Bekari and Balls

Reality is slightly off-color sometimes. Close to 40,000 young men and women scrambled for 48 jobs advertised by the state handicrafts department in Kashmir recently. The posts are all low-grade or Class-IV in officialese. Media reports say that among the applicants are B.Tech degree holders. That is like rocket scientists applying for horticulture jobs. To grow carrots, perhaps.

Meantime at the JK cricket association (JKCA) millions have been swindled by fat cats, reports suggest. It is a league of extraordinary gentlemen. There is a fellow called Ehsan Mirza, neat and bearded. There is Aslam Goni, a NC crony from Doda. Then there is Farooq Abdullah, cheeks the color of almond blossom. So who created the bogus accounts to siphon off sackfulls of money from the BCCI, we may never know.

Keeping in with our first family, Kashmir’s youth National Conference (NC) found a unique way to celebrate Omar Abdullah’s birthday recently. One wannabe politician, youth president of some district and other NC supporters cut a 42 Kg cake (according to the age of the Chief Minister) and fed the cake to Omar’s poster. Excited eye witnesses told media that the ‘young’ CM’s picture actually appeared to eat chunks of the cake. The rest was distributed to party workers.

Celebrations apart, more than 600,000 young men and women in Kashmir, according to government’s own records, are educated with no jobs. The figures are updated to end-2011. Contrast with the yearly expenditure on the security et al of the silly Durbar move. I reckon it is a staggering Rs 2 billion (200 crores). In the last 20 years alone, that is Rs 20 billion (2000 crores). How many jobs is that?

Makes one wonder, did Omar, surrounded by his yes men, none of whom has ever been bitten by one of Srinagar's 99,000 dogs, virtually teleport himself to Kathua to lick at bits of the 42 Kg cake. He was last heard frenetically scouting for his 'cake eating' picture on social media.

PS: The cake was baked in a local store called 'Vanity'.

© Sameer

Akbar’s court

All hail the Emperor. He is wrathful and angry and his fingers slither. There is no particular reason for his state of annoyance. He gets angry for no reason and he drowns you in the choicest of abuse in chaste Kashmiri. There must have been a nursery of compulsory curses the Emperor attended. He is a complete natural.

Talking of fingers, it is to his credit that showing middle finger is again fashionable in august gatherings. Not that there are no females around but you see when the going gets tough, they say, the tough get going. Mastoorat due to sheer dint of the fact that they made themselves available in the court have no choice but to crane their necks and look at the ground beneath their feet.

You may be a Molvi or a miscreant, the Emperor’s vituperation is abounded. He sees no class or creed. He asks his men-at-arms to bundle you up like good old school ata-savaair (piggyback) days, regardless of your age. So the next time you wish to stand up on your feet and question him about the poor quality of his hair-dye, remember he can run roughshod over you and your observations.

And my poor scribes (the ones who sit in the court taking down notes, which I frankly reckon is a boring proposition) don’t think you are immune. Be careful with your quills and inkpots. Hell hath no fury like a bespectacled Emperor scorned. We know that you are just doing your job but bear in mind that the Emperor controls everything. Including you.

© Sameer

Kierkegaard in my plane

On a plane recently, flying somewhere over the Persian sea, I buried myself in Kierkegaard, a gift by an erudite friend, whom I have come to like. The Danish existentialist whose work was hugely inflected by overtly theological colors (he attacked the Church but believed in faith and creator), claims that the praise of erotic love and friendship belong to paganism. In Kierkegaard’s other book Works of Love, perhaps, he contrasts natural loves to love for God, I recall. Thinkers!

From the corner of my eye I detected a bright orange glow had lit the wingspan up. Looking out of the airplane window at the unending, irregular clouds, I felt an urgent twinge in my heart. The big maroon sun had just set and the sky appeared like wounded twilight. Sometimes the beauty of nature brings poetry to mind, by itself.

