Ramadan is a particularly reflective time for Muslims around the globe. For more than 1.6 billion faithful it holds a deep spiritual dimension of compassion, consideration, forgiveness and obedience to the wishes of God. Kashmir is no different. It is atonement time in the valley also. When I was young, I remember vividly naats and daroods reverberating from the mosques around the Ramadan time. There was a beautiful melancholy and meaning to it -- simple folks, singing hymns to God at dawn.
So last night in a tiny nondescript hilly village called Gool in J&K there was some unpropitious exchange between the villagers and Indian soldiers. Media reports suggest that the BSF men objected to late night buzz around the mosque and roughed up the local Imam. Nothing much. Various monstrosities, from regular army to irregular task forces, have beaten up scores of Imams and devotees during those tough militancy years. This was surely no exception.
However the poor people of Gool decided to protest this bullying, these random acts of putting the locals through wringer and interfering in their religious duties. While they sure didn’t have Article 25 in the Constitution of India on their mind, which says that all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess and practise their religion, people nonetheless gathered to vent out their grievances.
We already know what happened next. The BSF went on rampage and a massacre unfolded. Innocent, unarmed and fasting village folk were mowed down by the foot soldiers of the world’s largest democracy. There are conflicting reports of eight to nine people dead. More than 42 people are injured. Why, one ponders, this excessive use of force? Why this mad bloodbath on hapless, simple, religious people? Is democracy a vampire that must drink blood to get an orgasm?
Oh, and there may be probes. By a retired or serving justice. That is a given. Shinde, India’s smiling home minister, may have already ordered one. God knows in the last 25 years not one man in uniform was touched by a bargepole. Since public memory is short-lived, by the time it is Eid, the authorities would estimate the people to more or less forget about it. Sad indeed it will be were we to obliterate from mind –- these adversities -- in our quest to justice.
I don’t know why we bother to wait for condemnation from Omar or his dad or Soz or some such. How does it even matter? Within the superstructure of occupation anything is acceptable: A boy plucked from his cowshed and killed in cold blood or an indiscriminate act of shooting on unarmed protestors. When Sonia ji throws an Iftar party with Dr Farooq and his son, Azad and Soz and Mufti and other compradors, falling over each other, sampling doner kebabs, the red sherbet won’t remind them of Gool’s blood. Rest assured.
© Sameer
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Wednesday, May 01, 2013
You are in China
The Chinese are here. They came quicker than you can say Jack Robinson. And there isn’t much you can do once the dragon skates its way into your lair. Newspapers say that they have camping gear with them and that there is little the Indians can do but watch them from a distance. Imagine an entire 14 Corps, who knows, perhaps 40,000 soldiers, forced to watch the ignominy of 30 odd Chinese troopers having baked beans with their little Xuéyuán, or officer cadet, in canned tins.
The politicians in Delhi are clueless. Nineteen kilometers is a long distance. If Kashmir University was where the Chinese are actually supposed to be, then Pampore is where they have gotten. That is Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO). Nineteen frigging kilometers deep into J&K and the netas are busy talking about coal shit. The CBI director, who looks like a broke pahalvan, was doing some abracadabra with TV chaps yesterday. No urgency about the incursion, it appears. Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and good with ketchup.
So as things stand we now have a situation in Kashmir. There is a fourth claimant. It used to be the Indians, Pakistanis and Kashmiris. Looks like the Chinese woke up a bit late to suggest: What about us? Is it going to go four-fold from tripartite? Omar Abdullah, the viscount of Gupkar, wants India to send a clear message to China. Anyhow the security and policy mandarins in Delhi are in no tearing hurry. They whisper, “but it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.”
Meanwhile at an altitude of 17,000 feet the fellows from PLA have erected a little signage in DBO. “You are in Chinese side,” it reads. Masters of irritating arithmetic, the idea is to provoke the Indians. Kashmiris meanwhile watch keenly, looking at the irony of it all. It must indeed be amusing to see the two creatures, in an eye-ball-to-eyeball situation trying to leave their scent marking and territorial claims on a landmass, which is clearly disputed in the first place.
As Chinese choppers violate the border with impunity and hideous Molosser dogs give some canine company to the PLA, the Indians continue to grow anger beards. There is an old Chinese saying ‘May you live in interesting times’. It appears that these indeed are interesting times, of course with a dash of fuckwittage thrown in!
Sameer
PS: Since Pakistan bashing is flavour of the season, must one reason that jingoism was perhaps manufactured to poison our humanity.
The politicians in Delhi are clueless. Nineteen kilometers is a long distance. If Kashmir University was where the Chinese are actually supposed to be, then Pampore is where they have gotten. That is Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO). Nineteen frigging kilometers deep into J&K and the netas are busy talking about coal shit. The CBI director, who looks like a broke pahalvan, was doing some abracadabra with TV chaps yesterday. No urgency about the incursion, it appears. Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and good with ketchup.
So as things stand we now have a situation in Kashmir. There is a fourth claimant. It used to be the Indians, Pakistanis and Kashmiris. Looks like the Chinese woke up a bit late to suggest: What about us? Is it going to go four-fold from tripartite? Omar Abdullah, the viscount of Gupkar, wants India to send a clear message to China. Anyhow the security and policy mandarins in Delhi are in no tearing hurry. They whisper, “but it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.”
Meanwhile at an altitude of 17,000 feet the fellows from PLA have erected a little signage in DBO. “You are in Chinese side,” it reads. Masters of irritating arithmetic, the idea is to provoke the Indians. Kashmiris meanwhile watch keenly, looking at the irony of it all. It must indeed be amusing to see the two creatures, in an eye-ball-to-eyeball situation trying to leave their scent marking and territorial claims on a landmass, which is clearly disputed in the first place.
As Chinese choppers violate the border with impunity and hideous Molosser dogs give some canine company to the PLA, the Indians continue to grow anger beards. There is an old Chinese saying ‘May you live in interesting times’. It appears that these indeed are interesting times, of course with a dash of fuckwittage thrown in!
Sameer
PS: Since Pakistan bashing is flavour of the season, must one reason that jingoism was perhaps manufactured to poison our humanity.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Barefoot in Bombay
It is Earth Day and I am in Bombay. I have just stepped out of the UTV boss Siddhartha Roy Kapoor’s office after a candid chat with the guy, better known as actress Vidya Balan’s husband. Outside everyone is honking with mad abandon, perhaps in a quaint Mumbaya way to demonstrate a total, tone-deaf support for environmental protection.
Bombay is quirky. Has always been. A small wayward girl, in soiled clothes, is hanging dangerously onto a scooter. The rider, of course, has no knowledge that a naughty child is making a temporary swing of his Bajaj scooter in the traffic jam. A migrant woman, sooty and stout, with a frown on her is stringing a clothesline on the sidewalk, as if it were her personal space. Autowallas ride barefeet. Bombay is fascinatingly free for all.
Karan Johar is sipping his Starbucks Refresher. From the way he is quaffing from the transparent tumbler one feels he is 14 and not 40. There is a mischievous grin in between his slurps. He is silver-tongued and his answers are savvy. His secretary tells me that they have ordered Biryani from some posh place and he would like me to have some. I refuse politely. Biryani, sort of, dulls your nondiscriminatory flair.
**
I flew in to Bombay from Bhopal. It was my fourth flight in two days. The city has a distinct Islamic heritage, notwithstanding the current BJP government. There are old-world minarets and domes everywhere you look. It used to be a state before it was taken by the Union of India in 1949. Till 1929 the Bhopal state was ruled by a series of Begums, the last of whom Jahan Begum Sultan reigned for 25 long years.
The last queen abdicated in favour of her son, Hamidullah Khan, who made a lovely little palace for his daughter atop a hill overlooking the tranquil Lake Bhopal. His girl Begum Abida Sultan called it Noor-us-Saba. It is now a heritage hotel. Amitabh Bachchan was staying in one of its suites. I had a room of my own, overlooking a lush well-manicured garden. Lake Bhopal sparkled if you looked a little ahead. The central cascade courtyard took you back in time to a charming Nawabi evening. I must confess I felt a tad vain.
.JPG)
**
I was a little panicky when I boarded the little ATR 72, a twin-engine turboprop Jet Konnect flight. Never before had I taken one of those mini-flying things, that six-bladed propeller flight which makes a constant buzzing sound. Thirty odd passengers, including some foreigners, took the early morning plane with me. It was an expectedly bumpy, knobby, choppy journey but the excitement to finally interview Amitabh Bachchan, one-on-one, in his vanity van cancelled out my fear.
After he completed his scenes and changed into a Reebok Track Suit in his van, I was ushered in with two caveats. No political questions and please finish it in 15 minutes flat. Only if he likes a journalist or his questions, does Mr Bachchan extend the allotted time given. I was a tad nervous but pretended not to. I clambered onto the luxury van. There he was: Tall, regal and elegant. The Amitabh Bachchan of our childhood. The man himself. Graceful as the willow-bough over the streamlet weeping.
Big B stood up to greet me. He has been in the industry for 45 long years. He is considered an icon. People jostle to get photographed with his wax statute at Madame Tussauds in London. The BBC calls him the greatest star of stage or screen in the millennium. I slumped into a sofa next to him. Shall we start Sir? I said to break the ice. By all means, my boy, he chorused in his legendary baritone voice.
The interview went on for an hour and fifteen minutes. The megastar must have liked me.
**
When I landed in Delhi the previous evening I knew it was going to be a sleepless few nights in India. Consequently my seven-hour stay in the city of djinns was spent awake. Delhi has become a chaotic city of weirdos and perverts where gang rapes are commonplace and loutish behaviour is not uncommon. How did Ghalib’s Dilli become so lowbred, I wondered? Aabid, my alter ego in Delhi, was tied up somewhere. Even in the familiar there can be wonder sometimes, I thought.
**
Three days later, after a grueling schedule, the sight of Dubai’s dazzling city lights from the plane’s windowpane had a tranquilizing effect. It is home, away from home. I’ve perhaps gotten used to its tidiness, the sparkle, the Joie de vivre. The only thing that bothers me is my editor breathing down my neck, demanding the Bollywood stories, one after the other.
Sameer
Bombay is quirky. Has always been. A small wayward girl, in soiled clothes, is hanging dangerously onto a scooter. The rider, of course, has no knowledge that a naughty child is making a temporary swing of his Bajaj scooter in the traffic jam. A migrant woman, sooty and stout, with a frown on her is stringing a clothesline on the sidewalk, as if it were her personal space. Autowallas ride barefeet. Bombay is fascinatingly free for all.
Karan Johar is sipping his Starbucks Refresher. From the way he is quaffing from the transparent tumbler one feels he is 14 and not 40. There is a mischievous grin in between his slurps. He is silver-tongued and his answers are savvy. His secretary tells me that they have ordered Biryani from some posh place and he would like me to have some. I refuse politely. Biryani, sort of, dulls your nondiscriminatory flair.
**
I flew in to Bombay from Bhopal. It was my fourth flight in two days. The city has a distinct Islamic heritage, notwithstanding the current BJP government. There are old-world minarets and domes everywhere you look. It used to be a state before it was taken by the Union of India in 1949. Till 1929 the Bhopal state was ruled by a series of Begums, the last of whom Jahan Begum Sultan reigned for 25 long years.
The last queen abdicated in favour of her son, Hamidullah Khan, who made a lovely little palace for his daughter atop a hill overlooking the tranquil Lake Bhopal. His girl Begum Abida Sultan called it Noor-us-Saba. It is now a heritage hotel. Amitabh Bachchan was staying in one of its suites. I had a room of my own, overlooking a lush well-manicured garden. Lake Bhopal sparkled if you looked a little ahead. The central cascade courtyard took you back in time to a charming Nawabi evening. I must confess I felt a tad vain.
.JPG)
**
I was a little panicky when I boarded the little ATR 72, a twin-engine turboprop Jet Konnect flight. Never before had I taken one of those mini-flying things, that six-bladed propeller flight which makes a constant buzzing sound. Thirty odd passengers, including some foreigners, took the early morning plane with me. It was an expectedly bumpy, knobby, choppy journey but the excitement to finally interview Amitabh Bachchan, one-on-one, in his vanity van cancelled out my fear.
