zabarwan

2010-06-07T10:52:00.001+04:00

Monday morning. The doors of Air India-001 are flung open at the Srinagar airport. The sky is blue, like the British Conservative party flag. A lean figure with a light blue Turban -- snowy white hair concealed within -- appears at the door. He has a duffle coat on. There are whispers on the Tarmac: Prime minister, Prime minister. With a brown bag in hand. Lots of goodies for us.

Slowly, with the grace of a sonneteer, Manmohan Singh descends the air-stairs. There is sound of salutes. Left. Right and centre.

Omar, clad in a crisp jacket, hair greying, like an amateur philosopher, steps ahead and extends both his hands for a hand-shake: Mr Prime Minister, Welcome to Kashmir.
PM: Nice day. The weather is fabulous, Omar.
Omar: Yes Sir, it was raining all through the last week. And the week before. We feared floods. All rivers are flowing over the danger mark.
PM: Hay Rabba [Oh God]. Why is everything so dangerous here?
Omar, tittering: Nothing serious, Mr PM. The rains can be a blessing sometimes. The only way to keep the separatists indoors.

Both step into a waiting car fitted with a zillion gizmos. Not even a robin on the tree can trill when the motorcade passes by.

PM, turns to Omar: Oh, by the way, I was mulling over to invite the separatists to a closed door.
Omar: Well, sir -- Geelani sahib is angry, like always. CID wallas tell me that even Mirwaiz is irate. And Yasin has been asking people to burn torch-lights at night. Sajad writes angry notes on Facebook.
PM: Grim, very grim. Why are they so annoyed?
Omar: Must be the weather, Sir. Grumpy like northern sky.
PM: I shall still renew my offer for peace. Sonia Ji insists.
Omar: How can there be peace Sir, when people are plucked out of their fields and clobbered to death?
PM, gaze a little stern: Don’t sound gloomy, Omar. It is a nice day.
Omar: Pardon me, His Excellency, I was a little distracted.
PM: You know we can’t afford to loose focus.

The cavalcade crosses a desolate looking Boulevard. Farooq Abdullah and Ghulam Nabi Azad follow in their respective cars. Sirens blaring. Farooq taps his driver to overtake Azad. [Tez Chalav Shahmas-lada -- Drive fast, you dimwit] Soz trails in another car, looking repeatedly at his cell-phone, wondering why it stopped working [Khabar haz kya gov yath – What happened to my phone? – Jammers Professor, Jammers]

Meanwhile in the PM’s car –
Omar, gathering courage again: Frankly, I am for zero tolerance, Sir.
PM: So am I.
Omar: We are on the same page.
PM: Zero tolerance for violence and terror.
Omar (in his thought-baloon): And human rights violations.
PM: Did you say something?
Omar: No Sir – we are already at the convocation centre. Let’s step out.

© Sameer

Why?

2010-05-31T10:51:00.003+04:00

Mother they promised me
honey from the bee hive
and I ran to savor some
mindless of the night

They gave me not a single drop,
instead put
honey-color bullets
in my mouth

I kept asking for some
food and they kept
spraying me with arrows
till I gave up

The longbow man roared
and turned to his men
wiping away blood, he said
my violence conquers yours

Mother I think they killed me
but I know not why
The thinnest crescent
of moon saw me bleed

© Sameer

Fig and the cartoon bird

2010-05-26T13:31:00.000+04:00

A cartoon bird flaps its wings
in a doodle as old as dirt
Looking high and low for perch
across a glum-looking portrait

In a wood and canvas canoe
I drift along the bird
Looking for shiny moorage
by a phony familiar island

I forget what season it is
as I chase the cartoon bird
I wade on,
as it soars, abstracted by the trail

As it reaches a tiny garden
to halt upon a fig sprig
Kissing wasps on a fruit
gape at the bird’s beak

Figs deny to grow in winter
shy of sky-smelling snows
Adam and Eve robed in leaflets
once rambled about the sky

The bird pierced a lilac fig
to jab a wasp deep in it
Drupe is often confect
for the lover lives inside

© Sameer

Auschwitz in the old city

2010-05-21T13:04:00.001+04:00

Yeh kiska lahu, kaun mara
ai rahabar mulko kaum bata

~Whose blood is this, who died?
Oh leader of my nation, speak up
[My translation of Sahir Ludyanvi’s verse lines]

Word was out, like a lion that hadn’t eaten for days. Early Monday morning three gunmen had barged into the Lake view home of Kashmir’s Mirwaiz – Chief preacher and spiritual leader to more than five and a half million Kashmiri Muslims – and went straight to Maulvi Muhammad Farooq’s alcove. The men had the mental maps worked out and knew exactly where to find the high priest.

A hugely influential but controversial leader, Maulvi Farooq was quite urbane and classy. He would appear in Srinagar’s historical Jamia Mosque at noon-time on Fridays clad in an intricately embroidered gown and a Karakul cap with trademark black glasses. A thousand eyes would look at him in awe as he slowly ambled towards the pulpit of the 600-year old perfumed prayer hall, ornate in exquisite Indo-Saracenic architecture. All 370 wooden pillars in the mosque stood upstanding. The chandeliers pendulated.

But when have gun-barrels respected superior lineages? The men, who entered the Mirwaiz house, on May 21, 1990, pushed their way into his study and even before the 11th Mirwaiz of Kashmir could understand what was happening, a volley of bullets hit him. Centuries old reverence was brutally violated. Always pro-Pakistan, Maulvi Farooq had recently fallen out of favor with the hardliners. A meeting with India’s Kashmir affairs minister and subsequently calling the kidnapping of Rubiya Sayed ‘un-Islamic’ acted as an immediate provocation.

By the time the reverend was wheeled to the Sher-i-Kashmir [Lion of Kashmir] institute of medical sciences, a hospital ironically named after his bete-noire Sheikh Abdullah, with fifteen gun-wounds to his head, chest, stomach and legs, Mirwaiz was dead. Kashmir’s grand abbot was no more, slaughtered by his erstwhile followers. Irate crowds began to gather outside the hospital as news got around. Governor Jagmohan – recently dispatched to tame Kashmiris – got into a huddle with his security advisors at Raj Bhawan, a few kilometers away. Indignation rained.

There was some scuffle over Mirwaiz’s dead body. The hospital authorities were hesitant to hand it over. People took forcible control of the slain leader’s body and carried it in a procession through downtown Srinagar. The crowd swelled as more and more people joined the cortege. Sloganeering hastened. Women wailed. Near the Islamia College of science and commerce, located at Hawal, the 69th battalion of CRPF intercepted the marchers. Suddenly, skittish like stupefied horses, troopers aimed their guns on the mourners. A curtain of fire followed. 57 innocent people were cut to an instant death.

The pallbearers were all dead. Mirwaiz’s body fell off the coffin, on the road. Two more bullets hit his mortal remains. The air was rent with terrifying screams and more bullets, which seemed to ricochet off the walls and hit even more people. In less than three minutes, the funeral procession was reduced to a pile of dead. The road outside the college resembled a concentration camp, with bodies scattered all over, a blood-soaked coffin, hundreds of slippers, bedaubed in blood. Hawal was Srinagar’s little Auschwitz in that hour.

There are conflicting reports about what happened afterwards: Eye-witnesses who spoke to foreign media said that as soon as the CRPF guns fell silent (having exhausted their ammunition), around six to seven men -- from the procession -- collected Mirwaiz’s body from the roadside and placed it in the coffin. By all accounts they ran with the casket to Mirwaiz’s office. The cleric was later laid to rest in Srinagar’s Martyr’s graveyard. Those who perished in the blood-bath were buried the same day. Sometimes in history mourners can swiftly become mourned.

Ironically the man alleged to have led the hit squad to assassinate the Mirwaiz, Abdullah Bangroo, was killed less than a month later by troopers. In an atmosphere as malefic and morbid as Kashmir it is hard to sift through the official and unofficial versions. Often both are contradictory. Call it a quirk of fate, Abdullah Bangroo lies buried very close to Mirwaiz's tomb in the Martyr’s cemetery in Srinagar.

No one was ever charged or punished for the May 21 killings. Governor Jagmohan, under whose watch the mass murder took place, never showed any remorse.

Blood, bought for a song.

© Sameer

Our Catch-22

2010-05-15T10:21:00.003+04:00

So what is making news in Kashmir, my editor habitually asked me. 'Hmm, Kashmir is calm', I ran on. And before my super-rich boss could even begin the thought process of asking his pretty personal assistant to book him the next business class – for a quick air-trip to the valley -- I chipped in: 'but the calm takes no time to turn into a storm'. The look on his face suggested that I grounded his flight before it took-off. That is, I think, our reality. We are a riddle. There is a lull, like when a bomb goes off. Who knows what comes next?

When we are not on a strike or obsessed with the latest encounter story, we like to watch cricket. Everyone is a Pakistan supporter.
I am startled sometimes. If it was only about religion then India has had its share of Pataudis, Azharduddins, Kaifs and Pathans. It is not about faith. There is some profound, archaic, incomprehensible obsession with Pakistan that while not many in Kashmir would like the idea of Zardari as their president, they would root for Team Pakistan.

Brings to my mind an occasion in my childhood in Kashmir. On August 15 – India’s Independence day – for many years in the 1990’s the Indian army mandated that every bus, car, horse-carriage, motor-bike and bicycle should have a little flag of India. This was to show-case our ‘Indian-ness’ as also massage the soldiers’ ego, who took some perverse pleasure at the sight of independence-seeking citizenry carrying the tri-color flag. There was a strange irony to it. For many it was forced love, like unwilling love-making.

