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
Friday, July 30, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The naked dervish
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
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
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Ideating on a Hartal morning
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
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
Thursday, July 22, 2010
The deer in my dream
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
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
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Striking it out!
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
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
Friday, July 09, 2010
News Hour by Arnoub Goswami
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.
[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.
Thursday, July 08, 2010
What next?
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
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
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Persecution -- what are you tonight?
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
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
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Red is my orchard
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
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
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Where are my fireflies?
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
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
Sunday, June 20, 2010
One more tear
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
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
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Home
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
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
Thursday, June 10, 2010
To my old bed
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
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
Monday, June 07, 2010
PM in Zabarwan
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
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
Monday, May 31, 2010
Why?
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
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
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Fig and the cartoon bird
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
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
Friday, May 21, 2010
Lest we forget
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 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.
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
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 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.
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
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Our Catch-22
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
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
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Liberty
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
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
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Stone Age
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
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
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