After he completed his scenes and changed into a Reebok Track Suit in his van, I was ushered in with two caveats. No political questions and please finish it in 15 minutes flat. Only if he likes a journalist or his questions, does Mr Bachchan extend the allotted time given. I was a tad nervous but pretended not to. I clambered onto the luxury van. There he was: Tall, regal and elegant. The Amitabh Bachchan of our childhood. The man himself. Graceful as the willow-bough over the streamlet weeping.
Big B stood up to greet me. He has been in the industry for 45 long years. He is considered an icon. People jostle to get photographed with his wax statute at Madame Tussauds in London. The BBC calls him the greatest star of stage or screen in the millennium. I slumped into a sofa next to him. Shall we start Sir? I said to break the ice. By all means, my boy, he chorused in his legendary baritone voice.
The interview went on for an hour and fifteen minutes. The megastar must have liked me.
**
When I landed in Delhi the previous evening I knew it was going to be a sleepless few nights in India. Consequently my seven-hour stay in the city of djinns was spent awake. Delhi has become a chaotic city of weirdos and perverts where gang rapes are commonplace and loutish behaviour is not uncommon. How did Ghalib’s Dilli become so lowbred, I wondered? Aabid, my alter ego in Delhi, was tied up somewhere. Even in the familiar there can be wonder sometimes, I thought.
**
Three days later, after a grueling schedule, the sight of Dubai’s dazzling city lights from the plane’s windowpane had a tranquilizing effect. It is home, away from home. I’ve perhaps gotten used to its tidiness, the sparkle, the Joie de vivre. The only thing that bothers me is my editor breathing down my neck, demanding the Bollywood stories, one after the other.
Sameer
Tuesday, April 09, 2013
The Dream
I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do
~Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
Are dreams a peek into the unknown? I can’t really tell. I was lying sick in my bed on a beautiful April morning and I dreamt these slices of dreams, which stuck like barnacles to each other. There was this deer that walked upto me, from nowhere, pointing to its hind leg, suggesting something is amiss. Unsure of what to do I began to dream-talk to the deer, in a reassuring way, not certain if it understood my language. His actions suggested that the limb needed attention. Why have you come to me, I doodled in my dream? But when I patted the deer, lovingly, it smiled.
At that my dream broke. I looked into my phone, lying by the bedside, to see the time. A flurry of messages greeted me. ‘I had a minor accident this morning and hurt my leg. Nothing serious except for torn pants and some scratches on my knee,’ read one. I sat up like a befuddled Penguin wondering if there is a thing such as psychic dreaming? Are we connected in a telepathic way? Are dreams guardians of sleep, as Freud said? What is this bond, this union? Makes me reckon if Edgar Allan Poe, that great romantic, was always telling the truth when he said ‘All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.'
Sameer
~Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
Are dreams a peek into the unknown? I can’t really tell. I was lying sick in my bed on a beautiful April morning and I dreamt these slices of dreams, which stuck like barnacles to each other. There was this deer that walked upto me, from nowhere, pointing to its hind leg, suggesting something is amiss. Unsure of what to do I began to dream-talk to the deer, in a reassuring way, not certain if it understood my language. His actions suggested that the limb needed attention. Why have you come to me, I doodled in my dream? But when I patted the deer, lovingly, it smiled.
At that my dream broke. I looked into my phone, lying by the bedside, to see the time. A flurry of messages greeted me. ‘I had a minor accident this morning and hurt my leg. Nothing serious except for torn pants and some scratches on my knee,’ read one. I sat up like a befuddled Penguin wondering if there is a thing such as psychic dreaming? Are we connected in a telepathic way? Are dreams guardians of sleep, as Freud said? What is this bond, this union? Makes me reckon if Edgar Allan Poe, that great romantic, was always telling the truth when he said ‘All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.'
Sameer
Tuesday, March 05, 2013
Mayhem in March
The
completeness of night’s silence is absolute in Kashmir. Earlier today
another boy was put six feet under. Killed in cold blood in Baramulla by
the Indian army. Apparently a small crowd was protesting against the
hanging of Afzal Guru and driven by pure emotion, pelted a passing army
patrol with stones. Since Kashmiri blood costs next to nothing, the
armymen quickly got down, cocked their machine guns and sprayed the
protesting kids with bullets, instantly killing a kid – Tahir -- in his
20s. Nothing much. His friends, too shocked to react, smeared his blood
on their faces. Grown-ups wept. The army later issued a statement that
they didn’t shoot the boy. Period.
The fact is that the army had no need to issue the statement. No one can touch them with a bargepole – statement or no statement -- since every military-walla enjoys total immunity in Kashmir and hence feels free to pull the trigger without caring two hoots about who is the line of fire. Hundreds of thousands have perished in Kashmir over the years and no one was ever punished. There are probes ordered and then there are commissions which sit. Nothing much happens. A prompt little denial completes the travesty.
There are banana republics and anarchic countries in the world where shit happens. Those godforsaken lands make no claims, at least, to call themselves the longest or largest democracy in the world. They don’t have 70 jingoistic channels to dismiss their ugly deeds. I don’t understand, for the life of me, how India -- a constitutional democracy – can get away with this charade in Kashmir. Who on earth kills kids for being impulsive or spontaneous? Does a democracy plunge a poisoned bayonet in your face because you show your fist to it? Pray how can sentiments be ever policed?
And they dug a grave quickly. And everyone cried bitterly. And furious sloganeering happened. And the poor mother and sister were inconsolable. And the father was delirious and his friends won’t sleep tonight. Innocent little details. And there might be restrictions from tomorrow till further orders. And the security grid will think that it is over but it isn’t. It is never really over. Memories are like warehouses. The injustices accumulate. And scream solders onto another scream bringing about a clarity that is both beautiful and bold.
There was a flinty, ferrety frown on the CM's face in the assembly today. All media faithfully reported the 'broke down' speech, as if he were a run-down car. History, however, is a great judge. It will mention the gouts of blood on the streets of Baramulla even if the TV channels chose not to.
Sameer
1) http://www.indiaresists.com/
2) http://kafila.org/2013/03/06/
3) http://kashmirtimes.com/
4) http://www.thekashmirwalla.
5) http://www.authintmail.com/
The fact is that the army had no need to issue the statement. No one can touch them with a bargepole – statement or no statement -- since every military-walla enjoys total immunity in Kashmir and hence feels free to pull the trigger without caring two hoots about who is the line of fire. Hundreds of thousands have perished in Kashmir over the years and no one was ever punished. There are probes ordered and then there are commissions which sit. Nothing much happens. A prompt little denial completes the travesty.
There are banana republics and anarchic countries in the world where shit happens. Those godforsaken lands make no claims, at least, to call themselves the longest or largest democracy in the world. They don’t have 70 jingoistic channels to dismiss their ugly deeds. I don’t understand, for the life of me, how India -- a constitutional democracy – can get away with this charade in Kashmir. Who on earth kills kids for being impulsive or spontaneous? Does a democracy plunge a poisoned bayonet in your face because you show your fist to it? Pray how can sentiments be ever policed?
And they dug a grave quickly. And everyone cried bitterly. And furious sloganeering happened. And the poor mother and sister were inconsolable. And the father was delirious and his friends won’t sleep tonight. Innocent little details. And there might be restrictions from tomorrow till further orders. And the security grid will think that it is over but it isn’t. It is never really over. Memories are like warehouses. The injustices accumulate. And scream solders onto another scream bringing about a clarity that is both beautiful and bold.
There was a flinty, ferrety frown on the CM's face in the assembly today. All media faithfully reported the 'broke down' speech, as if he were a run-down car. History, however, is a great judge. It will mention the gouts of blood on the streets of Baramulla even if the TV channels chose not to.
Sameer
1) http://www.indiaresists.com/
2) http://kafila.org/2013/03/06/
3) http://kashmirtimes.com/
4) http://www.thekashmirwalla.
5) http://www.authintmail.com/
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Rendezvous with Ratan
This week Rajya Sahba MP GN Ratanpuri went to
meet Geelani Sahib at Malviya Nagar in New Delhi, where the padre of
Kashmir’s resistance has been confined to a solitary room by the mighty
government. On the first day the honorable MP wasn’t even allowed to
shake hands, leave alone meet up the ailing patriarch. Both Geelani
sahib (standing on the doorway) and Ratanpuri (standing a few feet away)
were not allowed to touch base. Like jinxed lovers.
After standing in the kotcha for a long time, and having made a dozen phone calls to several chaps in the higher echelons of power (being a lawmaker has its perks) Ratanpuri returned with eyes like disappointed lemons. Orders from the top, he was bluntly told, bar anyone from meeting the 83 year old. A feeble soul with a pacemaker, half a kidney, chronic asthma, cervical spondylosis and prostate problem is apparently a code orange level threat to the largest democracy in the solar system. What to do, Sir?
But Rantanpuri is not someone to give up so soon. After all he has been the editor of the quirky Urdu Daily Aftab in the heady 70s, not to mention his celebrity broadcaster days at Radio Kashmir, Srinagar. He persisted on Day two and finally, with a great degree of wriggling and contacts, managed to convince the paranoid security grid that he won’t really leak any of the radioactive substance that Geelani Sahib apparently emits.
He shall, he pledged, simply have a photograph taken with the old man on his new BlackBerry. Armed with a tablet (akin to the Ten Commandments…Thou Shalt not types) and under the watchful eye of the pot-bellied Delhi Police constables, the MP managed to sneak into the small room-cum-prison to meet up Geelani Sahib. Only to get an earful from the bed-ridden paterfamilias, who said what he always says without fear or favour -- with or without Haryanvi cops around -- that Kashmir’s right to self-determination is the final answer to all the questions.
Interestingly for the entire while that Ratanpuri spent by Geelani’s bedside, he was supposed to talk in Urdu only so that the eavesdropping Haryanvi constables could make sure that no nuclear secrets are changing hands (This being the trust deficit season just before the tourist season). Given the chaste Urdu that Geelani Sahib speaks and drawing from Ratanpuri’s long years at Radio Kashmir, where he spoke into the microphone like a velvet throat, one wonders how much did the poor cops finally pick up?
Did jargon like Haqe-Khud-i-Radyat, Aqwam-i-Mutehda, Bunyaadi Haq, Jazbe Ehsar, Qaabiz Afwaj slightly dull the heads of the special cell cops? We might not know their states of mind! However Ratanpuri, coming as he does from the pro-India camp, after updating his Facebook, revealed truthfully to the media, “Geelani Sahib was lying with pain in left side of his abdomen. With Ortho-collar around his neck he stood up to wish me.” Tells a lot about the grace and fortitude of India’s code orange level threat.
© Sameer
After standing in the kotcha for a long time, and having made a dozen phone calls to several chaps in the higher echelons of power (being a lawmaker has its perks) Ratanpuri returned with eyes like disappointed lemons. Orders from the top, he was bluntly told, bar anyone from meeting the 83 year old. A feeble soul with a pacemaker, half a kidney, chronic asthma, cervical spondylosis and prostate problem is apparently a code orange level threat to the largest democracy in the solar system. What to do, Sir?
But Rantanpuri is not someone to give up so soon. After all he has been the editor of the quirky Urdu Daily Aftab in the heady 70s, not to mention his celebrity broadcaster days at Radio Kashmir, Srinagar. He persisted on Day two and finally, with a great degree of wriggling and contacts, managed to convince the paranoid security grid that he won’t really leak any of the radioactive substance that Geelani Sahib apparently emits.
He shall, he pledged, simply have a photograph taken with the old man on his new BlackBerry. Armed with a tablet (akin to the Ten Commandments…Thou Shalt not types) and under the watchful eye of the pot-bellied Delhi Police constables, the MP managed to sneak into the small room-cum-prison to meet up Geelani Sahib. Only to get an earful from the bed-ridden paterfamilias, who said what he always says without fear or favour -- with or without Haryanvi cops around -- that Kashmir’s right to self-determination is the final answer to all the questions.