I visualized stepping out of the plane, walking on the half-orange bits of clouds, singing Emily Brontë:

Love is like the wild-rose briar
Friendship is like the holly-tree
The holly is dark when the rose briar blooms
But which will bloom most constantly?

Ofcourse I didn’t get a chance to take the head-trip. Modern airplanes are very fast and they land smoothly even in cross-winds, even when the golden sand is flung hard and fast by a seriously riled God. Soon enough I was back in the opulent town, to the grind, with the predictability of everyday life.

In life there are situations, however, when you wish things you love to stay with you, by some magic. Some alchemy. It is hard to let go off some connections but the meaning of life is that you have to learn to unfetter. It is the invisible threads, that remain the strongest ties, Nietzsche the madman, once quipped.

I guess, I’d agree.

© Sameer

Peerzada's socks and shoes

Approximately 70 kms from Srinagar, there is a beautiful touristy hamlet called Kokernag. There is a spring in the middle of the place called Papashudan Nag or sin-cleansing spring. Kashmir’s education minister was born somewhere nearby -- in a village called Damhal. Unfortunately the minister never got the opportunity to wash his misdeeds in the neighbourhood spring. Instead leading by example he got someone in the state board of school education to write his son's exams.

That was two years ago. Newspaper reports suggest that his son recently bagged a distinction in the senior year or first year of A-Level certification (locally called Bahim jamaat). When your dad is a minister of education, who gets a dozen schools sanctioned in tiny Damhal -- if only to improve upon the 13,000 votes he polled last time -- you cannot afford to score a lower grade. How can you invoke the Kashmiri-accented Urdu bluster in cafés, without 85% marks?

There is something odd about old Congressmen in the valley. One they do the best shaves in the whole world as if they have all the time to primp and prink their double-chins. Two they make moral corruption look like meat and potatoes. There are so many mini-scandals stacked up with skeletons in Congress (and NC) closets that one would easily lose count. A dozen leaders were implicated -- one of the main accusers being a minor -- when the 2006 sex scandal surfaced. Nothing ever came out of it.

And here we are in the beginning of 2012 with the usual middle class gibberish being regurgitated at regular intervals in the corporate media. A million tourists this year. One for each vine and weed in the Dal. Regulation politicians in Karakul caps, neck deep in corruption, ruling the little valley of ours slyly eyeing the next election, completely unmindful of the ethical decay slowly eroding us. It is almost sad.

Thanks to Julian Assange we know what the US embassy in New Delhi wrote to the State Department in the US in their classified cables on Kashmir. “Peerzada Mohammad Sayeed behaves like a traditional Congress machine politician, one who asks his staff to put on his socks and shoes for him.”

Sometimes the Americans get it bang-on.

© Sameer
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Operation Rooster and other conspiracies

Wintry woes continue in the valley. Last week cops, on the basis of some solid info, laid siege to a mohalla, a country subdivision, in Baramulla, North Kashmir. These days, owing to the extreme weather, the police swings into action only when the intel is fully reliable and the target is clearly achievable. A high ranking officer led the offensive. Crack teams took position at vantage points. At the appointed hour the police assault was launched. Codenamed operation Rooster, it was swift, efficient and successful.

Three men were arrested. All young. “Case FIR # 12, 13 and 14 of 2012 under Section 3/7 has been registered against them,” newspapers screamed. What is all the more interesting is the huge body of evidence collected against the perpetrators. For once the police is uber-confident that they have a water-tight case. Oh and by the way the boys were booked for selling chicken at exaggerated rates. A few things can be more heinous. Period.

One doesn’t really want to get into the nuts and bolts of the poultry pricing mechanism in Kashmir. We have seen many a chicken being abducted on cold nights by feral cats, locally called laesh, never to be returned. Often the australorp feathers, lying about in the yard, are the only evidence of the overnight struggle. So many hen coops in the damp little valley of ours have been vandalized by both -- feral cats and CRPF in the past. To even think of raising the prices of our ‘happy chicken meal’ stinks of conspiracy. An elaborate Judeo-Christian one.

