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

Being Dead

[Selçuk: Sep 20, 1985-Forever]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As Dickinson wrote in her insanity:

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

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

Who, vital only to Our Thought --
Such Presence bear away
In dying -- 'tis as if Our Souls
Absconded -- suddenly –
If they don’t allow cats, I hope they let Selçuk translate laughter in paradise.

Sameer

At the last gasp

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

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

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

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

What is my cure?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Sameer
Filed under: Mini-blogs

April sprinkles

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

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

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

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

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

© Sameer

Tulips and texts

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

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

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

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

Half an hour later.

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

An hour later.

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

© Sameer
Filed under: Mini-blogs

My fearless comrades

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sameer

The wisdom of our fathers

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

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

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

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

Philosophers. How they anatomize feelings? Super-sleuths.

© Sameer
Filed under: Mini-blogs

Where is the money, honey?

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

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

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

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

© Sameer
Filed under: Mini-blogs

Jailed for ever

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

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

© Sameer

Filed under: Mini-blogs

The end is nigh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy All Fools Day

Sameer

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

Wazwan: Our food fiesta

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

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

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

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

**

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

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

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

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

**

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

**

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

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

**

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

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

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

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


**

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

**

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

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

**

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

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

Sameer

Our street-fighting years

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sameer

To my amigo: Come back

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sameer

1846: Lest we forget

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sameer

Education on sale

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sameer

Romance in the hills

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

***

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


***

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

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


***

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sameer

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

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

Why so serious?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Must be the conflict.

Sameer

Lest we forget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Spring

Sameer

Peaceniking down the pike

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We perhaps need the imagination to locate the dots.

Sameer

Twenty Ten

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

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

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

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

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

Sameer

Yellow rice people

We have had fried rice culture in Kashmir much before the Chinese became rich. Taeher is rice, sprinkled with mustard oil and freckled with a lot of turmeric. Kashmiri women have forever distributed Taeher to the faithful, outside countless Astans [shrines/reliquaries] and graveyards. I remember running as fast as I could in my childhood to collect a handful of the sticky yellow rice, generously strewn with golden brown onions. There would be a million random reasons why Taeher was offered to neighbours, friends and bystanders: A birth in the family, someone getting a job or simply Dastageer Sahib’s day [Abdul Qadir Jilani, lovingly called Dastageer Sahib, lived from 1077-1166, was a Persian saint who never visited Kashmir and yet we adore him].

We are a very natural people. We have these large barns of rice that we devour in decent amounts. Rice is well stocked in every Kashmiri family by fall. Crops when mowed down are collated beautifully in small hut like formations. Thea-per. Our meal. Threshing completed and husking done, the rice grains, heart like, light, crisp and razzmatazz, are barreled. And then it may snow over and the ever-leaking Jawahar tunnel may close on us and the only airport in Kashmir may appear deserted, we don’t give a damn. As long as there are endless degchis [cauldrons] of Taeher.

[Makhdoom Sahib, courtyard corner]

On rough-hewn stone stairs leading to the mausoleum of Makhdoom Sahib, also called Sultan-ul-Arifeen [king of knowledge], people can be seen divvying up Taeher to the pilgrims. The trek to the top of southern side of Kastoor pind is about 90 stone stairs from the north [Bashi Darwaza end] and about 127 from south [Kathi Darwaza end]. Makhdoom Sahib, for the uninitiated, was born to a Rajput landlord family some 500 years ago in Tujar, near Sopore. They say no one goes hungry from the mystic’s abode in Srinagar. Cinnamon color sparrows can be seen feeding on Taeher crumbs along the flight of stairs.

We are a hugely exuberant people also. In the decade of 90s we suddenly rebelled. Like March of the penguins, we poured out on the alleys, in the countryside and in the hills. Hundred thousand, two-hundred thousand. Hollering loud. Singing songs of the revolution. Women would pack Taeher in polythene bags and throw it into the crowds. People partook of the offering, readily. Azadi [Freedom] hovered above, like tumble-weed clouds. We were told later that it was mass hallucination.