Quite unbeknownst to my friend, a resident of Srinagar, who lived in the US and home for holidays, the show, was on. He decided to pay us a visit. Since his car had no flags slapped on it, he was flagged down by troopers near the Sopore Bridge and asked to step out. A handsome army officer in his 30’s asked for his identity papers. An explanation was sought for the act of disobedience. My pal produced his American passport which had the desired effect. And I don’t frankly know about the flag business, he said in his rather honest defence.

The officer smiled and spoke in polite English and explained that putting up an Indian flag in these parts on August 15 is as important as vermicelli [a sweet pasta like dish called seviyan in India and Pakistan] on Eid. So get a flag, the officer grinned as he handed his passport back. I’ll, my friend responded, as he hopped back into his car, ‘but officer’ he shouted just as the captain began to turn his back: ‘our hearts are green. And we don’t eat seviyan on Eid.
Kashmiris don’t have a sweet tooth’.

The paradox stays. A local boy topped India’s elite civil services recently. Everyone and their uncle congratulated one another. A Kashmiri had done them proud. The stereotype had been broken, the pigeon-hole dismantled, the myth shattered. So everyone danced in the rain. Same evening when Pakistan played their T-20 match against England, lots of prayers must have gone up for the men in green. Head says India, the heart whistles: Pakistan.

It is our Catch-22. We are complex.

Sameer

Liberty

2010-05-12T22:36:00.000+04:00

Past prairies full of dewy grass
on a hummock east of sunrise
Next to boughs laden with cherry
in the rouge of concealed groves
Far from a million churlish noises
where stillness strokes the soul
Beyond the bounds of barley fields
deep in woods of rose-ringed parakeet
In the land of shiny caterpillars
cocooned from the ogre-ish uproar
Across streamlets with slippery cobblestones
underneath cliffs of last year’s snow
There is a hint of hope
and it is stark

© Sameer

Stone Age

2010-05-08T00:24:00.002+04:00

A slapdash stone hit someone in Srinagar. The gent dropped dead. The mob dissipated. Newsmen rushed to the spot. There was hyper-activity on FaceBook. Boom was lowered. Syed Ali Shah Geelani was swiftly blamed, like an arrow that flies off a sharp archer’s bow. Omar Abdullah thought Geelani was solely responsible. His online devotees seemed to agree. Delhi-based television channels ran tickers that read: Geelani’s stone-throwers kill a man. Not the one to take it lying down Geelani came back with a quick explication: Job of Omar’s henchmen/India’s agents/elements bent to defame the freedom struggle. The verbal warfare was last continuing.

In reality Geelani – white as a druid – had called for a symbolic walk to the office of the meaningless United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan [UNMOG] in Gupkar. Bored military personnel from Chile, Croatia, Philippines, Korea and Uruguay are stationed at UNMOG. God knows, no one ever listens to these countries, leave alone, military observers on deputation from these countries. Kashmiris must have submitted a million memoranda in the last sixty years to the observers. The surprised blue-capped officers would step out of their sleepy office, over-hung by Chinar trees, and gingerly accept our pleas from inside the iron-grilled gate. No one knows what they did to our heart-felt epistles. That is still a multi-lateral mystery. Recycling can’t be ruled out.

The freshest march didn’t materialize. The separatists were arrested and released in the evening. These days no march is allowed. The million strong processions during the Amarnath land row were a chink in the armor, which exposed the state. Wary, the government does not permit more than four persons to assemble without reason, except for rented NC workers, who are ferried from Srinagar suburbs to wave little red plastic flags of the party – for example when Mrs Gandhi makes a sudden air-dash to Srinagar or when Omar wants to practice his Urdu-like Kashmiri. Democracy is very subjective. It does not ensure liberty to all. Or always.

Right now Madame Mufti sounds more separatist than the separatists themselves. Fearful that she may step on their sacred space, the pro-freedom blokes avoid her like bubonic plague. Over and over again they remind her that her dad as India’s home minister unleashed the hideous looking Jagmohan on Kashmir. With cold-calculated-cruelty governor Jagmohan went on to order the great purge that antagonized generations of Kashmiris. The year was 1989. Twenty one years later Kashmiris remember it like yesternight. The Muftis may be avowed adversaries of the Abdullahs, but for most plebeians, both are quislings.

Political divides aside the Kashmiri romance with stone throwing -- coming back to the latest frenzy – styled on the Palestinian Intifada has lost all its luster. True it used to be the weapon of the dispossessed – the oppressed – against the powerful, and hence lit upon huge symbolism in the conflict years. The defiance has now been sadly dented, notwithstanding what Geelani says. It is mobocracy. Random men, out on the streets on the drop of a hat, half-bricks, flints and cherts in hand, don’t seek instant-Azadi. They enjoy a field day. The adrenaline rush leads only to stone age.

© Sameer

Being Dead

2010-04-29T15:51:00.004+04:00

[Selçuk: Sep 20, 1985-Forever]

Emily Dickinson, one of America’s most powerful poets was a recluse. She had extracted a promise from her younger sister to burn all her papers after her death. Thankfully Lavinia didn’t set a match to her famous sister’s poems. Dickinson’s poetry survived, and is considered among the finest in the world -- for her lifelong fascination with the inscrutable theme of dying. Emily met her maker in 1886, age 55, and is buried in Amherst, Massachusetts, very close to our very own Agha Shahid Ali’s final resting place.
Shahid deeply loved Emily’s works.

Agha Shahid Ali’s hauntingly beautiful poetry evokes a very private pain in us. He died of a brain condition at 52. I have often wondered why God chose to put the rotten tumor in one of the most gifted minds of our times. Deep in his mind-matter. Why are the most matchless of men the first ones to get marching orders? Why do the finest fall first? Why do the young have to die? Why is parting so awfully painful? I get no answers. Only an eerie static. Like snow falling on a silent night. Oft times we have to learn to answer our own questions. And answers are such mousetraps.

I knew this wonderful Turkish guy who was pals with me. He too had a beautiful mind. I would sometimes give him some silly shaggy dog story: that when he laughs on phone I can distinctly hear Cheshire cats meow in the background. “I mean it Selçuk, I’d say for effect”. “Shut-up, Sam he retorted, there are no Cheshire cats in Istanbul”. “Only Pisîka Wanê, which is perhaps Kurdish for Van cats.” “And guess what, Sam, I have a cat in my lap right now”. “Didn’t I say I heard mewling”, I chortled. “But the cat is so quiet, Sam, he replied innocently. “You freak me out”. Ofcourse he had informed me in an earlier chat about the cat and he would simply misrecollect.

Selçuk was a regular guy with boyish dreams full of blue dolphins.
He lived by the Bosporus. With a gift for languages, he became a translator at 23. I used to get mails containing Turkish glossary from him. He quietly fed fish in the strait that connects the Mediterranean to the Black Sea. Mackerels, sardines, and tunny would swim to him to nibble at small chunks of food he threw at them. Makes me feel content in a strange way, he explained. I thought he was being seraphic to the fish in a selfish world. Selçuk ceased breathing yesterday, carrying to his youthful grave, many such small secrets. The fish of Bosporus may well go hungry.

Personally I feel like a potpourri of emotions – between being awful and helpless. I hate losing people I love. But I lose people from time to time. Every time I love people, they just seem to go away forever. My unmarried aunt died of cancer on a windy autumn evening. I cried a lot, I remember, shaking like a young leaf on a maple tree. Many years later mom breathed one last time. It was a bitter wintry afternoon. I was 17 and I loved her like a teen. She didn’t open her eyes even as I kept wailing like a banshee. The dead never open their eyes. They aren’t allowed to. I don’t know why.

Rafi, the guy who helped me grow up fell off the roof from his small two-room home last year on a rainy day. I was not in Kashmir. I never am. Something happened to his head. In a week he was dead. Tears welled up in my eyes when someone rang me up. Rafi used to pray and fear God a lot, like all mortals. They say that fireflies glow by his grave now. I refuse to believe. He was 40 and shouldn’t have been in that cold grave. Fireflies make-out when they emit those lights.

Selçuk was the last person I’d like to see dead. He was too tender footed to go. But he is gone. At least he has no fear now. After the first death, there is no other, Dylan Thomas suggests. I think I agree.

I seem to have figured it out by now. There is this veil – that is what I reckon, death is. It is dark and rag-like. Stitched in many places by some glum thread. When it flutters it spews a scent that gives you heartache – the size of wild blue yonder. No one who walks into it, ever walks out. They are exaggeratedly proper about it.

We, the living, are always asked to move on, pray for the dead and forget. But how can one forget memories? Death ends a life not a relationship. I don’t think I can ever forget my aunt, my mom, my Rafi maam, my Selçuk. I can’t afford to. I intend to immortalize them.

As Dickinson wrote in her insanity:

Bereavement in their death to feel
Whom We have never seen --
A Vital Kinsmanship import
Our Soul and theirs -- between --

For Stranger -- Strangers do not mourn --
There be Immortal friends
Whom Death see first -- 'tis news of this
That paralyze Ourselves...

Who, vital only to Our Thought --
Such Presence bear away
In dying -- 'tis as if Our Souls
Absconded -- suddenly –

If they don’t allow cats, I hope they let Selçuk translate laughter in paradise.

Sameer

At the last gasp

2010-04-27T21:57:00.007+04:00

Was it effortless?
like your smile
Did they wake you up?
one last time
Or was it quick?
like a burglar in night
How many wings did it have?
Grim-reaper or arch-angel
Did you float or glide?
was it heady, like dope
Could you see our eyes?
from the cheese-like moon
Is it hot or is it cold?
beyond the stars
Do souls have foot-prints?
in the kingdom of heaven
Is it limitless hence?
are you weightless tonight
Will they let you see God?
from an opening in heaven
I’ll see you in the cow-slips
by your distant grave

© Sameer
~Dedicated to my amazingly mad-cap friend Selçuk, who passed away earlier today

Published in Poets' Basement -- CounterPunch Magazine, USA -- on the weekend May 7-9, 2010.

http://www.counterpunch.com/poems05072010.html

What is my cure?