While the chicken fight continues in marketplaces of Kashmir, fisticuffs of a different kind seem to have spilled onto the virtual world. Ergo in various online platforms Kashmiri Pandits (KPs) and Kashmiri Muslims (KMs) slog it out over the most mundane of matters. It is a relationship that fluctuates betwixt love-hate to hate-hate and is replete with a jarring narrative. Online KPs think that they have been wronged by offline KMs while online KMs feel that offline KPs are belittling their suffering via their online trolls. It is very complicated and doesn’t get any moderate than that.

Due to huge snowfall in the hills leopards are on the prowl in the hinterland of Kashmir. Authorities say there could be about two dozen of them. Real hungry. Meantime small children and an occasional adult gets bitten around by bitches in the streets of Srinagar while the municipality blokes sit around rusty bukharis (furnaces) wondering why the government takes an eternity to release funds for salaries. Yes there is a direct correlation between wages and inertia.

Some Harvard dude is training cops how to be politely tough with people. January 26 is approaching. An old man is preparing notes on defiance.

© Sameer
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Snow Sparrows

We may have our iPhones alright but the first sprinkling of snow in Kashmir upends just about everything. Power transmission lines, roadside trees and civil administration cave in on each other and in that order. Ergo -- light, water and most means of communication disappear. The winter of 2011-12 is no exception. Local government was caught with its pants down, God knows doing what, in the season’s first – and subsequent – snowfalls.

Tourists from mainland India, with monkey caps fitted on them, like executors, can be seen wandering around Srinagar’s only fashionable lakeside road, Boulevard. Since the authorities have somehow managed to restore light for a few hours each day in hotels and houseboats, coupled with CM’s cut-my-light-also dramaturgy, things have begun to look touristy again. Picture postcards show snow, not the absence of glow in bulbs.

While it might still take some time to get the glow back in hamlets of south and north Kashmir, the general public has been asked to carry their cell-phone chargers in Pheran pockets, just in case. Great improvisers, as Kashmiris are, they put hospitals to good use this winter. In perpetual absence of ‘regular electricity’ cell phones were powered on by ‘essential services’ supply and car engines. Then people say we don’t ‘ideate’. Not fair.

Talking of fare -- no Kashmiri household can ring the snow in without the quintessential local fare -- Razma (kidney beans), called Razma dal and Kashur anchar (Kashmiri pickle) in our neck of woods. So when it snows outside, like it used to in good old days, there is no joy better than sitting around with your folks in the old kitchen, finishing off platefuls of rice with Razma and anchar (and fish, if you are in Sopore). Else a duck meal with spinach will do, if you live, let’s say in Sajad Lone’s little village.

Although Harisa is available in many towns of Kashmir these days, it is still a bit of novelty. The original inhabitants of old Srinagar are somewhat skilled in the craft. If you have a hovel or home along one of Srinagar’s notable bridges – Ael Kadal, Fateh kadal, Razeh kadal, Zeen kadal, you are likely to be teased in the bed by the near-seductive aroma of Harisa coming from one of the pinds. Nothing comes close. Milk in Kashmir, like our smutty politicians, is adulterated these days.

Besides taking potshots at the CM, who wears 70’s style English sweaters and hop scotches all over the valley, while people find it hard to walk to the local mosque in 10 inches of snow, the winter talk is invariably bound to throw up that moth-eaten annual question. Why is Mr G in Delhi while we shiver in the bitter chill? Well, may be, because he does not have a Hamam like some of us and unlike all of us he is not allowed to step out, around summer, the time of dangerous ideas.

Winters are exclusively for nader-mounjas. And brown-grey sparrows, pecking at yellow crumbs of rice, on the staircase of Makhdoom Sahib in Koh-e-Maran.

© Sameer

A town torched

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

Twitter: @sameerft

An inauspicious start

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 forever.