Pic Credits: GN Ratanpuri, Rajya Sabha MP
Interestingly for the entire while that Ratanpuri spent by Geelani’s bedside, he was supposed to talk in Urdu only so that the eavesdropping Haryanvi constables could make sure that no nuclear secrets are changing hands (This being the trust deficit season just before the tourist season). Given the chaste Urdu that Geelani Sahib speaks and drawing from Ratanpuri’s long years at Radio Kashmir, where he spoke into the microphone like a velvet throat, one wonders how much did the poor cops finally pick up?
Did jargon like Haqe-Khud-i-Radyat, Aqwam-i-Mutehda, Bunyaadi Haq, Jazbe Ehsar, Qaabiz Afwaj slightly dull the heads of the special cell cops? We might not know their states of mind! However Ratanpuri, coming as he does from the pro-India camp, after updating his Facebook, revealed truthfully to the media, “Geelani Sahib was lying with pain in left side of his abdomen. With Ortho-collar around his neck he stood up to wish me.” Tells a lot about the grace and fortitude of India’s code orange level threat.
© Sameer
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Substitutes
Last summer when I went to meet Geelani Sahib, the cops outside his home stopped me to check my credentials. I told them I am a journalist to which a polite Kashmir Police constable quipped, ‘Bub haz chu atyi, neero achev’ (Bub is there, please go in). Over noon-chai served in simple porcelain cups and a fresh Kashmiri bagel, I asked him pointedly about the futility of Hartals and why there could be no alternative to these shut-downs.
‘Any political struggle or revolution requires a fair degree of hardship. I know Hartals are leading us nowhere but what is the substitute. You give me one’, he responded. I tried quoting Gene Sharp, the Clausewitz of nonviolent warfare. Geelani Sahib nodded affably but the tiny smile on his lip suggested that he didn’t completely agree with me.
At an ideological level, India has lost the battle in Kashmir. The way Afzal's execution was carried out and the justification given did not cut ice with anyone in the valley. Frankly Kashmiris have evolved in the last two decades and we understand the falsehoods, media spin and associated crap. As a writer friend whispered, 'A 12 year old kid can see through the charade, the fraudulence of their arguments'. Curfews, clampdowns and curbs are the only skeletons left in the democracy's cupboard.
But what about Hartals? Are they regressive? Is this collective punishment? What is the substitute? I think the answer is not black and white. If Hartals had the power then something would have been achieved by now. However, Hartal, conceptually, does have some symbolic purpose but by employing it so often, we might end up wearing out the masses by making them talk their ears off. That is, Hartals shoud be used sparingly to retain their relevance.
Instead of Hartal, what we need is more introspection and more awareness about our issues. That is, encourage our generation next to seek education, travel (within and outside Kashmir) and write (blogs, poems, articles, satire, books) to facilitate this incredible quest for information and knowledge all over Kashmir. Once our population knows that the real power is in knowledge and scientific reasoning then you will see intelligent responses from people. Lets not cheer our kids into throwing stones, which are only met with bullets. Let them defeat the injustice through the power of ideas.
Books are the best way to bring awareness and it should be drilled into the collective psyche of Kashmiri boys and girls that they need to write about their life and aspirations. It does not need to be a history lesson. Kashmiri masses need to write on each and every subject, be it fiction, non-fiction, economy, sociology, psychology, religion, violence. There will be kids who would opt for medicine and engineering but lets cultivate a sense for liberal arts too. Unless and until Kashmir does not produce its own breed of bright journalists and writers, you can’t fight the onslaught of an uber-nationalistic Indian media. Kashmiris first need to write for each other and then globalise themselves.
Young people in Kashmir need to travel within Kashmir to understand and know what exists beyond Srinagar. Kashmir for Kashmiris remains divided in three territories: Srinagar, North Kashmir and South Kashmir. I understand that people can talk about Srinagar because it is the capital. However, what on God’s green earth does South Kashmir and North Kashmir mean? When did they become provinces of note within Kashmir? Where does North Kashmir begin and end? North of what? And the same for South Kashmir? The reality is that Kashmiris don’t know about themselves. South Kashmir and North Kashmir simply allows them to hide their ignorance.
So, lets fight oppression by educating ourselves and then educate others beyond Kashmir. It might be that we will not achieve anything substantive in the near term but at least we will not lose our youth to boredom and violence. And in the process, we might end up knowing ourselves better.
In the era of globalisation, we have to think global. We have to educate the world about Kashmir, its conflict and injustices. Lets have our cultural renaissance in a million different ways. Eight million people don't just define themselves by the same victimhood narrative. That makes us appear weak. We don’t need people to feel sorry for us. We require the global opinion to agree with us.
Hartals, I may venture to add, are too local to have any lasting impact. While we can pull our shutters down, every now and then, in protest, let us not stop in the tracks in our quest to excellence. The fact is that our ideological foe is formidable. The engagement has got to be multi-layered: Cultural, intellectual, philosophical and political. This is a long fight and there is no date for Azadi. Revolutions, by their nature, are infinite.
While there is no taking away from our deep and tremendous admiration for Geelani Sahib, and the beautiful cause he leads so courageously, I’d rather a kid draws a cartoon, lampooning the state, rather than see his coffin being taken away and his helpless mother, wringing her hands, holler: myaani potrov.
Let them cordon our streets and block the Internet. Our icons live in our hearts and minds and we shall strive to honour them with our pursuit of knowledge.
© Sameer
‘Any political struggle or revolution requires a fair degree of hardship. I know Hartals are leading us nowhere but what is the substitute. You give me one’, he responded. I tried quoting Gene Sharp, the Clausewitz of nonviolent warfare. Geelani Sahib nodded affably but the tiny smile on his lip suggested that he didn’t completely agree with me.
At an ideological level, India has lost the battle in Kashmir. The way Afzal's execution was carried out and the justification given did not cut ice with anyone in the valley. Frankly Kashmiris have evolved in the last two decades and we understand the falsehoods, media spin and associated crap. As a writer friend whispered, 'A 12 year old kid can see through the charade, the fraudulence of their arguments'. Curfews, clampdowns and curbs are the only skeletons left in the democracy's cupboard.
But what about Hartals? Are they regressive? Is this collective punishment? What is the substitute? I think the answer is not black and white. If Hartals had the power then something would have been achieved by now. However, Hartal, conceptually, does have some symbolic purpose but by employing it so often, we might end up wearing out the masses by making them talk their ears off. That is, Hartals shoud be used sparingly to retain their relevance.
Instead of Hartal, what we need is more introspection and more awareness about our issues. That is, encourage our generation next to seek education, travel (within and outside Kashmir) and write (blogs, poems, articles, satire, books) to facilitate this incredible quest for information and knowledge all over Kashmir. Once our population knows that the real power is in knowledge and scientific reasoning then you will see intelligent responses from people. Lets not cheer our kids into throwing stones, which are only met with bullets. Let them defeat the injustice through the power of ideas.
Books are the best way to bring awareness and it should be drilled into the collective psyche of Kashmiri boys and girls that they need to write about their life and aspirations. It does not need to be a history lesson. Kashmiri masses need to write on each and every subject, be it fiction, non-fiction, economy, sociology, psychology, religion, violence. There will be kids who would opt for medicine and engineering but lets cultivate a sense for liberal arts too. Unless and until Kashmir does not produce its own breed of bright journalists and writers, you can’t fight the onslaught of an uber-nationalistic Indian media. Kashmiris first need to write for each other and then globalise themselves.
Young people in Kashmir need to travel within Kashmir to understand and know what exists beyond Srinagar. Kashmir for Kashmiris remains divided in three territories: Srinagar, North Kashmir and South Kashmir. I understand that people can talk about Srinagar because it is the capital. However, what on God’s green earth does South Kashmir and North Kashmir mean? When did they become provinces of note within Kashmir? Where does North Kashmir begin and end? North of what? And the same for South Kashmir? The reality is that Kashmiris don’t know about themselves. South Kashmir and North Kashmir simply allows them to hide their ignorance.
So, lets fight oppression by educating ourselves and then educate others beyond Kashmir. It might be that we will not achieve anything substantive in the near term but at least we will not lose our youth to boredom and violence. And in the process, we might end up knowing ourselves better.
In the era of globalisation, we have to think global. We have to educate the world about Kashmir, its conflict and injustices. Lets have our cultural renaissance in a million different ways. Eight million people don't just define themselves by the same victimhood narrative. That makes us appear weak. We don’t need people to feel sorry for us. We require the global opinion to agree with us.
Hartals, I may venture to add, are too local to have any lasting impact. While we can pull our shutters down, every now and then, in protest, let us not stop in the tracks in our quest to excellence. The fact is that our ideological foe is formidable. The engagement has got to be multi-layered: Cultural, intellectual, philosophical and political. This is a long fight and there is no date for Azadi. Revolutions, by their nature, are infinite.
While there is no taking away from our deep and tremendous admiration for Geelani Sahib, and the beautiful cause he leads so courageously, I’d rather a kid draws a cartoon, lampooning the state, rather than see his coffin being taken away and his helpless mother, wringing her hands, holler: myaani potrov.
Let them cordon our streets and block the Internet. Our icons live in our hearts and minds and we shall strive to honour them with our pursuit of knowledge.
© Sameer
Sunday, February 10, 2013
We heard his neck break
So they hanged him after all. By the neck. Till he could exhale no more. “We heard his neck break,” one jail official told a journalist friend of mine. That was perhaps a mandatory detail. Exactly when the spinal cord snapped, that particular instant was essential for the collective conscience to be finally declared satisfied.
BJP notables soon declared victory on behalf of the hard Hindutva lobby. The soft part is taken care of by the grand old party itself. Rahul will soon smile those cute dimple smiles and a million tourists will fly into the valley in low-cost airplanes.
That there was no direct evidence in this case is no more an issue! That too has been settled now. How? Well, what is important: collective conscience of the middle class, judiciary, netas and media or the basic fundamental rights of an individual? Those for collective conscience say ‘Aye’, the nation asks, some douchebag TV host might groan; the ‘Ayes’ have it. Go figure.
So what does one make of the guy put to death on February 9, 2013? How did Afzal’s head become a souvenir as if it were some war trophy everyone wants to take home and show to kids? How did a regular guy who hummed poetry turn into the monster who had to be shoved into the democratic guillotine at all costs? As if solitary confinement for 12 years in a 16 ft by 12 ft death cell was not enough.
Why this secrecy, like burglars, one wonders? Why can Ghalib not kiss his dead father's face? There must be some civility even in death! Why can a family not be allowed to grieve? What does India want to prove: That by not letting his family visit him for one last time, Shinde becomes some tough nut? That, Sir, is a clear lack of dignity.
The answers are staring at us. There are times in the life of a nation when your defiant stare is perhaps a befitting response to the deception of what’s being thrown at you. In any case there is so much bad blood and dumb shit flying around that you don’t feel like to add to the chorus.
In 1989 lot of Kashmiri boys did things they never imagined they could do. Those who could not even climb a small tree scaled some of the tallest peaks in the world. No one knows precisely what happened all of a sudden -- back then. Who knows if it was a medley of reasons – spurred by a cataclysmic chain of events set off by another shocking hanging just five years back.
This February 11 would be 29 years since another Kashmiri, Maqbool Bhat was hanged in Tihar, where he lies buried. As if in a diabolical gesture Afzal was hanged just two days short of Bhat’s death anniv. His body too, in complete contravention of the universal statutory laws, was not returned to his folks. And it comes a full circle.
Promptly the press is muzzled and the clamp down begins.
Atoot Ang is not so Atoot after all if you have to hold it down by jackboots. This is state belligerence. Plain and simple. The fault lines are clear. The masks have slipped.
It is so utterly heartbreaking.