2010-04-25T23:56:00.003+04:00

A Kashmiri, with a mushroom-like conical cap called soozun-dar toep in the local idiom, falls sick. It is a very strange condition – a mix of delirium and restlessness – which is particularly aggravated whenever gladiatorial jackboots kick him in the stomach or Kohl-eyes, filled with malevolence, stare at him. The man, sick as a secret, decides to seek cure. We call him a Koshur [Kashmiri] to respect his privacy.

Koshur: Jenab [Sir], what ails me? What is my cure?
Syed Ali Shah Geelani: You’ve got a condition called occupation-disorder. I’d recommend two tea-spoons of a wonder drug to you.
It is called audacity. Have it without fail. Every day. Also stop work on Fridays. I think you shall be just fine. Very soon.

Weeks blow past. No respite. Anxiety continues. He goes to a priest.

Koshur: Jenab, what makes me uneasy? What is my cure?
Mirwaiz: You have been walking middle of the road for too long.
The dust on your soozun-dar toep suggests so. Do you know dialogue drug? It works. I don’t have any samples left from my last foreign visit, or I’d have given you some. It works.

Days fly by. No help. Antsiness increases. He visits a star-gazer.

Koshur: Jenab, my pain is awful. What is my cure?
Yasin: Your internal romanticism is dead. Externally you look burnt-out. Give up on power-lamps in your home and instead burn a Mashaal [Torch-light]. Imagine if seven million people burn Mashaals at night. That would be infinitely symbolic.
The demons will leave.

Months elapse. The unrest remains. Koshur goes to see a doctor.

Koshur: Jenab, I’m sick. What is my cure?
Farooq Abdullah: Tsche chi Preh [You are possessed]. It is a green Jinn, the most mischievous of all gnomes. It guards a chest with no treasure in it. No medicine will fix you. There’s only one solution to this madness: counter-madness. So get up and dance. Dance with me.
Dance your worries away.

The Koshur exits the clinic and quietly walks in the rain swept city.
It has just been announced that Kashmiri blood is expensive.
It is not cheap now.

© Sameer
Filed under: Mini-blogs

April sprinkles

2010-04-23T10:46:00.000+04:00

Rain -- cold small beads
come slanting down
on Zero Bridge,
upon old waters that flow beneath

Wet almond blossom
in night-long showers
scattered in bolshie gardens by the Dal
stamped upon by everyday ghosts

Bloodshot glower in black skies
Men in sand-bags with sad, cold eyes
Spring showers upon ugly bayonets
early rain on parched souls

Moist, hidden graves in deep, distant woods
under damp raspberry trees
Dead sleep in rain-swept dark
the undead roll in stone Hamams

Rain spatter on familiar roofs
Rainy sounds like idle words
Rain-color puddles on the boulevard
No rain songs to live it up

© Sameer

Tulips and texts

2010-04-18T17:47:00.002+04:00

Phone rings in Room 134 in North Block, office of India’s home minister:

Omar: Hi, this is Omar. Could you put me onto Mr Chidambaram?
PA to Chidambaram: The minister is busy. In any case he is in no mood to talk to separatists.
Omar: This is Omar Abdullah, for heaven’s sake. Abdullah with an A. A for Allegiance, not Azadi.
PA: Oh, I am sorry Mr Abdullah. Transferring the call.
Omar: Mr Chidambaram. Good morning.
Chidambaram: Morning Omar, How is Srinagar?
Omar: There are tulips all over. In each lea and meadow. On CRPF bunkers outside my home.
Chidambaram: Don’t remind me of CRPF. Makes me think of Maoists, those cruel red flags.
Omar: My flag is also red.
Chidambaram [mischievously]: But you have blue eyes, Omar.

Omar smiles a shy smile. The tulips, outside his home, blush.

Omar quickly continues: Oh, I forgot, I called up to demand – no sorry, seek is the word – a ban on ‘block SMSes’ in Kashmir.
Chidambaram: Does SMSing bother you?
Omar: There are text terrorists lurking in the mountains behind the tulip garden.
Chidambaram: Grave, very grave.
Omar: Yes. Please make a call to Raja.
Chidambaram: I’ve no regard for kings and princes.
Omar: I mean A Raja, the telecom minister.
Chidambaram: oh, fret not Omar. My boys will do the needful.

Half an hour later.

Phones calls get made. There is frenetic activity in the telecom ministry. Notifications are quickly typed. Service providers in Kashmir are rung up. Text messages are banned. News is flashed on Internet. FaceBook status messages begin to get irate.

An hour later.

Omar: Hello, Can I speak with Mr Chidambaram? This is Abdullah. Omar Abdullah.
PS to Chidambaram: Right away, Sir.
Omar: Mr Chidambaram, I’d asked for a ban on ‘Group SMSes’. You got all SMS banned.
Chidambaram: Oh, I thought you said block SMS.
Omar: No, I meant ‘block’ as in group SMSes, used by the rumor mongers.
Chidambaram: Sorry I’m somewhat unhinged these days.
Omar: Can you have the order revoked? Mehbooba may gang up with Geelani on me. Already text terrorists are fuming and the FaceBook crowd is up-in-arms.
Chidambaram: A Raja is off to Nilgiris.
Omar: And Priyanka is in Srinagar.
Chidambaram: OMG, that skipped my head. Please ensure a pleasant stay.
Omar: Ofcourse I will. How about the call to Raja?
Chidambaram: I’ve winked my boys already. They are on the job.
Omar: Thank you.
Chidambaram: Happy Tuliping.

© Sameer
Filed under: Mini-blogs

My fearless comrades

2010-04-16T10:16:00.005+04:00

I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets.
~Napoleon

In Kashmir…the arena of an armed confrontation between separatist elements and state security forces, continued to pose serious challenges for journalism through the year.
~ Annual Press Freedom Report for South Asia

Journalists are a very strange tribe. We write and speak to inform and educate. As also entertain. We are paid to be creative -- to report, to observe, to get down to brass tacks. To dine with the who’s who. We often hobnob with the rich and travel with the poor.
We perform shack jobs for the powerful. We offend. We distort.
We bring out the truth. We are feted about and hunted down.

Reporting from a conflict zone – like Kashmir – can often prove to be tricky. The coverage of events has got to be non-partisan.
A journalist has to take care of loads of stuff: citing sources, double-checking facts, providing necessary contextual background and oft times, offering their own observations, perfigurations of interpretations without the urge to editorialize. That isn’t always easy.

The tinker of a slow duel -- of crisis and credibility -- is subliminally heard in a journalist’s mind always. Therefore the importance of information in a complex conflict situation is very critical. And journalists – being peddlers of such info – also become critical.
The nature of the job is such that there is no retreating from an impending danger, nor can you brazenly afford to antagonize the street view. You feel like a drunkard with a spadroon in hand.

Whenever I visit Kashmir, people regularly tell me that journalists here are either paid agents or spies or lackeys. Or all the three.
And by and large journalists have zero-ethics, they throw-in for good measure, tagging me along. The fear emanates from a real danger. The danger that media is rented by crooked leaders to underwrite national fears and hatreds. All things considered, most journalists resist this temptation. Those who give in, automatically, cease to be journalists and become propagandists.

A hack needs to tread warily, like a female model on a tottery ramp. That is because media can easily become a weapon of war. Lots of journalists are under a constant squeeze to promote fragmentation of human society. They have to strive to stay unfettered and free from such pressures. I think the important question of conscience comes into play here. And conscience is a very human trait.

Umberto Eco, the Italian medievalist, philosopher and intellectual said last fall – and I sat in rapt attention listening to him – that we must define the limits of tolerance and to do this we must first know what is intolerable. Sadly a society like Kashmir provides little leeway to understand the fine line between tolerance and intolerance. Top reason why journalists find themselves in the infamous list of the most disliked group, just beneath politicians.

In reality a code of ethics does exist for journalists. The code is simple: to seek after truth, to be independent and to minimize harm. Under any circumstances the sub-text is no simple detail. How can journalists be immune and avoid being exploited for political objectives? How can journalists differentiate between a planted and a genuine story? How can a conflict be reported objectively – with both sides of the picture – in intense friction?

I reckon journalists' ethics are largely a content issue, and governments should have no proper role in media content. Period. When men in media say they do 'nation-building journalism' it means they simply end up toeing the official line. Likewise when they highlight every silly syllable that the separatist bandwagon utters in Kashmir, they inadvertently eschew their responsibility as watchdogs of society.

The 19th century British cultural critic Mathew Arnold once famously said that journalism is literature in a hurry. In the 21st century Kashmir, journalism is fast becoming organized gossip, to paraphrase Egglestone.

Sameer

The wisdom of our fathers

2010-04-10T17:47:00.003+04:00

My Italian friend Umberto [Laurelli, not Eco] used the expression – The wisdom of our fathers – the last time we yakked away. It has been almost six months since the death of the great French thinker Claude Levi-Strauss, the old Jew of Alsace, whose beautiful observations in Tristes Tropiques [The sad tropics], made the anthropological world stand up and take notice. As one of the world’s finest minds, Levi Strauss was the first to observe that ‘human mind’ has the same structure – the world over. Both the savage mind and the civilized mind, he thundered, are structurally the same.

Man’s wild goose chase for answers, the search for underlying pattern of thought of all forms and kinds of human activity – like why we do something, what prompts an action, who prods us, when are we decided about something, where does it all evolve – came to be collectively called Structuralism. In the analysis of culture and language – the building blocks of any society -- as also mythology and kinship, the role of Structuralism has been very profound.