As 2009 fades, serious things continue to happen to us. We handle them with such lightness that evokes Chaplin. The conflict years have seared the collective consciousness of a generation and as we try to emerge out of it, the scars remain. Yet there is laughter shining in people’s eyes. I met this very chirpy boatman in Srinagar, this time around, paddling at the putrid waters of Dal, singing in atmospheric, whisper style Kashmiri. ‘What do you do Chacha, I asked, when there are strong currents in the lake?’ He raised his oar high in the air and held it in both his hands above his head. ‘Ya Peer Dastageer’, he replied in a soul-baring way.

We continue to be such simple Taeher people.

Sameer

A week in Srinagar

Text and images: Sameer

It was cold as St Andrews Day winds. From inside the plane the cops on the tarmac appeared pink-nosed. They had condensed necks. The paramilitary men, who quickly take positions along the aircraft as soon as it taxies, shriveled. The outside temperature was barely 6 degrees centigrade, which without any heating systems in Kashmir – barring Hamams that the well-heeled have -- is darn cold. As I deplaned, a light icy feeling of abandonment crossed me. There is always something bittersweet about home coming.

As a rule night comes early to Kashmir. I woke up to a nippy Eid morning. It gladdened me that Geelani was in town, and he, like me, had chosen home [read Sopore] for Eid. I mostly get to read his reactionary stuff in the online variants of Srinagar-based English dailies. Nothing beats the thrill of listening to him in person – all shrill and sound and fury. I know most of what he is says sounds dated and obsolete now but I love the finality with which he says it. Mirwaiz doesn’t even come close. Omar will take a lifetime to get there.

Our political leadership [separatist/mainstream], much on the lines of the Pakistani ruling class – and so unlike Indian politicians – are extremely well turned out. They dress smartly, like film stars. Geelani wears long chesterfield overcoats, paired with chequered mufflers, usually contrasted and a nice felt cap. His beard is nicely clipped and grey. Mirwaiz has a stunning collection of designer Pathani dresses and rug caps. Trendy eye-glasses often compliment his jaw line beard. Yasin, our homemade socialist, has a weakness for dark Kurta-pajamas. Embroidered shawls usually drape his frail frame. Not to be left behind most adjuncts and second rung leadership follows the fashion quotient.

And November welded into December and newspapers were suddenly replete with ads and stories in the run up to Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah’s birth anniversary. The Sheikh’s grandson – cover boy for December in the men’s fashion mag GQ – had promised government jobs and other fringe benefits to the natives on the occasion and everyone was eagerly expectant. In Srinagar, the old patriarch Sheikh smiled to his people from the life-size billboards patched across the city. Nearly three decades after his death, nothing much has changed.


[The patriarch laughs]

The night before Omar was to make the grand announcement, flanked by his party confreres [their highnesses, the ubiquitous duo Ali Sagar and Nasir Sogami], someone decided to attack a very fine gentleman, one who always wears a Pheran. Fazal Haq Quereshi, the original rebel and Al-Fatah founder in Kashmir [who made ‘underground’ a household term in the 1960’s] was hit/shot at/clubbed. I was sitting with a bunch of journalists amidst coffee and smoke when texts started to pour in. Suddenly everyone was animated. It was news-night.

On a balmy, cold morning NC workers were chart-wheeled to the tomb of Sheikh Abdullah at Hazratbal. The place looked like a Communist International, with the distinctly red NC flags strung on everything from iron grilling to lamp posts. There was much jostling. In other part of the city – Rajouri Kadal – protestors gathered outside the Mirwaiz manzil [old home of the Mirwaiz] to burn, yes you guessed it right, old bus tyres. Only God knows how many tyres have we burnt in the last two decades? Imagine the CO2 emission. In an era of intense global warming debate.