© Sameer
Follow @sameerft
BJP notables soon declared victory on behalf of the hard Hindutva lobby. The soft part is taken care of by the grand old party itself. Rahul will soon smile those cute dimple smiles and a million tourists will fly into the valley in low-cost airplanes.
That there was no direct evidence in this case is no more an issue! That too has been settled now. How? Well, what is important: collective conscience of the middle class, judiciary, netas and media or the basic fundamental rights of an individual? Those for collective conscience say ‘Aye’, the nation asks, some douchebag TV host might groan; the ‘Ayes’ have it. Go figure.
So what does one make of the guy put to death on February 9, 2013? How did Afzal’s head become a souvenir as if it were some war trophy everyone wants to take home and show to kids? How did a regular guy who hummed poetry turn into the monster who had to be shoved into the democratic guillotine at all costs? As if solitary confinement for 12 years in a 16 ft by 12 ft death cell was not enough.
Why this secrecy, like burglars, one wonders? Why can Ghalib not kiss his dead father's face? There must be some civility even in death! Why can a family not be allowed to grieve? What does India want to prove: That by not letting his family visit him for one last time, Shinde becomes some tough nut? That, Sir, is a clear lack of dignity.
The answers are staring at us. There are times in the life of a nation when your defiant stare is perhaps a befitting response to the deception of what’s being thrown at you. In any case there is so much bad blood and dumb shit flying around that you don’t feel like to add to the chorus.
In 1989 lot of Kashmiri boys did things they never imagined they could do. Those who could not even climb a small tree scaled some of the tallest peaks in the world. No one knows precisely what happened all of a sudden -- back then. Who knows if it was a medley of reasons – spurred by a cataclysmic chain of events set off by another shocking hanging just five years back.
This February 11 would be 29 years since another Kashmiri, Maqbool Bhat was hanged in Tihar, where he lies buried. As if in a diabolical gesture Afzal was hanged just two days short of Bhat’s death anniv. His body too, in complete contravention of the universal statutory laws, was not returned to his folks. And it comes a full circle.
Promptly the press is muzzled and the clamp down begins.
Atoot Ang is not so Atoot after all if you have to hold it down by jackboots. This is state belligerence. Plain and simple. The fault lines are clear. The masks have slipped.
It is so utterly heartbreaking.
© Sameer
Follow @sameerft
Sunday, February 03, 2013
Rock the party
Buoyed by the huge publicity generated by the all-girl Kashmiri rock band, thanks largely to some anonymous online trolls, several grandmothers have gotten together in down-town Srinagar and adjoining areas to form a rock band of their own. The elderly women are going to showcase their special talent, doing Sufi versions of chakir, wanwun and other musical genres, to re-tell old wives tales and lovelorn songs of Yusuf-Zulaikha. It will be a modern and progressive band, mind you, with Sare' Apa as the lead guitarist, Zoon boeb at bass guitar. Hajra, who sells fish on Amda Kadal as drummer and Nabla at the keyboard. Progressive rock, Zaed bal style.
The grannies struck upon the idea to get into rock and roll because Hajra heard some ‘modern’ folk talk about the outrage caused by online threats to Kashmir’s ‘first’ all-girl band. How dare someone object to our modern sensibilities? Sare' Apa remembered that we used to have someone called Lal Ded who sang in the 14th century and then another songster Habba Khatoon, who penned exuberant lyrics in the 16th century. How come a few high school girls singing became an exposition to call us illiberal? The grand mufti, a government flunky, represents his posh cottage, and not the attitudes and beliefs of Kashmir.
While the old dyeds’ from down-town get their lyrics sorted out and a full fan page to them, with likes and comments to the boot, here is a little ode to the twisted logic: Expression indeed is sacred and music perhaps is the outburst of soul but this entire hullabaloo in our little vale about a high school rock band and dudes throwing fashionable jargon like misogyny around -- amounts to zilch. It somehow looks odd when you talk about freedom of expression for the rock band and deny the same expression to people who want to take a simple procession on Ashura every year. What is so sacred about bass guitars and so vile about allowing a students union in the Kashmir University?
From the way TV anchors are mentally masturbating the nation and by extension some Kashmiri homes (with access to cable TV) it looks like hippie counterculture has spread out from San Francisco into the bylanes of Shahri-Khas and is here to stay. Sure English-knowing Facebookers are offended, TV anchors are terribly upset, Twitter crowd is frothing at their mouths while the honorable CM is equally piqued. Pity no one was outraged when Ghulam Hassan Sofi, a musical icon of ours, died a few years back in abject poverty. Chana'e bar tal ravam racha'e aawaaz vach'e nou.
Jeans patloon, paanch-cappuccino-lavo-jaldi and torrent-downloaded music sure makes you a Koshur-angrez but what would perhaps help is an understanding of your own cultural ethos. Even a teeny weeny bit! Remember much before bored brats from Srinagar and elsewhere would make a quick dash to Gulmarg to celebrate New Year over Ho Hey by The Lumineers, we had a rich tradition of female singers like Naseem Akhtar, Raj Begum, Shameema Dev, Kailash Mehra, Jahan Ara Janbaz and Zoon Begum in Kashmir. Yes we squandered that tradition only to appear more phony and fake!
Sure the spirituality of Mehjoor, Abdul Ahad Azad, Wahab Khar, Rasool Mir and Rajab Hamid is uncool. Their Satanic Majesties Request by the Rolling Stones is cool. Ranbir Kapoor eating wazwan is uber-cool. Psychedelic and riff laden heavy rock is modern. All-girls bands are wow and ‘absolutely rocking’ if you throw in the word Sufi. So what we need is more and more Kashmiris -- boys, girls and grandmothers -- crooning the Five Finger Death Punch and Linkin Park's Burn It Down, preferably by the Zabarwan. And if you can't text message your friends to come for the concert because such communication is banned, try Facebook pages. Outrage is á la mode!
PS: All suggestions for naming the bujji-band from down-town are welcome!
© Sameer
Follow @sameerft
Monday, January 21, 2013
Blood on the Bridge
It was cold as stone in Srinagar. January is a numbing period in the hills. Kids often get frostbites. Many grown-up men and women had gotten mild goose bumps the previous night when a balding man in big, thick-glasses declared — with a diabolical grin — that he will let go off some invisible cards from his hand if things don’t go his way. No one could anticipate what was to come but the unmistakable wickedness in the voice, broadcast at 7:30 pm on Radio Kashmir, Srinagar was not lost to many.
Just like Rome sent Pontius Pilatus to tame the outpost of Judea, Jagmohan came with a premeditated mindset to put the fear of God in Kashmiris. A depilated bureaucrat, he was infamous for being Sanjay Gandhi’s sidekick, who threw Muslims out of Delhi’s Turkman Gate. That was during India’s Emergency. In his second innings as Governor, he was dispatched to the valley, all dusted and deodorized, to tame the great unwashed, the rank and file, in short anyone who attempted to look human in that January chill.
Before he got an excuse to throw his invisible cards on the floor, Governor Jagmohan decided to bare his fangs. Suddenly the administration started to come down hard on people. A new winter curse called crackdown was unleashed upon unsuspecting folks. The rude intrusion into homes, where women were sometimes violently pushed around and young men walloped for no reason, shocked Kashmiris to no end. It was the beginning of brutalization of an entire population. The poor men, who marched to Gawkadal that afternoon, protesting against house-to-house searches in Chota Bazar, had no idea what was to befall them.
Rearing its ugly face by imposing harsh curfew for weeks at a stretch, the administration meant to send a strong message to Kashmiris. The official machinery wanted to bust the popular sentiment by resorting to completely undemocratic, arbitrary and harsh measures. It only ended in hardening of stances and a churn of a different kind. Jagmohan became ‘Jage-Khor’, an ugly cartoonish caricature in the collective conscience of the citizenry. Of course he couldn’t break the spirit, forget about taming it.
While mini-massacres continued to take place at regular intervals all over the valley, what astonished many was the degree of obfuscation by India. No one in New Delhi’s intelligentsia ever uttered a word about Gawkadal. But for notable exceptions, the national press relegated the incident to inside pages. There appeared a method to suppress memories and remembrance. In the absence of any proper reflection, naturally there was no cognitive closure either. The images and recaps kept coming back. Willfully, people may attempt to move on with life, but flashbacks are often involuntary.
The truth is that no one was ever punished for the Gawkadal massacre. No enquiry was ever conducted. Twenty-three years on, no one has been charged. No CRPF walla, none of the authorities who issued the orders, not Allah Baksh (who passed away recently) and of course, not Jagmohan, the venal old man, who must be whiling his time away in some sarkari library in Delhi, content at the age of 87 to initiate a policy that sent 16-year olds to graves.
Two decades later Gawkadal stands as a silent testament to the depravation of Kashmir’s brutal oppression.
http://www.kashmirlife.net/blood-on-the-bridge/
Just like Rome sent Pontius Pilatus to tame the outpost of Judea, Jagmohan came with a premeditated mindset to put the fear of God in Kashmiris. A depilated bureaucrat, he was infamous for being Sanjay Gandhi’s sidekick, who threw Muslims out of Delhi’s Turkman Gate. That was during India’s Emergency. In his second innings as Governor, he was dispatched to the valley, all dusted and deodorized, to tame the great unwashed, the rank and file, in short anyone who attempted to look human in that January chill.
Before he got an excuse to throw his invisible cards on the floor, Governor Jagmohan decided to bare his fangs. Suddenly the administration started to come down hard on people. A new winter curse called crackdown was unleashed upon unsuspecting folks. The rude intrusion into homes, where women were sometimes violently pushed around and young men walloped for no reason, shocked Kashmiris to no end. It was the beginning of brutalization of an entire population. The poor men, who marched to Gawkadal that afternoon, protesting against house-to-house searches in Chota Bazar, had no idea what was to befall them.
Rearing its ugly face by imposing harsh curfew for weeks at a stretch, the administration meant to send a strong message to Kashmiris. The official machinery wanted to bust the popular sentiment by resorting to completely undemocratic, arbitrary and harsh measures. It only ended in hardening of stances and a churn of a different kind. Jagmohan became ‘Jage-Khor’, an ugly cartoonish caricature in the collective conscience of the citizenry. Of course he couldn’t break the spirit, forget about taming it.
While mini-massacres continued to take place at regular intervals all over the valley, what astonished many was the degree of obfuscation by India. No one in New Delhi’s intelligentsia ever uttered a word about Gawkadal. But for notable exceptions, the national press relegated the incident to inside pages. There appeared a method to suppress memories and remembrance. In the absence of any proper reflection, naturally there was no cognitive closure either. The images and recaps kept coming back. Willfully, people may attempt to move on with life, but flashbacks are often involuntary.
The truth is that no one was ever punished for the Gawkadal massacre. No enquiry was ever conducted. Twenty-three years on, no one has been charged. No CRPF walla, none of the authorities who issued the orders, not Allah Baksh (who passed away recently) and of course, not Jagmohan, the venal old man, who must be whiling his time away in some sarkari library in Delhi, content at the age of 87 to initiate a policy that sent 16-year olds to graves.
Two decades later Gawkadal stands as a silent testament to the depravation of Kashmir’s brutal oppression.
http://www.kashmirlife.net/blood-on-the-bridge/
Monday, December 31, 2012
The year that was
The world didn’t end in 2012. Silly Mayans. Although panic gripped Kashmir in December following gossip that cosmic rays from Mars will enter Earth, perhaps somewhere between Gupkar and Dalgate, leading to harmful effects on mobile users. God knows who spins these old wives tales in our neck of woods but they always travel thick and fast. Such was the alacrity of the rumour that the office of Kashmir’s divisional commissioner had to step in, late at night, to allay any fears of mass paranoia. Behavioral scientists later attributed it to an early winter condition called ‘afvah-mongeritis’, a hallucinatory condition, brought about by Kangris. It goes away in a few days.