When Levi Strauss came out with La pensée sauvage [The Savage mind] – a body of scholarly work, it pitted two of the greatest French intellectuals of all times – Levi Strauss and Juan Paul Sartre over the question of ‘nature’ of human freedom. Freedom has been an eternal fascination with all men of words and ages. Strauss rubbished the idea of radical human freedom, put forth by Sartre and instead focused on human behavior. In the 60’s these ideas became a rage. But times change. And everything changes with it. Eventually Structuralism came to be overcast by post-structuralism and deconstruction.

Literary theorist Jacques Derrida made a pitch for binary opposites -- like maleness and femaleness, day and night, gay and straight – to drive home the point that there are no rigid categories but fluidity and it is well nigh impossible to compartmentalize or separate things fully. So there are no categories in absolute sense. Michel Foucault -- chair at the prestigious Collège de France – argued that all history and cultures influence ‘underlying structures’ – like texts – and a bias can’t be ruled out. Therefore we must study both – the object and the system of knowledge that produced it.

Philosophers. How they anatomize feelings? Super-sleuths.

© Sameer
Filed under: Mini-blogs

Where is the money, honey?

2010-04-09T10:58:00.009+04:00

The commies think striking is counter-revolutionary.
In Kashmir we believe otherwise. The art of going on a strike has been near perfected. Conflicts clear your head and make you take risks. Month-long strikes are routine. If last year was completely dedicated to human rights violations [against Shopian rapes] the year before saw protests for the alleged dilution of Kashmir’s special status [against Amarnath land grab]. This is the season of economic picketing. All the government employees have abandoned work in Kashmir. The strike is now in its sixth straight day – and expected to go on for another couple of days, at least. Demands range from payment of arrears according to the recommendation of the 6th Pay Commission to an enhancement of the retirement age from 58 to 60.

It is a funny situation. Like trundling down a cliff in a wagon without brakes and fighting over which songs to play. The bankrupt state of Kashmir stands to lose upwards of Rs 25 crore each day of the strike. The state government has no money. To meet the demand of its 450,000 mutineer-ing employees, it needs Rs 4000 crores [close to a billion dollars]. That is more than the revenue the state government raises in taxes in one year. Omar is cornered. The demands attempt to put a shake on him. Going to Delhi, asking for funds is an option but will the federal government foot the bill? What of our economic independence? Is interim taxation an alternative?

Already we have as many unemployed youth, as the striking government employees.

Meantime everyone is lovin’ it. Stay home. A good midday meal. Quick Friday prayers. Nun-Chai [Salted tea] at 4pm. IPL in the evening. The strike continues.

© Sameer
Filed under: Mini-blogs

Jailed for ever

2010-04-08T10:09:00.012+04:00

The state is doing everything in its capacity to elevate Shabir Shah to the status of Nelson Mandela. Infact Shabir has now clocked close to 25 years in jail since 1978 when he was arrested for the first time. In between he has been out a couple of times before being quickly bundled-off to bastille. Amnesty International calls the likes of him POC – prisoners of conscience. Simplified it means the state holds you down for non-violent expression of a conscientiously-held belief. Of all the major dramatis personae in the Amarnath land row, Shabir was singled out and incarcerated. Released in Jammu, the day before, he was promptly re-arrested. It is still one and a half years before Shabir completes a total of 27 years in jail, the number of years Mandela spent in the Robben Island prison. Perhaps broken jail-terms don't count.

George Galloway, the maverick British MP, thinks Shabir is a case fit for Nobel peace prize. I reckon the grey in Shabir’s hair is elegant.

© Sameer

Filed under: Mini-blogs

The end is nigh

2010-04-01T20:45:00.000+04:00

Finnish dredging machines dubbed ‘Water Master Classics’ have arrived in Srinagar along with foreign engineers to clean the Dal Lake up -- once and for all. The machines came all the way from the little Nordic country -- by road! First to the west Russian city of St Petersburg, from where the two-truck convoy moved to Moscow. The machines entered Kazakistan at Orsk, leaving the country near the Aral Sea for Uzbekistan. After a brief halt in Bukhara – with which Kashmir has some cosmic connection – the machinery crossed over to the Bhaglan provence of Afghanistan, travelling at turtle speeds to the badlands of Pakistan. From Jalalabad, the Water Master Classics reached Abbotabad, before crossing over to Uri. There was a break-down at Uri, with officials of Lawda [a gaggle of inefficient and extraordinary gentlemen] doing their utmost to help the Italian engineers to rev the engines up, which they thankfully managed to, this last Sunday.

The machines are presently stationed at an undisclosed location, near Boulevard [being hurriedly painted in cherry color with multiple plough design]. Soon the twin machines will be re-named – after either Sheikh Abdullah or Indira Gandhi – before dredging begins in all earnestness. Omar Abdullah is expected to be present during the first ten minutes of ‘Operation Dal Clean-up’ in a light-blue crisp Pathani dress, wearing a light note of Hugo Boss and gleaming tear-drop sun-glasses, picked up at Harrods on Brompton Rd. Sidekicks in one motor-boat, Omar with security paraphernalia in another. Media men, like mad-men trailing in a third one, without life vests. The Boulevard backdrop makes some stunning scenery. Zabarwan forests and the Dal shoreline. Maroon machines with crude ploughs. Omar and his easy elegance. Flash bulbs will freeze the Kodak moment. The Dal clean-up will never happen.

In the interim, the Pakistan High commission in New Delhi has decided to expand its Kashmiri invite list for next year’s Pakistan Day Celebrations after a wide spread discontent in the separatist ranks -- for being left out of this year’s tea party and dinner. There was a multi-course feast this March, which eye-witnesses verify, consisted of 101-types of Kebabs, each with a separate sauce in green saucers, laid out for the select few. This has caused much consternation and heartburn in Kashmir and a string of angry howls from the castaways, prompting the Pakistan High commission to amplify the list-of-probable’s for 2011. Infact invitations will be dispatched to every Mohalla Auqaf committee, so that there is no bad blood and Kashmiris continue to celebrate Eid, as and when Pakistan’s Rohat-e-Hilal Committee [Crescent sighting committee] decides.

Responding to Jamaat-e-Islami Kashmir’s latest salvo that Geelani long ceased to be a Jamaat leader, the ex-Jamaati-turned-Tehreek-e-Hurriyet boss Syed Ali Shah Geelani waxed eloquent, almost saintly: Even sans my Karakul cap, I can gather more people in my rallies than Jamaat-e-Islami and MUF leaders -- put together – can ever manage, with those fake Karakul caps of theirs. Show me one separatist who mocks our occupiers with such gems as Bharti-Samraj [Indian empire] in a way that I do without battling an eye-lid, the senior leader added for effect. And this latest fixation of calling me an octogenarian in newspapers is nothing but a scandal, by Indian agents – those clever tongues -- in the valley, who never tire to call me names. Come summer, I have an issue of such magnitude ready, which will make Omar forget Facebooking. That kid.

In between Farooq Abdullah, the slightly off-color cub of Kashmir’s original lion, has reiterated – for the millionth time – that Kashmir is the crown of India. Talking to a British newspaper Dr Abdullah said that he has only stated the obvious and shall continue to do so – in every non-descript south Indian town -- till good sense prevails upon the Indian policy makers and they make him the next president of the union of India. Farooq Abdullah’s election as the president of India, the old doctor said, referring to himself in third-person [something he is wont to, much like Gaius Julius Caesar] will automatically solve the Kashmir problem. The accession to India will be final, he concluded with an unusual finality, like John Nash, just after propounding the Game theory. What a genius? And we never knew. Pity.

Omar’s amnesty call to people who wandered to the ‘other’ Kashmir over the last twenty years has been taken rather seriously. The army now says more than 400 people are waiting to cross over to ‘our’ Kashmir. The only problem is that they may be hiding walnut-color daggers beneath their Pherans [cloaks].

The met department predicts that there is going to be a great heat wave this summer in Kashmir. Clerics are unanimous that end is nigh.

Happy All Fools Day

Sameer

PS: Since humor is at a premium in our neck of woods, let us be clear that all situations in the April fool’s blog are fictitious and resemblance to any character –with or without a Karakul, Blackberry or dagger – is purely coincidental.

Wazwan: Our food fiesta

2010-03-25T21:06:00.007+04:00

Fall in Kashmir is an utterly pleasant time. The airs change as if touched by the flapping wing of a bottle-green angel on his way to the sky. There is mild breeze in the tall mosque spires, the undulating nets of fisher folk and the quiet branches of the majestic oaks. The harvest air of pastures. The leaves, an angry shade of crimson, fall off the trees to strew the ground beneath. Orange saffron pads prance to a balmy sun. Gazelles hop. Kashmir is festive.

Marriages cannot have more appropriate timings in Kashmir. Fall is the official season of weddings. A caboodle of autumns ago, I was made aware of my cousin’s marriage and in a week’s span I flew down – cutting excuses and airline deals for me -- to the timeless vale to attend. Weddings in Kashmir are plain euphemisms for food. Food that is partaken, loved and doted on. No wonder a majority of the invitees do not either greet the bride or the groom or give away any gifts. They simply come, eat and go. As if in an open, plentiful, free-for-all eatery, where you drop by and leave. All expenses paid.

Wazwan – is a multi-cuisine mutton fiesta, conducted by the Wazas [master chefs]. Kashmiris on the whole are simply crazy about meat. Voracious eaters of mutton, even Kashmiri Pandits savor their steak. Pluralistic cultures have never blended any better. Wazwan comes close to smorgasbord, Swedish hors d’ oeuvres, but while wazwan is served by a troupe of wazas, the Swedish counterpart is humbly buffeted. And while buffets make you stand, wazwan is relished on ground. Nearer to mother earth.

My uncle, a guy who produces a million juicy apples each summer, made his terms clear. He wanted the feast to be a success, because any wazwan is directly proportional to the success of a marriage and repute of the household. Most of the money, consequently, gets spent on food. The preparations go on a military scale. Work was assigned to each soul remotely related. Friends are called in. I was lucky to escape work on account of two factors: One, I’m a non-resident Kashmiri. Out of sheer regard for the fact, I was not made to run. Two, I got my very fancy-looking digital cam rolling. A journalist filming the feast saved me the day. Rest of the boys, my cousins and second cousins, toiled.