In a matter of few minutes he became the latest statistic in Kashmir's murky tale. Thankfully there was no electricity last night for the parents to see each other's eyes.

Why do the poor always die? While the 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. The less privileged, almost always, get killed. That is a given.

By habit politicians burn 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 folk, in a certain reassuring way so that their loss looks acceptable.

It is so awfully ironic that while alive no one wants to die and yet when you get shot in the head, 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 – snow falling on antlered hanguls. Intrigued that I am with its pastoral simplicity, I cut the blood part out.

© Sameer
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Filed under: Mini-blogs

2011: Kashmir's kick-ass year

The final dying moments of 2011. What an eventful year it has been! The Americans killed OBL, go-go-go Hollywood style and NATO got poor Qadafi cornered, like a desert rodent, only to be impaled by the loutish thugs from Misrata, who then put his body on display, similar to some medieval pillory.

The Arab spring, powered on by ordinary people, astounded everyone. Elsewhere ordinary people – the now-famous 99% -- got their act together and sat down -- in Zuccotti Park, NY, laying mental siege to the slimy edifices of capitalism. Occupy Wall Street was almost synchronous with the Euro zone stumble, something that is bearing on, as we put our stockings on to ring the new year in.

Kashmir stayed relatively peaceful in 2011. Early on in April, village folk lined up, pherans upon shoulders, Geelani Sahib’s boycott call notwithstanding, to elect their Sarpachs. Sociologists admitted at that time that human memory is forecasted to remain short-term and God knows Panchayat-ghars were notorious make-shift interrogation centers not so long ago.

One of Kashmir’s foremost lobbyists in the US, Dr Fai was caught this year feeding carrots to rabbits in Virginia, near DC. Caught up in heavy diplomatic cross-fire, the Kashmiri doc – who has since revealed the color of all rabbits – was America’s style of humiliating Pakistan which had – earlier in 2011 -- outted and thrown the CIA agent Raymond Davis in prison. The Pakistanis released Davis after he paid blood money; subsequently the Americans let Fai off on bail -- with an electronic contraption strapped to him. Bad blood remains.

In the run up to fall this year, there was ballyhoo in badam-orchads and Indian news papers. Glad that the first nine months of the year passed off relatively smooth, lit-lovers thought it fit enough to dust their Fab-India Kurtas and head off to Srinagar. Since Zabarwan makes stunning backdrop in autumn, it was time to sit back over 'yellow as quince' Kehwa and discuss freedom of expression with local men and women of letters. Alas no one took the bait.

There was murder in the Gupkar castle in 2011. TV channels went berserk, especially Arnoub, the oily haired Indian telly anchor who has successfully discovered the G-spot of Kashmiris and jerks them into a mad frenzy every time he begins mouth farting. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the prince of Denmark’s dad drinks a potion so potent that it immediately causes bubbling scabs on his body. Something similar happened. Some commission was set up and then winter set in.

The debate on the abrogation of AFSPA gathered momentum this year with both Omar and Umar on the same page for a change. Many weeks of hue and cry later, the debate drowned in liquor. Rather than promising something substantial – to be named after Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah – on the late Sher’s anniversary, Dr Farooq asked for opening of beer bars in Srinagar. Sheri-Kashmir must have turned in his grave. What a spirited wish on someone’s tomb?

They say life is about looking forward. As 2011 melds into 2012, one can only wish that there is more power in Kashmiri homes this winter. Let the flute and the lyre of peace replace the paranoia and bluster of those who administer us. And though we may seasonally be unretentive, one cannot burn memories.

Happy New Year, folks.

© Sameer

Mommy

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 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 sent 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 fathom. 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

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 wolves 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 gives birth to a baby. The unpalatable becomes palatable as north star appears. The unreal welds into the real. Three wise men show up. Snow falls. Lore is fact. Hearts hammer. A lone bell begins to tintinnabulate. People re-meet.

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.

Sameer

The return of Chilay-Kalan

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ants in pants of right-wing

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?

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

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