Displaying our frenzilicious appetite for all things horrible, we got into a Shiite-Sunni Twenty-20 in 2012. Both Shias and Sunnis thought, in their infinite wisdom, that the state was in league with the ‘other’ community. There was such vile posturing. Flabbergasted, the administration quickly imposed curfew in nine police station areas in the city. The university postponed its exams and the usual blame game begun. All opinion polls suggested, what Geelani Saab had prophesized when the first stone was flung: handiwork of the agencies. It is a time-tested Kashmiri euphemism for our own ‘imbecility’.
In the year bygone cooking gas became a rare commodity. Serpentine queues to fetch a gas capsule became routine in Kashmir. With an acute shortage of more than 6000 LPG cylinders per day, many rued the day they dismantled their mud hearths, a central feature in all Kashmiri homes, not too long ago. Alas the advent of cell-phones and disposable incomes dulled many a heads in Srinagar and other semi-urban places and people started doing away with good old fireplaces. There was some romanticism in saying ‘hearth and home’. Not any more. Now keep standing in the damn queue while it snows on you.
The beautiful shrine of Dastageer Saab went up in flames one fine morning last year. The 200-year-old sanctuary, located at Khanyar in old city, was entirely made of wood. The desecration came as a rude shock. How could someone put a match to our heritage? Accident or vandalism – the jury is still out but what an utter disgrace that our cultural history is being torpedoed right in front of our eyes. No one might ever know who committed this crime but a spiritual watering hole to hundreds of thousands cannot be extirpated by such acts of hate. Dastageer continues to live on in the hearts of countless.
Towards the year-end the Hurriyat (Mild) got busy, packing their bags for Pakistan. They broke bread with everyone -- from Bilawal’s dad to Imran Khan and returned home the other day to declare the trip a huge success. There is a speculation – and it would only be a stab in dark – that the visit had the Indian blessing. God knows what’s cooking behind the scenes? At the Institute of Strategic Studies of Islamabad, Pakistan’s top think-tank funded by the foreign office, Prof Abdul Ghani Bhat, clad in a funny blue cape, was at his melodramatic best. He told a serious audience that even if we have to cut each others noses, it should be done in such a fashion that we should look better than before. Prof Shireen Mazari, editor of The Nation and one of Pakistan’s top strategists, had a confused look for days afterwards, I am told.
And for all you news-floozies out there, a new luxe hotel has come up in Gulmarg. The Khyber: Himalayan Resort and Spa, owned by the Khyber Group of Industries came up at a whopping Rs 120 crores. JHM, a US Hotel group, which owns the Crown Plaza, Hyatt Regency, Marriot, Renaissance hotels across the globe, is a partner of sorts in the venture. The Khyber Group belongs to the Trumboos of Sopore, our erstwhile next-door neighbors. The price for a room in their uber-luxury hotel oscillates between Rs 14,500 to 1,05000 per night.
On that rather upscale note, wishing you a happy New Year.
PS: Snow, pherans, old kotchas, familiar laughter, naar kangir, naedir monja, old friends, vaan penji. Simple pleasures in life are still priceless.
© Sameer
Follow @sameerft
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Remembering BB
Five years since Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. The absence of one the sub-continent’s most charismatic, controversial and captivating leaders is like sky, spread over everything. Her tainted hubby who went on to become Pakistan’s Prez has old foes breathing down his neck. The same men who bumped off Benazir continue to run amok, killing innocent bystanders. Her son, the baby-faced, shrill-sounding Bilawal is set to be anointed later today. As if leadership were a heirloom. Nothing ever changes in Pakistan!
At the end of one of her interviews – way back in late 80’s – Benazir was asked if the popular supposition was correct: that if and when she supplanted General Zia-ul-Haq [Pakistan’s ex-military dictator], she would become the first woman to rule a Muslim country. "Quite true," she said and then remembered that a Queen Raziyya [Raziyya Sultan] had ruled the Delhi sultanate in the 13th century.
I checked the reference. According to history, the queen had been "wise, just and generous" and endowed with all the qualities befitting a king. "But she was not born of the right sex, and so, in the estimation of men, all these virtues were worthless."
Eventually men had murdered her.
I hope Mohtarma rests in eternal peace amidst the mango fragrance of the beautiful Pakistan countryside.
Sameer
Updated, Dec 27, 2012
Sunday, December 09, 2012
We, the 93 per cent
In many's looks,
the false heart's history is writ in moods,
and frowns, and wrinkles strange
~Sonnet 93, William Shakespeare
English playwright and poet (1564-1616)
Sonnet 93 is one of Shakespeare's famed sonnets addressed to a mysterious fair youth. Our local fair youth brigade -- read Messrs Omar and dad Farooq Abdullah – are currently blushing at the 93 percent polling recorded in the state for the four Legislative Council (LC) seats held under the rural local bodies’ quota. Despite prevailing threats from some quarters and a general atmosphere of intimidation, it appears that the Panchs overwhelmingly decided to get in a democratic queue. The icing on the cake was the four by four victory lap by the NC-Congress combine.
Notably the election to these seats was last held in the 1970s. No wonder the intelligence apparatus and the security grid in the valley are happy like clams in butter sauce, congratulating each other. It is after a long, long hiatus that the government is in a position to fill up the LC seats under the Panchayat quota. Apprehensions that some members might boycott the polls after the recent killing of five Panchs and Sarpanchs by unknown gunmen, and the late summer calls for the headmen to resign, have apparently fallen through. The belief in democratic process, it appears, just like the seasonal Harisa, has returned to Kashmir.
The problem is not with so many council folk turning up in large numbers to vote. The image being carefully cultivated, and the one that immediately goes out, is that elections – of any stripe – are in a circuitous way some tacit approval of India’s rule in Kashmir. The fact that the Panchayat polls are being held like a direct contest between the National Conference-Congress coalition (notwithstanding the gibberish Sheikh Nazir and Mustafa Kamal keep regurgating) and the Peoples DemocraticParty (PDP) is not lost to many. The rightwing BJP contested all four seats.
In the meantime, Hurriyet Conference, headed by Syed Ali Geelani called for a boycott of the polls. Not because in his mid-80s, the old man takes some perverse pleasure in making these appeals. There is perhaps a larger point he is trying to make. Elections, in a disputed geography like Kashmir, seldom solve anything. They only lead to an illusion in a bubble. Alas false hope is a terrible thing. Rest assured, the 93 percent turn-over and all the associated sound of progress shall soon be sold as signs of creeping normalcy.
Pertinently everyone wants to give peace a chance but the unraveling of any such initiative requires a political will (not necessarily the will-o'-the-wisp of Prof Gani Bhat and co). If anything these elections seem to be obfuscating, even if temporarily, the dominant narrative in Kashmir. While it is quite convenient to hail democracy and beat poll drums at SKICC, making sure that dissenting voices are effectively locked up in Hyderpora – isn’t exactly fair game. The truth is that the current exercise is simply a part of the existing structure of power in Kashmir and bears no relation to the aspirations of people.
For three decades the polls to the Panchayat quota were not held in Kashmir. Suddenly, as if to prove a point, feelers went out. Campaigning began in all earnestness. Pro-India parties started the usual election-time bickering. And on December 6, the results were announced with much fanfare. Self-congratulation climaxed while everything evaporated in the background. A day after the elections, New Delhi based newspapers were quick to note that the contest in Kashmir assumes significance as it is being considered the litmus test for the 2014 assembly elections.
The game, it appears, has just begun. God knows how much does a plateful of Harisa cost at Aali Kadal these days!
© Sameer
Follow @sameerft
the false heart's history is writ in moods,
and frowns, and wrinkles strange
~Sonnet 93, William Shakespeare
English playwright and poet (1564-1616)
Sonnet 93 is one of Shakespeare's famed sonnets addressed to a mysterious fair youth. Our local fair youth brigade -- read Messrs Omar and dad Farooq Abdullah – are currently blushing at the 93 percent polling recorded in the state for the four Legislative Council (LC) seats held under the rural local bodies’ quota. Despite prevailing threats from some quarters and a general atmosphere of intimidation, it appears that the Panchs overwhelmingly decided to get in a democratic queue. The icing on the cake was the four by four victory lap by the NC-Congress combine.
Notably the election to these seats was last held in the 1970s. No wonder the intelligence apparatus and the security grid in the valley are happy like clams in butter sauce, congratulating each other. It is after a long, long hiatus that the government is in a position to fill up the LC seats under the Panchayat quota. Apprehensions that some members might boycott the polls after the recent killing of five Panchs and Sarpanchs by unknown gunmen, and the late summer calls for the headmen to resign, have apparently fallen through. The belief in democratic process, it appears, just like the seasonal Harisa, has returned to Kashmir.
The problem is not with so many council folk turning up in large numbers to vote. The image being carefully cultivated, and the one that immediately goes out, is that elections – of any stripe – are in a circuitous way some tacit approval of India’s rule in Kashmir. The fact that the Panchayat polls are being held like a direct contest between the National Conference-Congress coalition (notwithstanding the gibberish Sheikh Nazir and Mustafa Kamal keep regurgating) and the Peoples DemocraticParty (PDP) is not lost to many. The rightwing BJP contested all four seats.
In the meantime, Hurriyet Conference, headed by Syed Ali Geelani called for a boycott of the polls. Not because in his mid-80s, the old man takes some perverse pleasure in making these appeals. There is perhaps a larger point he is trying to make. Elections, in a disputed geography like Kashmir, seldom solve anything. They only lead to an illusion in a bubble. Alas false hope is a terrible thing. Rest assured, the 93 percent turn-over and all the associated sound of progress shall soon be sold as signs of creeping normalcy.
Pertinently everyone wants to give peace a chance but the unraveling of any such initiative requires a political will (not necessarily the will-o'-the-wisp of Prof Gani Bhat and co). If anything these elections seem to be obfuscating, even if temporarily, the dominant narrative in Kashmir. While it is quite convenient to hail democracy and beat poll drums at SKICC, making sure that dissenting voices are effectively locked up in Hyderpora – isn’t exactly fair game. The truth is that the current exercise is simply a part of the existing structure of power in Kashmir and bears no relation to the aspirations of people.
For three decades the polls to the Panchayat quota were not held in Kashmir. Suddenly, as if to prove a point, feelers went out. Campaigning began in all earnestness. Pro-India parties started the usual election-time bickering. And on December 6, the results were announced with much fanfare. Self-congratulation climaxed while everything evaporated in the background. A day after the elections, New Delhi based newspapers were quick to note that the contest in Kashmir assumes significance as it is being considered the litmus test for the 2014 assembly elections.
The game, it appears, has just begun. God knows how much does a plateful of Harisa cost at Aali Kadal these days!
© Sameer
Follow @sameerft
Thursday, November 29, 2012
The Fight
It is the onset of winters and we have gotten busy, I am told, slugging it out to decide which one the two -- Sunnis or Shiites -- has a better Muslim soul. And the faithful can go bonkers in trying to prove that their belief has some divine sanction while 'otherising' the godawful deviant. Unmind of the ludicrousness taking place in down town Srinagar, heavens opened up last night and it rained. Nature has its own ways and means of pissing at human witlessness.
How I love the sound of ceaseless tapping made by a million tiny rain globs! Like some ancient aqua dance. Nature is an orchestra conductor with a magical wand-in-hand. An unseen choirmaster to whom the clouds bobble. Winds blow. Plants prance. Like tiny teardrops, which are beautiful, glistening and innocent, rains come.
I like to walk in rain. When it rains on humans it cleans up many dusty layers and cuts through the cobwebs. I imagine old chimneys happily piping up smoke in a distance. I think about a flock of swallows fluttering somewhere in a frenzy, caught up in the rain, looking for some dry perch.
When it is dark and cloudy outside, I’m oft transfixed by lightning -- the ferocious signature of God on his palimpsest. In red ink. Like a furious school teacher, signing a poor marks sheet. In red. Cross at us for some archaic reason. Don’t we do our home work well enough?
It is end November and it is raining. On our new found bitterness. On stones lying about in Zadibal. On Sunni mosques. On the homes of the Hurriyet. On Taj's ill-gotten farms. On half-constructed aspirations. On bunkers with ugly slits in them. On Shaheed marguzars. On bare cherry trees.