**

Around evening two red wagons drove in. From inside, sheep bleated monotonously. Destined since birth for the butcher’s knife. Nothing much. When did a sheep last die of old age? Someone later told me that they were all slaughtered and a few didn’t even resist. Another wagon carried the cooking weaponry: ladles, pestles, knives and the army. Army of the wazas. Super-skilled in their craft, these guys possess a Midas touch. Ordinary foods give off aromas of wizardly cumin with an impatient flick of their hands. The wazas wear dirty clothes. So shaggy that they would be perhaps mistaken for mendicants. It is a stylemark: dirty waza-dress and none complains. May be it is a camouflage.

Since my Kashmiri-American pal was in town, I sent a quick invite. My kindergarten buddy used to play Lath-Keenj-Lut [tip-cat] with me when we were kids but now speaks with an American twang and more importantly spots a green card. Unlike me, Kashmir seldom features in his itinerary these days. I was taken by surprise at his rather impromptu visit. Normally used to exotic seafood on holiday cruises in the Mediterranean, Wazwan meant some change. He promptly texted that he would join.

Back at the Vur -- open kitchen -- all the cooking is done the fusty way on fire [logs, twigs and birch branches]. The assistant wazas pound the meat needed for making meatballs. Another group made quick salami of the softer limbs in the lamb. For lamb-skewers. Yet another party religiously sifted the spices. These units work as close-knit regiments and regimental pride is key. They try to outdo each other only to finish together. The pounding and cutting, battering and smashing, slicing and hammering of mutton makes strange nightly noises. The musicality of mutton.

The kerfuffle of Wazas declares a marriage, out loud. It mingles with the wedding songs sung in the women’s enclosure. Kashmir has a tradition of wanwun [madrigaling]. Beautiful women with still beautiful voices tell the stories of love and happiness in a very sing-song fashion. Chorus. They stand like a human chain, arms flung over each other's shoulder and swing like an ancient rhythm. Their carols curl and pop in air. Sprites sit back and take notice, so do men. The place seems drenched in a noisy revelry.

**

Glib talkers talked about 9/11 in a naive, unintelligent way. Some said that America – and its Jews -- faked the attack. I was asked for a journalistic opinion, which I gave. I don’t think it satisfied them completely. I felt a trifle amused. Though fine fellows, most of their information was gossipy. Meantime the Degs [copper pots] simmered in soft cuddling whiffs under the autumn moon. A Deg with a Waza stirring it unceasingly is more like Getafix, the Gaulish druid standing near his cauldron, tossing his secret ingredients onto it for his magic potion. A gourmet can tell you that Wazwan is only magic!

**

The D-day finally came. Guests began to flock in by 2pm. They came in two’s and three’s and sat orderly in a large tent (water proof, double draped) pitched in the wide lawn. Kashmiris have spacious homes and large premises, much like their appetites. The Wazas gave their preparations some last minute touches. Soon food began to arrive, in all its grandeur and majesty, in Taramis [largish copper plates]. Four eat from one plate. The romance with copper that started a long time ago has not ended. Not yet. Not even in a disposable world.

Each Tarami is topped with hot rice enough for eight people. Kebabs [lamb skewers], tabak maz [ribs deep fried], meth-maz [minced meat] and chicken is artfully arranged on the plate. This is the first course and people have less than five minutes to finish it off before another dish appears. My American buddy asked for mineral water and immediately got a bottle. Nowadays all feasts serve mineral water. Next came the golf-ball like Ristas, done in rich rouge gravy. Suddenly one feels like lunching under a spice tree.

**

A bevy of Wazas does the rounds, carefully serving the contents. It is an intangible art that these guys have perfected over many autumns. They pick out exactly four pieces of a course from a Deg along with some spattering of gravy which is served at four different spots in the Tarami. There are a few things in world, which can be eaten with your bare hands and wazwan tops the list. Spoons and forks can stay in the silverware. For a real thing you need to tuck the sleeves, as they say.

A team-leader is selected randomly, one who actually apportions the serving in a Tarami. The decision is unanimous. This is an important moment, for whoever is chosen to do the favor, refuses at first. A secret ring of joy, however, hovers round his heart to know that he is the most suitable bloke. Tarami-leaders do their job sincerely, never saving a bigger share. Even if they would, no one will complain. Whatever can be eaten is quickly gobbled down. Before another serving comes into sight.

As a gold-hued potion shows up, I knew it was Yekhni. Served towards the close of the elaborate wazwan, it is comprised of -- of course, mutton, stewed in curd and some delectable herbs. It is sumptuous and thick. I licked my fingers. My pal said I must watch out for the calories. ‘Normally I take Ahmed’s sugar-free green tea but in the middle of mutton kingdom with master cooks serving to spoil you, you feel like to indulge. A tad.’ The Kashmiri-American looked on.

There are 8 to 10 courses generally. Uncle made it eleven, auspiciously extravagant. There is some inscrutable fixation with 11. Not a figure is browned off. The American bit into finely cut turnip pieces, occasionally squeezing out a young lemon on the vegetable dressing. I couldn’t help work a tiny smile seeing him move his jaws with a steady chomp amongst all the munching around. My friend thought people will have collywobbles with all the food they consume. I rubbished him: Kashmiris imbibe the assortment of spices and it glows in their cheeks. In heads too, at times!

**

Guys-on-duty: cousins and second cousins kept bringing in extra Sarposhs -- large lids of copper – containing more rice. Each tarami took two generous helpings of ‘new rice’.

**

Since all good things must come to an end, the waza brings his specialty towards the climax. Gushtaba: a yardstick to measure the chef’s culinary skills. It is a huge ball of meat, marinated with blobs of golden fat. It has a golden soup too, which is tingling. Gushtaba serves as a full stop and looks like an inflated cricket ball or a deflated football. The American friend of mine however called it ‘MOAB’…Mother of All Bombs. Smirking, he took a chunk of it to finish off his lunch. We (me and two others, on our tarami) finished the rest of it, licking the last dreamy dab of gravy.

A mandatory duva [short prayer] said and people were off. [I couldn’t help notice many people actually say ‘ti aamen’ (and Amen) – a curious blend of Kashmiri and Arabic]

**

A close kin that I am, I was called inside, along with the almost-filled American for an odd ‘Kehwa’ cup. Kehwa is neither tea not lemonade. It is Joe’s nectar. It is a brew sprinkled with lots of apricots and cashews, raisins and almonds. Subtly rouge, thanks to the precious strands of saffron that float in its ripples, it tastes heaven. One feels levitated, somewhere between cloud nine and paradise. The American sipped in a few of the priceless pints, made double.

Early next morning, in my home, I found my washroom occupied. My friend had stayed over for the night. When he didn’t come out for a long time, I tapped. ‘I've got the trots’, he hollered. Clearly Wazwan was too much for his American dietary habits. For once, only once, the Mother-of-all-Bombs had done some harm to an American.

Sameer

Our street-fighting years

2010-03-21T00:47:00.001+04:00

This has been a wrestling week of sorts. After years of fake bonhomie the swords were finally out. Yasin Malik’s little entourage was attacked in Sopore, purportedly by Syed Ali Geelani’s men, perhaps stoned with the one jungle/one lion theory. In a spirit of quick animus, JKLF workers promptly attacked Tehrek-Hurriyet office in Srinagar. Before things could go out of hand, in stepped the druid-like Geelani with a green olive branch. Yasin, always wise as a monk -- albeit in black – raised white flag. With the absence of an alibi for this sudden end-winter spite, an old fish story emerged: handiwork of Indian spooks.

How can the separatists hog all the limelight, all the time? Madame Mufti made her usual random wild accusations against Omar and his fellow clubbers. Since Omar is almost always politically correct and manages to make the opposition look plain silly, Madame has – by now -- perfected the art of instigating the young Chief Minister. And lo and behold: Omar was enraged as a Spanish matador in the state assembly. He spoke blazingly in clipped Urdu and bits of English, while Madame continued to give him that ‘wait-till-I-have-a-real-issue’ look. The mainstream in Kashmir has an uber-aversion of each other.

Angels of death never fail to descent in our neck of woods. Clad in dark, merciless cloaks. In Sopore and Srinagar. Both places there was a volley of tea-colored bullets followed by ugly body bags. Both places poor people got caught up in a mad frenzy. I’m sure justice is a concubine. The poor are like nutmeg. They are always crushed. One such boy, as he was being wheeled to the hospital, had this soupcon red in his eyes, like wanting to hold onto dear life. Moments later he shut them for ever. I cannot stop thinking about the little mole beneath his handsome brow.

In a matter of few minutes those boys became the latest statistics in Kashmir's murky tale. Both were poor: a vendor and a store assistant. The poor always die. Rich get away. Rich boys ski. They drink coffee in plush cafés. They wear au-de-perfume. They blog. They debate on intellectual constructs. They eat caviar. And Harisa. In Kashmir people are filthy rich [at least the ones I know are]. The concentration of wealth, like elsewhere, is so inequitable. And the less privileged, almost always, get killed. That is a given.

The separatist camp burns a lot of gas in trying to out-do each other to reach the families of those who get killed. The dead are often hailed as martyrs in presence of their un-dead folks, in a certain reassuring way so that their loss looks acceptable. It is strangely tragic that no one wants to die and yet when you get blown up, you become an instant martyr like Saint Sebastian. Redemption is attained in death at least, if not in life in the valley.

I often think of Kashmir as this distant Arcadia – inhabited by shepherds and antlered hanguls. Intrigued that I am with its pastoral simplicity, I dream of her virgin wilderness.