[Gangs assemble for Kani-jung]

I had Harisa with pals – at a stone's throw from the stone throwers. The intrepid Harisa-seller had very cleverly downed the greasy shutters and we had to literally slither into the mutton-fume-filled shop for a bite. Harisa is like Marijuana. The spices in the meat porridge come together [It tastes heaven] and explode in your head. You feel giddily replete. People speculate who shot Fazal Sahib. There are claps by the Dal bank, near the Sheikh’s concertina insulated mausoleum. Old city is sore. The contrasts stay. Have stayed forever.


[Concertina to protect the Sheikh's last abode]


[The dope den: Harisa shop]

Friends had invited Terra Naomi, an Alternative and rock star to perform in Srinagar. I sat through some of the ideation process. ‘Let’s print car bumper stickers, I opined’. She was to sing to draw the attention of world leaders towards the fast melting glaciers of Kashmir, a source of water to most of the sub-continent. Newspapers [Urdu as well as English] continued to call her YouTube sensation, irking me a great deal. An old man, with Chinese ear-muffs, clearly confused, was heard asking a passerby:

Ye Kahaz Gov you toop. [What’s you tube?]
He thought the government is asking people to switch over to tube-lights.

You killed the joke, tube light.

Sameer

The great climate debate

Even as the United Nations Climate Change Conference gets underway at Copenhagen, Climate Change Deniers are losing their sleep. Expectedly so. The well-heeled Climate Change Denier Industry – also called Global Warming Skeptics -- has a history of insomnia. One such influential band is the Global Climate Coalition, which represents ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, the American Petroleum Institute and several big motor manufacturers. In 1995 the GCC’s own panel of scientists turned renegade and stated that ‘the scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied.’ Expectedly GCC worked overtime to hush the matter up. They didn’t stop at that and spent millions to convince people that just the opposite was right.

The most credible body tasked by the UN to evaluate the risk of climate change is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The panel elucidates in its last major environment report that ‘it is more than 90% likely that humankind is largely responsible for the modern-day climate change’. Notwithstanding the fact that the Earth's climate has always changed naturally over a period of time the main cause of anthropogenic (human-made) climate change is burning fossil fuels – that produces carbon dioxide (CO2). The carbon dioxide in turn compliments the CO2 already present in the Earth's atmosphere, trapping more of the Sun's energy, thereby warming the Earth's crest. IPCC bases its assessment majorly on peer reviewed and published scientific literature.

Back in Copenhagen, much has been made out of the nearly 1200 limos and 100 private planes used to ferry the delegates. The very premise of this argument is silly. The expenses for transportation for more than 20,000 people coming in from all over the world, if compared to the consumption of a densely packed urban center of 140,000 people -- who aren't traveling -- is simple: 5% of those dignitaries from 120 nations will make use of the limos while 95% of the visiting dignitaries WON’T be riding in limos? And how many cars they use at the Climate Change Conference is going to be absolutely inconsequential in comparison to any final binding agreement they might make. This is painfully obvious.

***

The ongoing din (suddenly ratcheted up) is a very clever ploy employed by the Deniers to belittle any possible outcome at Copenhagen. They cherry-pick personal e-mails, misrepresent data and cut off graphs before their curves become inconvenient. There are special interest groups at work with marked financial interests who pay to misrepresent the scientific consensus on climate change. And they sound increasingly like the Tobacco lobby. In 2006, The Guardian reported:

‘There are clear similarities between the language used and the approaches adopted by Philip Morris and by the organisations funded by Exxon. The two lobbies use the same terms, which appear to have been invented by Philip Morris's consultants. "Junk science" meant peer-reviewed studies showing that smoking was linked to cancer and other diseases. "Sound science" meant studies sponsored by the tobacco industry suggesting that the link was inconclusive. Both lobbies recognized that their best chance of avoiding regulation was to challenge the scientific consensus. As a memo from the tobacco company Brown and Williamson noted, "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.’