It is raining. In-to our old miseries. In large puddles. In the begging bowls of the homeless who have nowhere to go. In desolate alleys. In the hollow of our prayers. In the crevices of our history.
Early winter rain. How genial.
© Sameer
Follow @sameerft
How I love the sound of ceaseless tapping made by a million tiny rain globs! Like some ancient aqua dance. Nature is an orchestra conductor with a magical wand-in-hand. An unseen choirmaster to whom the clouds bobble. Winds blow. Plants prance. Like tiny teardrops, which are beautiful, glistening and innocent, rains come.
I like to walk in rain. When it rains on humans it cleans up many dusty layers and cuts through the cobwebs. I imagine old chimneys happily piping up smoke in a distance. I think about a flock of swallows fluttering somewhere in a frenzy, caught up in the rain, looking for some dry perch.
When it is dark and cloudy outside, I’m oft transfixed by lightning -- the ferocious signature of God on his palimpsest. In red ink. Like a furious school teacher, signing a poor marks sheet. In red. Cross at us for some archaic reason. Don’t we do our home work well enough?
It is end November and it is raining. On our new found bitterness. On stones lying about in Zadibal. On Sunni mosques. On the homes of the Hurriyet. On Taj's ill-gotten farms. On half-constructed aspirations. On bunkers with ugly slits in them. On Shaheed marguzars. On bare cherry trees.
It is raining. In-to our old miseries. In large puddles. In the begging bowls of the homeless who have nowhere to go. In desolate alleys. In the hollow of our prayers. In the crevices of our history.
Early winter rain. How genial.
© Sameer
Follow @sameerft
Saturday, November 10, 2012
The gaseous state
The winter is coming, like they say in the massively popular fantasy television series Game of Thrones. It is November, and winter is coming to keep its date with the valley. Soon it will be cold as a witch’s tit in Srinagar and elsewhere and everyone will be wearing those god awful Chinese ear muffs, especially brothers from the transport fraternity. One can imagine mini-bus conductors hanging precariously low on the edge of their respective vehicle doors, their aquiline noses red with the winter chill, red ear-muffs on, hollering, ‘Lal Bazar, Lal Bazar’. There is something bleakly cosy about the winter in Kashmir.
Blokes in the Press Enclave, fellow foot-soldiers defending the fortress of journalism in the world’s most militarized zone, would naturally hate to leave the fort with its hot rusty furnaces, locally called Bukharis, during winter. Outside, mile long queues of ordinary folk will assemble to get their gas cylinders re-filled. Curiously in the first two decades of the Tehreek, many thought that ‘cylinder’ is what rogue militants do, when cornered by Indian troopers. Those were innocent days and no one bothered to tell apart surrender from cylinder. Now there is no one left to surrender and cylinders are in such short supply!
Such is the scarcity of gas that Kashmir’s ruling clan recently went into a huddle and decided – in a great sign of magnanimity – to give up their additional gas connections. Omar was the first one to announce the voluntary abandonment of his two gas capsules. Anyways he looks a tad frail these days, making you wonder if he really eats at night, let alone use the gas capsule for cooking. Next Dr Farooq, noted for his voracious appetite, stepped out to surrender his extra gas cylinders. Many National Conference workers assembled outside Gupkar on this somber occasion had tears in eyes. Renunciation is no mean feat.
Doctor sahib was heard telling folks that soon Kashmiris will realize why he was made the minister of gobar gas. If the present condition prevails the day is not far when everyone will have to go back to good old style stone and mud-fire also called ‘Daan’ locally and burn gobar and firewood. This may worry a lot of people who decided to do away with the Daan system with the advent of gas and electricity. Little did they know that modernity signifies the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art of which the other half is the eternal and the immutable.
A gas heater cannot, I repeat cannot, vanquish a naar Kangir. Ever.
© Sameer
Follow @sameerft
Blokes in the Press Enclave, fellow foot-soldiers defending the fortress of journalism in the world’s most militarized zone, would naturally hate to leave the fort with its hot rusty furnaces, locally called Bukharis, during winter. Outside, mile long queues of ordinary folk will assemble to get their gas cylinders re-filled. Curiously in the first two decades of the Tehreek, many thought that ‘cylinder’ is what rogue militants do, when cornered by Indian troopers. Those were innocent days and no one bothered to tell apart surrender from cylinder. Now there is no one left to surrender and cylinders are in such short supply!
Such is the scarcity of gas that Kashmir’s ruling clan recently went into a huddle and decided – in a great sign of magnanimity – to give up their additional gas connections. Omar was the first one to announce the voluntary abandonment of his two gas capsules. Anyways he looks a tad frail these days, making you wonder if he really eats at night, let alone use the gas capsule for cooking. Next Dr Farooq, noted for his voracious appetite, stepped out to surrender his extra gas cylinders. Many National Conference workers assembled outside Gupkar on this somber occasion had tears in eyes. Renunciation is no mean feat.
Doctor sahib was heard telling folks that soon Kashmiris will realize why he was made the minister of gobar gas. If the present condition prevails the day is not far when everyone will have to go back to good old style stone and mud-fire also called ‘Daan’ locally and burn gobar and firewood. This may worry a lot of people who decided to do away with the Daan system with the advent of gas and electricity. Little did they know that modernity signifies the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art of which the other half is the eternal and the immutable.
A gas heater cannot, I repeat cannot, vanquish a naar Kangir. Ever.
© Sameer
Follow @sameerft
Saturday, October 06, 2012
Mirror mirror who's the fairest of the two: Rahul or Omar?
Rahul will soon become PM: Farooq Abdullah
The archduke of Indian Nation Congress, a pretty boy named Rahul Gandhi, is the latest benefactor-angel to turn up in Srinagar after the great metrosexual SRK. Like SRK, he too has Kashmiri ancestry (verified by the crystal-gazer-in-chief Farooq Abdullah). Armed with a Gandhi pedigree in each pocket of his white Kurta and a disarming dimpley-smile (partially hidden under stubble) he is camping in Kashmir University campus these days, preaching the virtues of trust to our Generation-next. Alas, trust is the only entity, Kashmiris seem to be falling short of, while dealing with India.
Ironically most of the distrust can be directly traced to Rahul’s great granddad, another great Pundit of his times – Jawahar Lal Nehru, India’s first PM. He too came in peace and extended an olive branch. The camaraderie was legend. In many long walks that he took with Sheikh Abdullah on the Boulevard -- while the autumn moon shone bright and Dal had fewer weeds -- he spoke words of honor and hope. The great Sheikh nodded like a shy bride. Nehru looked gracious and pleased in what looked like a frame from a romantic film; one that was too good to be true. Kashmiris soon learnt that if something is too good to be true, it most certainly isn’t.
When the Nehru-Gandhi scion says in his dainty English that he wants to be pally with Omar, the archduke of National Congress, just like Nehru was brotherly with Sheikh Abdullah in the days of yore, there is a deep sense of déjà vu. It all feels like we have seen this film before and remember all the dialogues before they are even uttered. Why does it feel that way? The most mocking part of the act is the progeny of Sheikh Abdullah are the ones who are clapping the hardest. Ofcourse there is a rented mob also (usually gathered by one of the local MLAs, hence proving his worth to the party) that makes a loud hitting noise on these occasions. Such blatant expunging and selective amnesia of Kashmir's recent history is indeed a film -- a tragicomedy.
Newspapers are replete with pictures of Omar and Rahul in Valentine smiles, eyes meeting each other half way and more flames. The party sidekicks, in rare bonhomie, seem to be having those mental feuds: who’s more charming of the two? Then there is Farooq Abdullah, the master of ceremonies, jumping around, never failing to call himself in third person singular: Farooq, Farooq. Occassionally he turns to Omar and utters those magical words: Omar, you are doing well, hold on fast! Not like me; like your grandpa. And feeling wise, he gives Rahul that sweet avuncular look before regurgitating the ‘You will be the PM prediction’. Wish someone told the good doctor that asking ‘Is the Pope a Catholic?’ isn’t exactly wisdom.
© Sameer
Follow @sameerft
The archduke of Indian Nation Congress, a pretty boy named Rahul Gandhi, is the latest benefactor-angel to turn up in Srinagar after the great metrosexual SRK. Like SRK, he too has Kashmiri ancestry (verified by the crystal-gazer-in-chief Farooq Abdullah). Armed with a Gandhi pedigree in each pocket of his white Kurta and a disarming dimpley-smile (partially hidden under stubble) he is camping in Kashmir University campus these days, preaching the virtues of trust to our Generation-next. Alas, trust is the only entity, Kashmiris seem to be falling short of, while dealing with India.
Ironically most of the distrust can be directly traced to Rahul’s great granddad, another great Pundit of his times – Jawahar Lal Nehru, India’s first PM. He too came in peace and extended an olive branch. The camaraderie was legend. In many long walks that he took with Sheikh Abdullah on the Boulevard -- while the autumn moon shone bright and Dal had fewer weeds -- he spoke words of honor and hope. The great Sheikh nodded like a shy bride. Nehru looked gracious and pleased in what looked like a frame from a romantic film; one that was too good to be true. Kashmiris soon learnt that if something is too good to be true, it most certainly isn’t.
When the Nehru-Gandhi scion says in his dainty English that he wants to be pally with Omar, the archduke of National Congress, just like Nehru was brotherly with Sheikh Abdullah in the days of yore, there is a deep sense of déjà vu. It all feels like we have seen this film before and remember all the dialogues before they are even uttered. Why does it feel that way? The most mocking part of the act is the progeny of Sheikh Abdullah are the ones who are clapping the hardest. Ofcourse there is a rented mob also (usually gathered by one of the local MLAs, hence proving his worth to the party) that makes a loud hitting noise on these occasions. Such blatant expunging and selective amnesia of Kashmir's recent history is indeed a film -- a tragicomedy.
Newspapers are replete with pictures of Omar and Rahul in Valentine smiles, eyes meeting each other half way and more flames. The party sidekicks, in rare bonhomie, seem to be having those mental feuds: who’s more charming of the two? Then there is Farooq Abdullah, the master of ceremonies, jumping around, never failing to call himself in third person singular: Farooq, Farooq. Occassionally he turns to Omar and utters those magical words: Omar, you are doing well, hold on fast! Not like me; like your grandpa. And feeling wise, he gives Rahul that sweet avuncular look before regurgitating the ‘You will be the PM prediction’. Wish someone told the good doctor that asking ‘Is the Pope a Catholic?’ isn’t exactly wisdom.
© Sameer
Follow @sameerft
Wednesday, September 05, 2012
The lion sleeps tonight
No other topic bisects Kashmiris right down the middle as much as the legacy of one man -- six foot and four inches tall. Commonly referred to as the ‘Lion of Kashmir’ by most National Conference wallas, Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah is considered something of a male Lady Macbeth by countless others. A complex character, he attempted to climb Mt Greatness (and did reach quite high) but sadly stumbled somewhere along the trek to the summit. While lions are not known to live for more than a decade in the wild, Sher-i-Kashmir survived several jungles and jails. His cubs continue to live in a nice little den under the foothills of Zabarwan to this day. No, they didn’t become lions.
Sheikh Abdullah can best be described as a paradox who knew his Iqbal well. Kashmiris taking a walk along the Chinar bagh near Haft Chinar, Srinagar, in days bygone, often stumbled across Chinar leaves with Sheikh’s name clearly visible on both sides. Of course it was part of the myth-making around the man who was part anti-India, part pro-India, a Prime Minister now, a Chief Minister some other time, Nehru’s pal, Nehru’s foe, sleeping in Nehru’s bedroom at Teen Murti Bhavan one season to fighting swarms of mosquitoes in Kotla Lane jail the other. Like his persona, the inheritance of Sher-i-Kashmir is deeply split.