As if on a cue, I cut the blood part.

Sameer

To my amigo: Come back

2010-03-18T21:29:00.006+04:00

The darkness is here
And I am afraid to enter
~from a poem by Selcuk

There is a certain understated elegance about Selcuk – pronounced Sel-Juk -- that makes him very impressionable. He is satiny, like a Pasha who never got to go to a war. Selcuk wrote amazingly sensitive poetry in Turkish but could never hold a conversation for too long. He understood the happiness of winter and walked along the Bosporus on cold evenings – all alone – with nothing but a merry tinkle in his eye.

I bumped into him many years back in a virtual alley. He sounded like an upriver boy with no pretensions. That enamored me. Like so many young souls in Turkey he wished to break free and float to freer lands. Eventually he came to the United States and took up a small job in Cincinnati, Ohio. He fell in love with America. Selcuk went back to Istanbul to complete his studies. He said he would return but never really did.

A trademark tuff of flowing hair easily camouflaged Selcuk as a rock star. His lone weapon was a disarming smile which he used to devastating effect. Originally a Kurd, his folks came from a beautiful place called Siirt in Southeast Turkey. According to a legend a local lord had a beautiful daughter whom he decided to give in marriage to someone important from another clan. The girl was in love with a shepherd named Ali.

The big-nosed father paid no heed to the girl’s objections and she was obliged to give in to his wishes. The wedding day came and the wedding procession, with the bride riding on a horse, set out for the bridegroom's village. On the way back mournful strains of a flute were heard in the mountains. The girl knew it was Ali playing and called out to him, 'Run Ali! Take me away.'

The shepherd galloped up beside her on his horse, pulled her onto the saddle behind him, and the couple was soon out of sight. Some time later a village was built on the spot where the elopement had taken place, and it was called Seyirt, meaning 'run', after the girl's cry to her beau. In time Seyirt became Siirt. Selcuk was born in the same romantic village, though I am not too sure if he ever visited the exact spot.

In one of my last conversations with Secuk he told me that I’d love Taşbaşı, a place near his home. It is a deep gorge with intriguing rock formations through which the river Uluçay races along its winding course. The Billoris spa is located next to it. The spa has a large pool with hot sulphurous water. Selcuk invited me to come and take a dip. One feels strangely revived and rejuvenated, he chuckled.

It was tales like these and many more that made me like Selcuk.
He had a sudden offhand charm that innervated you. I haven’t met too many people who are so truthful, transparent and kind at the same time. Yet there was an inferno in him which I found hard to fathom. It came to me as a cross betwixt a burst of poetry and a wordless note of zest. May be I could never completely understand him.

Early today I was told of his pain. He lies comatose in an Istanbul hospital. Quite unknown to me, it appears he was nursing a brain tumor for which he underwent an operation. Soon after he slipped into a deep coma, out of which he is yet to emerge. I suddenly hear words on the night breeze. I feel heartsick. It is sorrow, the size of sky.

I wish life had an undo-function. It is such an uphill battle. Such an unjust trek.

I just hope Selcuk – my friend -- makes it. I’m yet to take the dip.

Sameer

1846: Lest we forget

2010-03-16T20:11:00.001+04:00

One hundred and sixty four years back -- this very day -- was Monday, March 16, 1846. Two foppish Englishmen and an over-dressed Dogra feudatory sat across a long table in Amritsar. The middle rung Brits -- Frederick Currie, Esq [a rank just below the Knight] and Brever-Major [a temporary commissioned officer] Henry Montgomery Lawrence signed on the dotted line along with Gulab Singh, the Dogra Maharaja, in what came to be called the Treaty of Amritsar. The Right Honorable [British fixation with Honorifics was at its silliest] Governor General Sir Henry Hardinge was present to strike his signet seal to settle the deal.
The treaty has all of ten articles.

Gulab Singh had a very scheming sense of self. He was diplomatic and astute, earning him the moniker Talleyrand of the East. Serving as a top commander in the Sikh Court of Ranjit Singh of Lahore [started off on a salary of Nanak Shahi 275] he went on to become the Raja of Jammu for his services to the Lion of Punjab. After Ranjit Singh’s death he trucked the Lahore treasury – 16 carts full of silver coins -- to Jammu. Gulab stayed completely neutral in the Anglo-Sikh war and before that favored the English in their Afghan wars.

The Brits never forget an act of kindness, especially of the wily kind. Kashmir was in many ways a British gift to Gulab Singh for being such a loyal turncoat. The Brits were so pleased with his services that they decided to give away the hilly country of Kashmir with all its dependencies situated to the eastward of the River Indus and the westward of the River Ravi to Gulab at a discount. Kashmir landed in the Dogra kitty for their unscrupulousness.

Infact the initial asking price for Kashmir was Nanak-Shahi 10.5 million, which the Sikhs couldn’t dole out. [The Sikhs, ruling Kashmir, offered to cede territory in lieu of the money demanded as war indemnity. The British were quick to lap the offer]. Kashmir went to the deferential Dogras at a mere Nanak-Shahi 7.5 million, half the original offer. The former frontier chief – and Raja of Jammu -- was the new Maharaja of Kashmir. This was unique in that unlike other Indian states, there would be no British Resident to oversee the reign in Kashmir. God knows Gulab turned out to be as petty as he was ruthless. History is testament.

The Dogras went on rule Kashmir harshly for a little over one century, thanks to the Treaty of Amritsar. As per Article ten of the treaty each year they had to most-respectfully present the Britishers with one horse, all teeth intact, a dozen goats of approved breed between the age of 8 and 9 – six male and six female -- and half a dozen Cashmere shawls with intricate design work.
The farce was complete.

That was rather easy for the ruling camarilla. They anyway made little distinction between man and beast.

Sameer

Education on sale

2010-03-11T14:08:00.001+04:00

I learned nothing there. It was just a question of ratto-maroing [cramming]
~Aga Shahid Ali, Kashmir’s greatest poet in English, on his undergraduate degree at the University of Kashmir.

Good teachers are costly, but bad teachers cost more
~Bob Talbert

B.Ed (Bachelor in Education) in Kashmir is like bats in the belfry.
It is the education scam of the decade. The colleges are mostly run of the mill. Kashmir University is wholly complicit. And it has now reached a point where the arrangement is pure assembly line. All you got to do is this: Cough up the desired money and the college will take care of attendance, study material, list of probable questions expected in the final examination, among other things. In simple words, while you unwind on your bed, your B.Ed degree churns out of the sham-academic-conveyor-belt.

The state has about 150 B.Ed colleges, all but two of which are private. This comprises of our education mafia. They are mostly incompetent blokes with little or inconsequential education, adept only at selling a bill of goods. The degree-shops charge exorbitantly -- for a B.Ed degree -- from close to 50,000 students who annually take up the course. Since most of the students are from outside Kashmir we have this unique distinction of exporting a very mediocre grade of alumni who learn nothing but the art of bunkum here.

Any private B.Ed college willing to grease the palms of the Education department in the Kashmir University is granted affiliation -- to fleece poor students. Swindlers masquerade as professors only to act hand-in-glove with these colleges. So we have B.Ed colleges mushrooming like wild flowers in pine woods. There is one in every borough. Consequently we have more B.Ed shops than regular colleges. With zero intellectual capital and shoddy infrastructure those managing the show mostly hire retired teachers to impart new ideas and latest skills to the next generation. The joke is on us.

The spurt in militancy in the 1990’s saw an unusually huge spike in the number of students from outside the state, particularly from places like Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh coming to take up B.Ed courses in Kashmir. This was around the same time when several state governments in India made the degree mandatory for aspiring teachers. Soon everyone in Kashmir scrambled for their share, like the Californian gold rush. The corpulent Education department in Kashmir University -- which mandates the B.Ed degree and the affiliation business – couldn’t have asked for more. Everyone in the department made hay while the proverbial sun shone.

To attract more students from other states – who mean no more than cattle to these institutes -- Kashmir University relaxed admission norms. Earlier, a minimum of 46 per cent was needed for admission. The limit has been further dropped to 36 per cent. And students taking up the course are expected to acquire the craft of imparting knowledge to the new generation. And more importantly have that hallowed suffix to their other degree/s [BA. B.Ed, MA. B.Ed. How frigging fancy!]

An educational system can never be worth a dime if it teaches young men and women – irrespective of their state of birth -- how to make a living but flunks to teach them how to make a life.

Meanwhile admissions are open for B.Ed 2010. Apply early.

Sameer

Romance in the hills

2010-03-10T23:40:00.002+04:00

Naad ha layei, Myani Yusufo wallo
[Am calling out for you, come my Yusuf]
~quoted by the wandering Zoon, also known by her famous nom de plume, Habba Khatoon, the ravishing beauty, songster wife of Kashmir’s last independent king Yusuf Shah Chak

The year is 1579. The day is cloudy and unseasonably cool. There is talk that Emperor Akbar in a fit of secular benevolence has abolished Jizya – per capita tax on the unbelievers – and the plains of neighboring Hindustan are agog with songs of gramercy. Kashmir is a tiny independent kingdom, ringed by the mahogany mountains of Pir Panjal. A lot of wild strawberry has grown in the valley this season. Early morning a white horse has been seen cantering in the hills. The lone horseman appears regal. More than a huntsman, he looks like someone chasing Monarch butterflies.

Yusuf Shah Chak ascended to the throne earlier that year after a bitter power struggle with his uncle Abdul Chak. The Chaks originally came on horsebacks from the country of Dards, a beautiful but godforsaken land sandwiched between 16th century Afghanistan and Kashmir. Ghazi Khan Chak, the first ruler, established the Chak dynasty in Kashmir in 1555, around the same time that Humayun, the Mughal scion [who died a year later, catching his foot in the royal robe, while descending stairs at dawn] began his second reign in Hindustan. Over the years Kashmir grew on the Chaks.