When the evidence doesn’t fit, the skeptics go, the scientists edit the evidence. This is a typical anti-science stance. As a matter of fact scientists correct their results from time to time when new evidence comes to light. The recently hacked emails should be a case in point. With no interest in establishing the truth about global warming, the Deniers insist that one or two odd lines of personal correspondence are just enough to destroy the entire canon of climate science. That is a far cry from truth. The emails in question cannot be de-contextualized and presented as the Final Judgment. Here’s why:

One of the supposedly most damning quotes from the CRU Hack “scandal” is:

“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” Phil Jones

Before the laity is drowned in lengthy denunciation of the ‘rouge’ scientist’ and his gall to HIDE stuff to prove his point, let it be known that every profession evolves a specialized vocabulary. Two medicos exchanging correspondence will understand much more about what is being said and meant than someone else, even if that other person knows all of the vocabulary. Top reason why most scientists are spectacularly unimpressed with the emails’ leak. As a thrown in, Trick here means technique. (For example trick of the trade).

***

The scientific conclusion behind the climate change debate is very clear: What drives climate change is a variation in the earth’s orbit around the sun over thousands of years. In a normal warming cycle the sun heats the earth, the earth gets hotter. The ocean warms up resulting huge amounts of CO2. This creates a greenhouse effect that makes warming much more intense. That is why humankind’s release of CO2 is so perilous. We are out of step with the natural cycle.

Jeff Severinghaus, Professor of Geosciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California lucidly explains what the lag of CO2 behind temperature (a charge Deniers often invoke) in ice cores tell us about global warming.

‘At least three careful ice core studies have shown that CO2 starts to rise about 800 years (600-1000 years) after Antarctic temperature during glacial terminations. These terminations are pronounced warming periods that mark the ends of the ice ages that happen every 100,000 years or so. Does this prove that CO2 doesn't cause global warming? The answer is no. The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data. The 4200 years of warming make up about 5/6 of the total warming. So CO2 could have caused the last 5/6 of the warming, but could not have caused the first 1/6 of the warming.’

CO2 does not initiate the warmings, but acts as an amplifier. From model estimates, CO2 (along with other greenhouse gases CH4 and N2O) causes about half of the full glacial-to-interglacial warming. In modern industrial times, there is so much CO2 being independently emitted by human activity that the amplifying effect might simply overwhelm the other factors that otherwise cause the earth's temperature to fluctuate up or down.

There is talk now of imposition of a carbon tax to protect the environment by reducing emissions, helping to mitigate climate change. An alternative policy is a cap on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [Cap-and-trade]. It is an endeavor to cap emission levels of GHGs and issue/auction permits (grandfathering) freely to polluters. Market may be allowed for these emission permits so that polluters can trade some or all of their permits with others. Infact both cap-and-trade and carbon taxes are intended to give polluters a financial incentive to reduce their GHG emissions. The main difference between them is that carbon taxes provide price certainty on emissions, while a cap provides quantity certainty on emissions.

Interestingly there is no evidence till date that the European carbon price affected their trade competitiveness. It has been more than 18 years since the Swedes established a carbon tax on energy consumption. Whenever skeptics claim the tax kills growth, its proponents whip out its track record: since the tax was introduced, Swedish greenhouse gas emissions have dropped by 9%, while the economy has grown by a whopping 48% since then. So this tax doesn’t slow growth in the least. It is not regressive.

The carbon tax has to be made revenue-neutral (for every dollar raised by a tax, an equivalent dollar is returned to consumers) to be effective. To illustrate this, in 2005, America’s richest 20% spent an average of $3,182 on gasoline, or 3.6 times as much as the $882 spent by the poorest 20%. So, although the poorest 20% of Americans spend a greater percentage of their income on carbon, they pay less overall and thus would receive more money back than they paid in carbon taxes. Except for those industries the tax is intended to raise prices for anyway, the effect is relatively small. A revenue-neutral carbon tax minimizes the effect even further because overall tax burdens would not rise. Unaccounted for in these figures are the costs companies would incur to shift away from carbon-intensive inputs. These costs can be passed forward to consumers. Those extra costs, however, will create jobs in new industries aimed at carbon reductions.

Sameer