How does one attempt to remember a man who challenged the might of the last Dogra feudatory at a time when entire villages were taken for bonded labour? Heck, you can’t even begin to place a leader who sets up the Plebiscite Front, telling a stunned India fearlessly that it should hold referendum in Kashmir under the auspices of the United Nations (Yes, pretty much what Mr Geelani says these days). Imagine the dent in the collective pride of millions after years of political struggle and broken promises, when the Sher-i-Kashmir meekly walks into Indira Gandhi’s rat-trap, also known as the Indira–Sheikh accord. His cubs now publicly say what Kashmiris knew all along: the exercise of the agreement was never actually completed. Less than a year after signing on the dotted line, Madam Gandhi had the Sheikh conveniently removed from power. You see this whole democracy business is somewhat messy, sometimes.
Thirty years after his death (died this week in 1982), one is astonished at his lion-logic that pushed us to these strange crossroads. By what alchemy, one wonders, did the Sheikh expect to change the conviction of Kashmiris? What then explains his volte faces? Was it spunk or silliness that led him to hobnob with Nehru even after the old boy had him thrown into a dungeon for eleven long years? Did he dig his own ideological tomb when he famously gave up Kashmir’s earnest demand for plebiscite? Did he really think that after Nehru’s chicanery, his daughter would accord Kashmiris genuine political space? It is difficult to say, even in hindsight.
So what really did the Sheikh bequeath to us? Was it Farooq Abdullah, the prince boy of good times, whose only claim to fame is that he was born to the right parent? Or was it the plough— a pastoral totem, hugely symbolic of our peasant past and an emblem that Sher-i-Kashmir efficiently tilled our consciousnesses with? Cutting short his first and only Pakistan visit, the Sheikh rushed back to cry at Nehru’s dead bed. Did he willfully dismiss from mind his humiliating arrest in Gulmarg in 1953 on Nehru’s orders? Pray, Krishna Menon, Nehru’s sidekick, famously likened Abdullah to Leon Trotsky. Not surprisingly the way Kashmir’s tallest leader was put out of countenance by the Delhi gang was not too different to what Stalin did to poor old Trotsky, before exiling him to Mexico.
Even if one were to excuse Sheikh’s strung-out flirtation with the Indians, how come he erred majorly in collecting a team, every member of which was a Marcus Junius Brutus in the making? The core team of Bakhshis, DP Dhars, Sadiqs plied Delhi with all the intel that was required on the Sheikh. And when the time came, his very team, trusted lieutenants like Bakhshi, hailed as Khalid-i-Kashmir within the NC (famous for saying all Muslims follow five tenets of Islam, I follow six; the sixth being Sheikh Abdullah’s command) stabbed him in the back. Multiple times.
There is a possibility that Sheikh Abdullah was a secular democrat. IB boss BN Mullick, India’s eyes and ears in Kashmir during Sheikh’s time, thought that Sher-i-Kashmir perhaps envisaged semi-independence for Kashmir. Howbeit most historians are agreed that from the very outset the Sheikh became disillusioned with India’s selective secularism but somehow got on with it. Nehru and co, on the other hand, knew their cards well. They knew exactly how to checkmate the lion with a semi-literate Bakhshi (eight-class pass), who in turn was given a simple brief: glue Kashmir, like a girl, to the couch.
Idealism, it is said, is the despot of thought. If Sheikh Abdullah really felt that independence was a ‘charming thought but academic and impractical’, then why did he wander all the way to Saudi Arabia and Algeria to garner support for Kashmir’s right to self-determination? Why did he seduce an emotional populace with slogans like ‘Throw my body in the Arabian sea, do not bury me in slave country’? A few years thence he simply gets up and concedes that the Instrument of Accession, ratified under the slimy Khalid-i-Kashmir, was no longer subject to challenge, meaning all those demands of plebiscite were nil and void. How many marks for that genius? 370.
Not surprisingly there are those who would say that his lion-roars meant nothing. No matter how earnestly he started off on the promise of delivering Kashmiris on the road to redemption, he ended up badly misjudging the route. His quislings ensured just that. For many he was a lion-heart who truly emancipated the poor with his socialistic zeal, gifting land to the tiller, something the feudal Pakistanis are still unable to do. In the end the Sheikh probably traded lions for lambs.
That September Indira Gandhi (not taking off her designer sunglasses for a millisecond) came for the funeral. Who knows what brought her to Srinagar: schadenfreude or sorrow? The Sheikh’s body was wrapped in a tricolor, perhaps fittingly in some parting thank you gesture from India. A million Kashmiris marched that afternoon, beating their chests, howling. The lion was dead. It was time to lionize him.
Less than six winters later, Kashmiris rose in a massive armed struggle. Millions marched again. There were no tricolors this time.
© Sameer
Follow @sameerft
Sheikh Abdullah can best be described as a paradox who knew his Iqbal well. Kashmiris taking a walk along the Chinar bagh near Haft Chinar, Srinagar, in days bygone, often stumbled across Chinar leaves with Sheikh’s name clearly visible on both sides. Of course it was part of the myth-making around the man who was part anti-India, part pro-India, a Prime Minister now, a Chief Minister some other time, Nehru’s pal, Nehru’s foe, sleeping in Nehru’s bedroom at Teen Murti Bhavan one season to fighting swarms of mosquitoes in Kotla Lane jail the other. Like his persona, the inheritance of Sher-i-Kashmir is deeply split.
How does one attempt to remember a man who challenged the might of the last Dogra feudatory at a time when entire villages were taken for bonded labour? Heck, you can’t even begin to place a leader who sets up the Plebiscite Front, telling a stunned India fearlessly that it should hold referendum in Kashmir under the auspices of the United Nations (Yes, pretty much what Mr Geelani says these days). Imagine the dent in the collective pride of millions after years of political struggle and broken promises, when the Sher-i-Kashmir meekly walks into Indira Gandhi’s rat-trap, also known as the Indira–Sheikh accord. His cubs now publicly say what Kashmiris knew all along: the exercise of the agreement was never actually completed. Less than a year after signing on the dotted line, Madam Gandhi had the Sheikh conveniently removed from power. You see this whole democracy business is somewhat messy, sometimes.
Thirty years after his death (died this week in 1982), one is astonished at his lion-logic that pushed us to these strange crossroads. By what alchemy, one wonders, did the Sheikh expect to change the conviction of Kashmiris? What then explains his volte faces? Was it spunk or silliness that led him to hobnob with Nehru even after the old boy had him thrown into a dungeon for eleven long years? Did he dig his own ideological tomb when he famously gave up Kashmir’s earnest demand for plebiscite? Did he really think that after Nehru’s chicanery, his daughter would accord Kashmiris genuine political space? It is difficult to say, even in hindsight.
So what really did the Sheikh bequeath to us? Was it Farooq Abdullah, the prince boy of good times, whose only claim to fame is that he was born to the right parent? Or was it the plough— a pastoral totem, hugely symbolic of our peasant past and an emblem that Sher-i-Kashmir efficiently tilled our consciousnesses with? Cutting short his first and only Pakistan visit, the Sheikh rushed back to cry at Nehru’s dead bed. Did he willfully dismiss from mind his humiliating arrest in Gulmarg in 1953 on Nehru’s orders? Pray, Krishna Menon, Nehru’s sidekick, famously likened Abdullah to Leon Trotsky. Not surprisingly the way Kashmir’s tallest leader was put out of countenance by the Delhi gang was not too different to what Stalin did to poor old Trotsky, before exiling him to Mexico.
Even if one were to excuse Sheikh’s strung-out flirtation with the Indians, how come he erred majorly in collecting a team, every member of which was a Marcus Junius Brutus in the making? The core team of Bakhshis, DP Dhars, Sadiqs plied Delhi with all the intel that was required on the Sheikh. And when the time came, his very team, trusted lieutenants like Bakhshi, hailed as Khalid-i-Kashmir within the NC (famous for saying all Muslims follow five tenets of Islam, I follow six; the sixth being Sheikh Abdullah’s command) stabbed him in the back. Multiple times.
There is a possibility that Sheikh Abdullah was a secular democrat. IB boss BN Mullick, India’s eyes and ears in Kashmir during Sheikh’s time, thought that Sher-i-Kashmir perhaps envisaged semi-independence for Kashmir. Howbeit most historians are agreed that from the very outset the Sheikh became disillusioned with India’s selective secularism but somehow got on with it. Nehru and co, on the other hand, knew their cards well. They knew exactly how to checkmate the lion with a semi-literate Bakhshi (eight-class pass), who in turn was given a simple brief: glue Kashmir, like a girl, to the couch.
Idealism, it is said, is the despot of thought. If Sheikh Abdullah really felt that independence was a ‘charming thought but academic and impractical’, then why did he wander all the way to Saudi Arabia and Algeria to garner support for Kashmir’s right to self-determination? Why did he seduce an emotional populace with slogans like ‘Throw my body in the Arabian sea, do not bury me in slave country’? A few years thence he simply gets up and concedes that the Instrument of Accession, ratified under the slimy Khalid-i-Kashmir, was no longer subject to challenge, meaning all those demands of plebiscite were nil and void. How many marks for that genius? 370.
Not surprisingly there are those who would say that his lion-roars meant nothing. No matter how earnestly he started off on the promise of delivering Kashmiris on the road to redemption, he ended up badly misjudging the route. His quislings ensured just that. For many he was a lion-heart who truly emancipated the poor with his socialistic zeal, gifting land to the tiller, something the feudal Pakistanis are still unable to do. In the end the Sheikh probably traded lions for lambs.
That September Indira Gandhi (not taking off her designer sunglasses for a millisecond) came for the funeral. Who knows what brought her to Srinagar: schadenfreude or sorrow? The Sheikh’s body was wrapped in a tricolor, perhaps fittingly in some parting thank you gesture from India. A million Kashmiris marched that afternoon, beating their chests, howling. The lion was dead. It was time to lionize him.
Less than six winters later, Kashmiris rose in a massive armed struggle. Millions marched again. There were no tricolors this time.
© Sameer
Follow @sameerft
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
SRK and other familiar charms in Srinagar
Kashmir has been hot as a thousand devils this year. Yasin Malik, with his trademark grim grin, thinks that it is due to our sins and the unresolved ‘Maslay Kashmir’. In absence of any metrological connection between sin and the sun, many would say that it could be about the ‘core issue’ only. As both parties – India and Pakistan – get busy with other non-essential stuff, where is the time to follow through on Kashmir? Alas Manmohan Singh, that clean fellow, always spotted in spotless white cotton Kurta Pajamas, turned out to be a coal dealer. Coal, of all the things. No class. Any which way, in Pakistan, the Supreme Court continues to play a game of dumb charades with prime minister’s office and the presidency. Ergo, the stalemate on Kashmir and the unseasonal heat-wave.
Into the sinning little valley of ours, strides the 46-year old heartthrob of India and baadshah of Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan. Local papers are totally g-spaced. ‘The King is here’, the biggest English daily in Kashmir screams in a somewhat excitified headline. Since he can play a college kid no more, SRK is playing the next best option, an armyman. So our superstar takes a chopper and all, rappels down in Pahalgam, by the Lidder, gives one of his politically correct quotes (my grandmom is Kashmiri; eh, explains the looks) and lo presto. Peace returns. The Kashmir of Raj Kapoor and Nargis in Barsaat reappears. Where peaches hang on low-lying boughs in orchards and Shammi Kapoor runs furiously in meadows (no, no dogs chasing him). The romance is back in our lives. Everyone should clap.
Since this is the season of returns, there is another ‘Return of the Jedi’. The interlocutors, too, are back: Radha, not a day older than last year with her hair nimbly argentate along with Padgoankar, French in his tastes and Indian by temperament. Since the government of India has decided not to implement anything that the interlocutors painstakingly suggested in their high-profile report ‘A new compact with the people of Kashmir’, another talk-shop will be opened. Only the duo understands the futility of this new exercise. Everyone else has moved on. Chidambaram has since given way to Shinde in the North block. Omar’s Twitter handle has been taken over by his uncle who perhaps forgot the password. Kamal is currently in viva voce mode.