The Chaks were generous but quarrelsome. They had unusual foes. On an expedition to Ladakh in 1562, Ghazi Chak got severe frostbites and was forced to abdicate to his brother Husain Shah Chak. After Husain Shah, the throne went to the younger brother Ali Chak. Yusuf Shah Chak, the tall, springy and nimble footed horseman, son to Ali, would be the last Chak king and the last independent Kashmiri ruler till Sheikh Abdullah assumed emergency powers 361 years later, in 1947. Ofcourse Yusuf knew not what fate had in store when he strode his fine steed that mild morning.

***

The young king was given to solitary bouts of roving in the hills. In those days people used to say that he was a tramp-king and he went to the woods to watch the mating rituals of woodpeckers. The court whisper was that the king likes the heady scents of the jungle. In the middle of a forest a faint wind laden with the perfume of a million perfumeries blew. It came from the bosom of the hills. Yusuf Shah Chak strode uphill to find out the origin. The horse was racing at 9,000 feet above sea level. Just when the ride would begin to feel schlepping, the king stumbled across the origin of fragrance.

It was a meadow that resembled a rainbow. Everywhere Yusuf looked he saw color. Violet Wisterias made frenetic love to bumble-bees with orange tails. The king alighted from his horse and took off his sandals. He ran barefoot on pea-colored grass that had remained untrampled for ages. Where he stopped to catch some breath, lofty pines grew teensy carnation, near their bases. A little ahead pink roses bloomed by a brook that had lots of slippery cobbles in it. As the Sultan hunkered down to reflect at his sudden discovery, an ewe, white as full moon, appeared from nowhere. Yusuf was convinced that he had sauntered into a lee of paradise. He named it Gulmarg [the land of flowers].

***

Thick woods hide entire villages in them. And people in those villages too. And their little secrets. Yusuf was to unloop some of it. An incredibly captivating beauty named Zoon [Kashmiri for Moon] by her poor peasant parents lived in one such hutment called Chandhoor. She sang Kashmiri songs in a high careful voice in the orchards near to her hut. Local lore has it that the nature-loving king riding incognito nearby heard her one evening. Yusuf was in torpor upon seeing her. She too fell for the handsome royal having no knowledge of his superior pedigree. Though already married Zoon eloped with Yusuf. They spent warm nights on haystacks under moonshine. Zoon became Habba Khatoon [Lady Love] to the king of Kashmir. Srinagar’s Habba Kadal is named after her.

***

Courts are such sly places. Especially during the onset of winters. While the king was galloping in the country, exploring new pastures untouched by old miseries, the powerful courtiers in Srinagar put their scheming heads together. The fat men rallied around a rebel Syed Mubarak Khan. One evening -- when the early winter wafts made chill against the skin if you rode too fast -- Yusuf Shah Chak left Srinagar to greet a million migratory birds. The first light of morning brought with it the tweedle of whistling Mallards, Greyleg Geese and amatory Gadwalls. Shovellers made mystic melody-pipe music. Flocks of triangle-headed Pochards and bald Coots had come quietly in the dark. Now there was a chirruping riot. In Srinagar the king had been overthrown.

The first reign of Yusuf Shah Chak lasted a little over year. He was brought down by a band of rebels in 1580. An exile in his own land, the deposed king attempted to gather men and means with much difficulty to fight his well-entrenched adversaries. When at first Yusuf failed to take the crown back he approached Emperor Akbar for help, thereby sowing the first seeds of Hindustan’s interest in Kashmir. Akbar initially procrastinated. Yusuf changed his mind and decided to go it alone. He made a final push to reclaim power. The battle of Sopore, fought between Yusuf Shah Chak and Lohar Shah was decisive. It resulted in a resounding victory for Yusuf. With a dragon-lance in his hand he triumphantly marched on to Srinagar.
The tramp king was back.

***

Hobnobbing with big empires is often a risky affair. Akbar never took too kindly to Yusuf’s fickle change of mind. Emissaries came down from Agra – Mughal capital – asking Yusuf to attend Akbar’s court and pay respects. Yusuf, the mellow-hearted, might have obliged but for stiff opposition from the fiercely independent minded nobles and supporters who wanted nothing to do with Akbar or Hindustan. Eventually he didn’t go. Thus began the Mughal scorn for Yusuf and Kashmir’s much vaunted sense of independence.

The Mughal onslaught was swift. It came in 1586. Yusuf was called for secret talks in the middle of the war. Chroniclers write that escorted by four bodyguards on horses, Yusuf Shah Chak arrived at his advance post. A fine rain was falling. The wind blew the rain across his handsome face. He bade farewell to his kingdom and rode for Hindustan. That was the last he saw of his beloved Kashmir, his beloved Zoon. He was promptly imprisoned.

The Mughal imperialism was complete. Kashmir was their northern-most outpost.

To this day Kashmiris hum the poetry of loss sung by Yusuf Shah Chak’s peasant queen, walking the tracks of Kashmir’s hauntingly surreal landscape:

Katue Chuk nound Banyo
Walla Mashooq Myano
[Where are you, my dapper love/Come home my beau]

The effrontery may have been battered but the romance lives on.

Sameer

PS: Yusuf Shah Chak, Kashmir’s last independent king, died in 1591. He is buried in a nondescript village called Biswak, near Nalanda in Bihar. Following year 1592 his son Yakub Shah Chak was poisoned. Habba Khatoon’s simple grave is located near Athwajan on the Jammu-Srinagar national highway.

The Mughals ruled Kashmir for 167 years, with the help of 35 governors.

Why so serious?

2010-02-27T10:07:00.011+04:00

Humor is a reminder that no matter how high the throne one sits on, one sits on one's bottom

The spoof appears to have run aground. Omar is an angry young man because someone attempted to lampoon him in a picture on FaceBook, along with his dad and grand-dad. The image appears to be a rip-off from a poster of a popular film ‘Three-idiots’. The Abdullahs’ – Kashmir’s high-brow first family – are mimed as Kashmir’s ‘Three-idiots’. An instance of Juvenalian satire, it would pass as just another gag in any civilized polity. Except Kashmir. Suddenly the ruling cabal is agitated, like an aged volcano.

A hurried press conference was called in Jammu to denounce the lampoonery. Rahim Rather, an old National Conference [NC] strong man, was flanked by two rising stars on the NC horizon Nasir Sogami and Devender Rana [expected to keep pouring paraffin in the NC lamp in Srinagar and Jammu respectively for many years to come]. They vented their ire on Mehbooba Mufti, leader of the opposition, and no Lal Ded herself. Ms Mufti was accused of forwarding a text to friends, asking them to check the picture out. Now Zardari was last seen giving final touches to a new law in neighboring Pakistan, attempting to gag those ridiculing him in texts. NC may well move a similar bill. AFSPA can wait.

Prof Howard Zinn, the very fine author, professor and intellectual who wrote tirelessly on civil liberties died in a swimming pool in Santa Monica, California last month. He often used to refer to Thomas Jefferson’s famous letter to Abigail Adams -- written during Shays’ Rebellion in western Massachusetts -- “The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.” It is not known whether the NC bosses know that in satire, irony is often militant.

Humor is like an aphrodisiac, which needs to be popped once in a while. In London, the city I love, Punch was a ground-breaking magazine of popular humor that often involved satire of the contemporary political scene. There are so many references and pastiches of wit in Islamic culture itself. Arabic poetry, the genre of satire, called Hija, mixes amusing anecdotes or wit in a grave subject to make it just more palatable. Satire gained currency after Islamic philosophers such as Avicenna and Averroes elaborated on the Greek thinker Aristotle's Poetics.

Nearer home in the good old innocent days, our folk singers, Bhands used to fuse play and dance, to portray social traditions and evils, bringing out the satire in them. Our Ladishah is a beautiful sarcastical form of singing. It is humor loaded with political reproof. In the present day Kashmir there are just press conferences, where particles of froth can be seen floating about in abundance.

We learn three new things from the ‘Three idiots’ joke and the subsequent press conference: Mehbooba Mufti – with that black cell phone of hers – is a gamester. Omar has two spots of angry red on his cheeks. Our humor has been molested.

Must be the conflict.

Sameer

Lest we forget

2010-02-22T21:45:00.007+04:00

Soon we will have the first spring blossom in Srinagar.
Hyacinths, blue and beautiful, shall smell like a mix of lavender and candy stick. Schools shall reopen. Low rumble will follow angry thunderclaps. Clouds shaped like abandoned honeycombs will freckle the skies over Dal. At noontide in the hinterland, ducks can be seen foraging for food, which usually consists of purple worms and fresh grass. Small ducklings with downy plumage usually walk in tow, imbibing the craft in their duck-brains. Rain is also expected.

There is talk that people who crossed the ‘line of control’ on cold, dark nights long years back – in bands of one dozen and two dozens – may be asked to return. It was in all probability a cross between uncontrolled anger and wild ardor that led to the night-walking, authorities are suggesting now. They are our folks, in language and temper, blood and spite, and must return. ASAP. The color of the sky oft referred to as green in classical Arabic poetry, isn’t green.
It is red with a plough for moon.

Intelligence sleuths are faced with a tough task this spring. How do Kashmiris acquire all the stones in the world – in myriad shapes and sizes? That is the riddle of the season. Ours is an oval valley. Surrounded by hills, Kashmir has volcanic rock formations. Rocks, many rich layers of them, are found in the Lidder valley in South and hillocks of Baramullah in the north. Only God knows how gunny-bags full of stones and half-bricks -- find their way to the alleys of Srinagar, as narrow as grids of a crossword puzzle. It forms the ammo to take on the might of a nuclear power, with close to 700,000 troopers on ground-zero, always in a state of battle-readiness.