Back in Pahalgam, Yash Chopra is busy filming. A crew of 100 has turned the woods into an extended outdoor film set. Everyone is twinkle-toed. Security is reportedly fool-proof, leaving loads of SRK fanboys, in scores of Tata Sumos, very heart-broken. It is, sort of, tragic that a middle-aged Muslim star with a local grandmom should not be allowed to meet his well-wishers. There might be a secret agency hand involved in this step-motherly treatment meted out to the valleyites. Not everyday do people get to climb on top of a bus in Kashmir to catch fleeting glimpse of a star who plays an armyman (whether or not the character enjoys immunity under AFSPA being wholly immaterial here).
In related news, an eleven-year-old student was arrested -- and subsequently let off on bail -- in Srinagar for indulging in violence against cops on the eve of Eid. By law anyone under 18 is a minor. One thing is sure: 11 is the first number which cannot be counted with a human's ten fingers. Why the spectacle? India’s own Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act states that publication of a child’s name or picture in any newspaper, magazine, news-sheet or visual media that may lead to the identification of the juvenile is not allowed. Clearly someone is not following the law.
Law is for the lawless, the Bible says. For the time being hoteliers and hawkers near Dal lake are planning to get their act together and write to Yashji to film on the famed Boulevard with SRK for a few minutes, atleast.
Everyone deserves a chunk of the peace pie.
Sameer
@sameerft
Into the sinning little valley of ours, strides the 46-year old heartthrob of India and baadshah of Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan. Local papers are totally g-spaced. ‘The King is here’, the biggest English daily in Kashmir screams in a somewhat excitified headline. Since he can play a college kid no more, SRK is playing the next best option, an armyman. So our superstar takes a chopper and all, rappels down in Pahalgam, by the Lidder, gives one of his politically correct quotes (my grandmom is Kashmiri; eh, explains the looks) and lo presto. Peace returns. The Kashmir of Raj Kapoor and Nargis in Barsaat reappears. Where peaches hang on low-lying boughs in orchards and Shammi Kapoor runs furiously in meadows (no, no dogs chasing him). The romance is back in our lives. Everyone should clap.
Since this is the season of returns, there is another ‘Return of the Jedi’. The interlocutors, too, are back: Radha, not a day older than last year with her hair nimbly argentate along with Padgoankar, French in his tastes and Indian by temperament. Since the government of India has decided not to implement anything that the interlocutors painstakingly suggested in their high-profile report ‘A new compact with the people of Kashmir’, another talk-shop will be opened. Only the duo understands the futility of this new exercise. Everyone else has moved on. Chidambaram has since given way to Shinde in the North block. Omar’s Twitter handle has been taken over by his uncle who perhaps forgot the password. Kamal is currently in viva voce mode.
Back in Pahalgam, Yash Chopra is busy filming. A crew of 100 has turned the woods into an extended outdoor film set. Everyone is twinkle-toed. Security is reportedly fool-proof, leaving loads of SRK fanboys, in scores of Tata Sumos, very heart-broken. It is, sort of, tragic that a middle-aged Muslim star with a local grandmom should not be allowed to meet his well-wishers. There might be a secret agency hand involved in this step-motherly treatment meted out to the valleyites. Not everyday do people get to climb on top of a bus in Kashmir to catch fleeting glimpse of a star who plays an armyman (whether or not the character enjoys immunity under AFSPA being wholly immaterial here).
In related news, an eleven-year-old student was arrested -- and subsequently let off on bail -- in Srinagar for indulging in violence against cops on the eve of Eid. By law anyone under 18 is a minor. One thing is sure: 11 is the first number which cannot be counted with a human's ten fingers. Why the spectacle? India’s own Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act states that publication of a child’s name or picture in any newspaper, magazine, news-sheet or visual media that may lead to the identification of the juvenile is not allowed. Clearly someone is not following the law.
Law is for the lawless, the Bible says. For the time being hoteliers and hawkers near Dal lake are planning to get their act together and write to Yashji to film on the famed Boulevard with SRK for a few minutes, atleast.
Everyone deserves a chunk of the peace pie.
Sameer
@sameerft
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Sick notes
I am a little unwell. Nothing much, just going through the
throes, I guess. Happens from time to time. And then it goes away. Lets say one
is in no mood to be mischievous, for a change.
I eavesdropped on someone saying no expectations, perhaps in a dream. I
know the words. I recall the exacting meaning they convey. There seems to be a
dash of restrain, some amount of agony and a delicate sprinkling of logic to
them. It provides the person a perfect get-away. A clean-chit. You can’t blame.
You can’t complain. You can’t look askance. Period.
In hindsight it is perhaps not a bad idea not to expect.
Unnecessarily you lose sleep. You begin to dream half dreams. You begin to care.
You tend to be protective. Quick reveries occur to you. Suddenly you feel
tasked. You start liking daffy things. That is what darned expectations can do
to you.
Dale Carnegie, one of the biggest thinking heads of his
times, once told a massive audience: When dealing with people, remember you are
not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion. Somewhere
Carnegie attempts – and probably manages to – put his finger on the exact mash.
That is because all instances of sharing, every act of laughter, whenever we shout,
when we canoodle -- unknowingly we are forking out a slice of that
sacred sentiment, called emotion. Logic comes in much much later.
Then there is a soft globule in most of us. Plebeians call
it heart. It is forever inexperienced. We may attempt to grow. Grow up. Grow
rich. Grow wise. Grow smart but the heart always remains naive. It stays captive to memories.
In reality life is hard. Mean. Unpredictable. The unreal is
often more powerful than the real, because reality is not always real. Without
meaning to sound philosophical, it would be safe to assume that all perceptions
of reality are just opinions.
You look for support, camaraderie, comfort, love. There are
times when you aren’t looking for anything in particular and suddenly you have
it. Such sudden, magnificent relations often offer you the confidence to walk
on the defenses of your own heart. The matchless moments you think you might
spend playing pranks. The circumlocutory silly philosophizing that you would
like to spray each other with. The unmooned darkness you reckon – foolishly –can
be deciphered together. But people move on, wittingly and unwittingly.
Remembrance grows on yew trees.
Bernard Shaw was an influential thinker of his times and
winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. He wrote to his friend:
I hope you have lost your good looks, for while they last
any fool can adore you, and the adoration of fools is bad for the soul. No,
give me a ruined complexion and a lost figure and sixteen chins on a farmyard
of crow's feet and an obvious wig. Then you shall see me coming out strong.
I dreamt last night that your heart was my piñata. I am sure
vocabs aren't always good. You might have to look up for Piñata!
@Sameer
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Tales from the valley
When the attendance in mosques starting thinning out and people start speculating whether Ramadhan is going to be 29 or 30 days, you should safely assume that Eid is around the corner. A report in the much respected Business Standard -- the other day -- stated that an average Kashmiri household will consume six kilos of mutton on Eid. Devils shall be unlocked and immediately possess mortals. The queues outside butcheries and poultry-walas are going to be long. Bakeries will work all through the night. Suddenly everything shall be more expensive. Men will flock to Eid-gahs in new Kameez-Yazars. Only poor Mr Geelani will stay at home.
The little debate over whether Mr Geelani is free to go around or stays perpetually incarcerated in his home refuses to die. Media reports suggest that despite the Goebbelsian spin, Omar – with those cute blue eyes – is fibbing. You see it is a simple scheme: let him go attend the funeral of an old friend – to give out an impression of some democratic layout -- but don’t let him in the mosque across the road. Who knows what dangerous ideas he preaches the peaceful this Ramadhan?
Curiously when I visited Kashmir this summer and went to meet the ageing leader, he appeared quite prim even at an early hour. Mr Geelani sat on an austere sofa surrounded by books in English and Urdu. In absence of a bookmark he had turned a corner page of one book to enable him to return to it with ease. A keen listener, Mr Geelani allows you the space to talk and nods along even as you mildly criticize some of his positions. I was respectful of the gap in our age; the leader being more than five decades older. Mr Geelani’s ideas, it turns out, are both intuitive and sharp. Ofcourse the cops were there, to ensure that none of those ideas come out.
Meantime in related developments, the bickering between mainstream political parties has suddenly spiraled. Is it due to fasting or some bad omen -- in the shape of Prof Soz’s tooth-brush moustache -- could not be immediately known. Apparently Kashmir’s first family – the much venerable Abdullahs -- has unleased their motor-mouth son, Mustapha Kamal, to drown anyone from Mr Geelani to the opposition PDP in verbal-carnage of the worst manner. Mufti Sayeed, the other claimant to Kashmir’s throne, is naturally finding it hard to duck the volleys. Poor Dr Koul and Mehbooba Mufti are no match to Kamal. He is like the Usain Bolt of valley’s dirty political track.
Oh, and, there was this wooden bridge over Dal lake in the interiors of Srinagar that collapsed when some government babu and an entourage of cops and mohalla elders and a few stray dogs crossed it – all at the same time, perhaps to inspect the structure. Everyone fell into the lake, the commissioner, the cops, their guns and the party of elders. The dogs howled madly and bystanders promptly dived in to save the group. Since the chief minister has gone mum on Twitter, it would have been nice to vex him with some mid-Ramadhan ribbing.
The little wooden bridge stays broken as August 15 dawns. It may remain unusable till the next Eid, God knows. Now is the time for sharp salutes. The security grid must be antsy. Omar will salute the flag in Srinagar while someone will do the honors in Jammu. New Delhi will smile a benign smile. A rented crowd will clap. Be as it may, Kashmiris will busy themselves for Laylat al-Qadr or the Night of Value. They shall pray for freedom.
© Sameer
Follow @sameerft
The little debate over whether Mr Geelani is free to go around or stays perpetually incarcerated in his home refuses to die. Media reports suggest that despite the Goebbelsian spin, Omar – with those cute blue eyes – is fibbing. You see it is a simple scheme: let him go attend the funeral of an old friend – to give out an impression of some democratic layout -- but don’t let him in the mosque across the road. Who knows what dangerous ideas he preaches the peaceful this Ramadhan?
Curiously when I visited Kashmir this summer and went to meet the ageing leader, he appeared quite prim even at an early hour. Mr Geelani sat on an austere sofa surrounded by books in English and Urdu. In absence of a bookmark he had turned a corner page of one book to enable him to return to it with ease. A keen listener, Mr Geelani allows you the space to talk and nods along even as you mildly criticize some of his positions. I was respectful of the gap in our age; the leader being more than five decades older. Mr Geelani’s ideas, it turns out, are both intuitive and sharp. Ofcourse the cops were there, to ensure that none of those ideas come out.
Meantime in related developments, the bickering between mainstream political parties has suddenly spiraled. Is it due to fasting or some bad omen -- in the shape of Prof Soz’s tooth-brush moustache -- could not be immediately known. Apparently Kashmir’s first family – the much venerable Abdullahs -- has unleased their motor-mouth son, Mustapha Kamal, to drown anyone from Mr Geelani to the opposition PDP in verbal-carnage of the worst manner. Mufti Sayeed, the other claimant to Kashmir’s throne, is naturally finding it hard to duck the volleys. Poor Dr Koul and Mehbooba Mufti are no match to Kamal. He is like the Usain Bolt of valley’s dirty political track.
Oh, and, there was this wooden bridge over Dal lake in the interiors of Srinagar that collapsed when some government babu and an entourage of cops and mohalla elders and a few stray dogs crossed it – all at the same time, perhaps to inspect the structure. Everyone fell into the lake, the commissioner, the cops, their guns and the party of elders. The dogs howled madly and bystanders promptly dived in to save the group. Since the chief minister has gone mum on Twitter, it would have been nice to vex him with some mid-Ramadhan ribbing.
The little wooden bridge stays broken as August 15 dawns. It may remain unusable till the next Eid, God knows. Now is the time for sharp salutes. The security grid must be antsy. Omar will salute the flag in Srinagar while someone will do the honors in Jammu. New Delhi will smile a benign smile. A rented crowd will clap. Be as it may, Kashmiris will busy themselves for Laylat al-Qadr or the Night of Value. They shall pray for freedom.
© Sameer
Follow @sameerft
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