We hit the bricks too often and too easy. Conflict makes people ornery. The entire cycle of throwing bricks and destroying public property and shutting down businesses has gotten tinged with a certain amount of rowdiness. Ofcourse those employed with the government continue to get paid as a divine right while they sit back at home [citing lack of transportation or safety as rhyme]; the economy continues to take severe hits. Private sector, still in its infancy in Kashmir, pays its staff for playing a game of cricket or attending a feast on an average strike-day. It happens nowhere else on earth.

Pastoral Kashmir is languid in spring. Women artfully balance the Paej [baskets made of stiff willow fibers] on their delicate heads. The contents may include animal dung, collected over the winter, to spray in their chestnut colored meadows. It is also the time to sow the first Haak [collard greens] – the official vegetable of Kashmir. While we like to think that only we devour Haak, not many people in Kashmir are aware that Haak is a staple food in Southern American cuisine also. The African-Americans love it as a part of their soul food.

Our backwoods have not always been pictorial. Nineteen years ago, this dreary day, February 22, a tiny north Kashmir village Kunan-Poshpora was snowed under. Early morning troopers from 4 Rajputana Rifles descended. The army men were apparently under the spell of some gypsy curse. What transpired in the sad, damp village over the next few hours is both gut-wrenching and disturbing. The mass rape is folk lore in Kashmir now. Two decades later the village wails on a single thin note, like someone taken by the Vikings and impaled.

I like the azure of Hyacinths. Legend has it that Hyacinth was a stunningly beautiful youth loved by Apollo and Zephyr. Once playing a game with Apollo, Hyacinth got hit by something hard. He dropped dead. Accusatory fingers were pointed at Zephyr. Envy could have been one reason. Apollo, it turns out, did not allow anyone to claim Hyacinth. It made a flower from the youth’s blood – Hyacinth. The flower smells ancient Greek blood.

PS – Farooq Abdullah, the ageing son of Sheikh Abdullah – his only claim to fame – reportedly danced and shook like a harlequin yesterday for no apparent reason, greatly amusing his hosts. Omar his capable son appears to have grown hair on his head in recent pictures.

Happy Spring

Sameer

Peaceniking down the pike

2010-01-15T14:18:00.007+04:00

The venue is Delhi’s India International Centre. The feathery-buttery winter sun looked weak as a simile. A battery of peaceniks converges. There are lots of doves and not all of them are white – rights activists, politicians, ex civil servants, academicians, ex militants, legislators and journalists. From Pakistan the time-tested and unbending Asma Jahangir [daughter Muneeza Jahangir works for NDTV] and Senator Hasil Khan Bizenjo [son to Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo, variously called Father of Baluchistan and a traitor; depends on whom you talk to] came. Kashmiri leaders included the former rebel turned socialist-leader Yasin Malik and the burly and voluble Sajad Lone.

There was much deliberation, socializing [something peace-makers are damn good at], rhetoric, wisdom and shouting. The much hyped-up conference proceedings have already been dealt with in some detail in the press [that gives us scope for some back channel twaddle]. The discussions in the 'India-Pakistan Conference: A Road map towards Peace' lasted more than 30 working hours. The take-home didn’t come as a surprise: Public sentiment in both India and Pakistan is inclined towards peace. We are a sub-continent of one-and-a-half billion peaceniks.

Key Pakistan speakers included Iqbal Haider [ex-student leader at Lincolns’ Inn and Pakistan Human Rights Chairman], Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan [ex-student Gray’s Inn and Pakistan’s finest legal mind] and defense analyst Ayesha Siddiqa [ex-bureaucrat and faculty at University of Pennsylvania]. From India the glib talker, Mani Shankar Aiyar [who but for his socialist outlook is pure foreign minister stuff], Salman Haider [ex-foreign secretary] and Prof Kamal Chenoy of the Jawaharlal Nehru University. The common thread that runs through most delegates is that they are all well-bred and au courant.

Ostensibly there was anger amidst the love-talk. Pakistani journalists I spoke to thought India has very slyly clubbed Kashmir and Baluchistan as if the two issues are at par. Kashmir, they were at pains to educate us, is a disputed territory. Baluchistan was forever under the control of the Shahs of Iran and the autonomous principality of Kalat. The wily British grabbed it in 1840s when it became the staging ground for the various Afghan-British wars [the Great Game]. Baluchistan became Pakistan in 1947 but some Baluch nationalistic groups didn’t like the idea of a split-up historical Balochistan [presently split between Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan] and hence the disquiet. Take-two: Pakistanis are very uncomfortable and high strung on Baluchistan.

There were more angry howls. Kashmiri Pandit [KP] groups have institutionalized the art of jeering. Any event in India – be it a literary festival, film screening or seminar on peace – connected to the Kashmir issue, they gate-crash to heckle at the odd Kashmiri speaker – be it Yasin Malik or Sanjay Kak. Be that as it may Kashmiri Pandits are integral to the Kashmiri fabric. After all we are the same stock and speak the same language. There is a huge debate and countless interpretations and a million slants to the theory of KP migration from Kashmir. Twenty winters is a long time. Let’s drop the bum rap. We need our neighbors back. Pandits are to Kashmir what songbirds are to woods. Take-three: KP groups suffer from low self-esteem.

Behind the scenes and after the mandatory hanging around with the intellectual crowd, I ran into a few interesting Kashmiris. Engineer Rashid is a legislator from the Langate province of Kashmir and is one of the most resolute politicians I have ever met. He sounds genuinely warm, has no airs and bears an activist-like demeanor. To his credit, Rashid had a particularly notorious army camp removed from his constituency after pleas from locals. He regularly fights for human-rights and often leads from the front. ‘I’m a grass-roots guy, and this gathering, I tell you’, he whispered conspiratorially in my ear ‘is anti-actual, not intellectual’. Boy, we need such mavericks.

Ved Bhasin, the founder editor of the much respected Kashmir Times remains such a sane voice after all these years. He spoke from heart [all intellectuals by definition speak clipped, smart, rehearsed verses; and not from heart] and called a spade a spade. He is independent minded, balanced and has more credibility than all his Muslim counterparts in the valley. I listened intently to him from the fifth row in the incredibly aromatic [was it the Pakistani females?] IIC auditorium when I suddenly noticed a very charming lady sitting besides me. Taking her for some middle-eastern journalist, I began, ‘That is Ved Bhasin’. Yes, I know, quipped Mushaal Yasin Mullick Awan. She is my latest painter pal on Facebook.

Monday morning quarterbacking: India and Pakistan have bickered over Kashmir for a little over six decades. There have been wars fought over, proxy-war waged, terrorism exported, espionage done and hate-speeches delivered. There have been cultural boycotts, trade black-lists, communication gaps. There has been much posturing and hoodwinking. Nothing has ever helped. The dispute remains. But hope lingers on. Both sides have a vast constituency which is ready to work towards building lasting peace between India and Pakistan. Like the European Union, there remain these amber and green dots that just need to be connected.

We perhaps need the imagination to locate the dots.

Sameer

Twenty Ten

2010-01-08T15:41:00.001+04:00

Twenty Ten made an ear-splitting entrée. Truckfulls of fireworks were set off in the Indian capital. Cold fog mingled with cracker fumes. Horns blared wildly. Vodka flowed. The rich gyrated and threw up at bar after another bar. The poor shivered under their perforated cloaks. News channels continued to waffle and re-play images from the year that was. Hawkers sold garish red Santa caps. Resolutions got made. Wishes popped like warm champagne. Even the entertainment-starved Kashmir rejoiced with rented rock bands. Hallelujah.

It is great to be young this year. Twenty Ten is going to be the year of the youth, the UN says. There would be sundry programmes to celebrate and government departments might have a budget dedicated to the hullabaloo. And the youth will continue to seek instant gratification. The age of revolutions is long over. Soon New Year resolutions will vanish like old oak tables. Old miseries will be upon us before we can say Jack Robinson. Already coffee colored bullets have pierced the winter chill of Kashmir.

January is the same each year. Cold and dreary. It doesn’t snow like a banshee anymore. Some people say it is climate change. Others assure that stuff happens and our planet has seen many ice-ages. Each camp accuses the other of conspiracy. Anyway we have become a nation of conspiracy-theorists. The macabre ritual of blood that played out in Srinagar -- this week -- too has opinion split in the middle. The handiwork of intelligence sleuths to thwart any attempts at troop reduction, avers one group. Gunmen, blessed by our notoriously naughty neighbor, struck, others opine. The binaries stay.

Often enough we like to lollygag in life. Flunking to add meaning to our existence. Sartre, the old French boy, perhaps had it right when he meant that human essence is simply existence. Hence the choices we make for ourselves are very important. And profound. Sad, we chose goofy over goodliness. Nutty us.

I think any Hazelnut flavored brew is a great way to beat the chill.

Sameer

Remembering BB

2009-12-26T13:15:00.002+04:00

Two years since Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. The absence of the sub-continent’s most charismatic, controversial and captivating leader is like a gaping hole, which remains unfilled. Her tainted hubby who went on to become Pakistan’s Prez has old foes breathing down his neck. The same men who bumped off Benazir continue to run amok in the streets, continuing to kill innocent bystanders. Nothing ever changes in the third world!

At the end of one of her interviews – way back in late 80’s – Benazir was asked if the popular supposition was correct: that if and when she supplanted General Zia-ul-Haq [Pakistan’s ex-military dictator], she would become the first woman to rule a Muslim country. "Quite true," she said and then remembered that a Queen Raziyya [Raziyya Sultan] had ruled the Delhi sultanate in the 13th century.

I checked the reference. According to history, the queen had been "wise, just and generous" and endowed with all the qualities befitting a king. "But she was not born of the right sex, and so, in the estimation of men, all these virtues were worthless."

Eventually men had murdered her.

I hope Benazir rests in eternal peace amidst the mango fragrance of the beautiful Pakistan countryside.

Sameer