Silence

Silence - the unfathomable, invisible, deep ocean within me. Unseen, unknown, inseprable, my scattered soul has dissolved into you. It is the repository of unsaid words, stories, journeys, emotion that were ever born inside me. In your womb lay hidden the tiniest of dreams, hopes, ambitions that I have ever lived. I bring my soul to you, to drown, to hide into your solitude. To untie. To release. To Exist.

The Boat Ride

I
Maryum - Afzal

She sat uncertainly on the edge of a chair, firmly clasping the bare wooden arm with one hand and holding the tiny hands of three year old Afreen with the other. A faded scarf carelessly covered Maryum’s head, her soiled pheran bore the signs of a wretched life and her vacant eyes stared at something invisible on the table in front of her.

On the other chair, Bilal her five year old son sat in the lap of his grandfather. Rasool Bhat, looked much older for his sixty five years, his backbone having curved under the weight of years of miserable poverty. In a faint and feeble voice he was pleading for mercy. The officer had been kind to them, having made them sit and even ordering tea, a privilege that other ordinary petitioners were not accustomed to. But he was firm and refused any consideration. Rasool Bhat tried to make another attempt, but the officer stopped him and put a hundred rupee note in his hand. His words – safety act, three years, prison - kept reverberating in Maryum’s head. She could feel the emptiness growing inside her, it was sharp and stinging. Looking at Afreen, her uncombed hair, her untidy clothes, her broken shoe, cheap trinkets, her ignorance about her own circumstances, a sudden burst of self-pity filled her up as she tried to sweep it away with the last reserves of her strength.

When Maryum turned to leave the police officer softly asked her “You still want to go back to him?” A single tear rolled down from her eyes as she again looked towards Afreen, who tugged at her pheran and stretched her hand towards her. Perhaps nothing could have given Maryum more strength, more hope at that moment than the little outstretched hand. An unsaid word hung in the air between them as she walked out of the room.

The mini bus was cramped with people, heavy conversations and a seventies Hindi movie song but Maryum was oblivious to all this, her own thoughts were crowded. She kept looking out of the window as images from the last six years, some blurred memories, and a few moments frozen by time kept flashing past her. The first time she had seen Afzal from a distance; their eyes had met; her shy, his expressive and dreamy. The day of their wedding when she wore her anxiety in a red embroidered shalwar suit, the first words they exchanged that day, the promise of enduring love. The day he had taken her to Pahalgam; she had sat close to him, self-conscious and perplexed, talking incessantly in a low voice about her naïve and unassuming demands of life. He had talked about mountains, about an imaginary world beyond them, about the river, its momentum, its undaunted will. She had liked his exuberance, his optimism but her simple mind was unable to comprehend his fantasies; worse she was scared of their fragility and his vulnerability.
A winter later, the realities of life had struck hard shrinking Afzal’s large canvas of dreams. He had tried his hand at many odd jobs but was unable to find a proper employment. Now he ferried people across Jhelum from his village to the next in a decrepit boat. After the militants had burnt down the old wooden bridge people had fallen back on this ageing mode of transport. In those days he had made sufficiently enough to provide for their basic needs of survival. But the monotony of a mundane existence along with added responsibility of Bilal, who was born in the first year of their marriage, seemed to have diminished his appetite for dreams. He no longer spoke about them to Maryum. She never asked.

II
Afzal - Naheed

Attired in various shades of dark, clouds had suddenly started assembling on what had otherwise been a bright sunny afternoon. The capriciousness of the weather could perhaps only be matched by the vagaries of human nature. Ever since the makeshift bridge was built, fewer people used Afzal’s boat now. The few who came were either old or infirm or those who would want to avoid the bunker at the other end of the bridge. Noticing the rancor in the sky, Afzal decided to start for home early with just a couple of passengers. As he began to untie the tethered boat, a soft shout called out from behind, he turned to see Naheed pacing towards him. The glow of her sculpted face, the rhythm and the grace of her movements, the dark waving hair and the distant and blurry gaze gave her a mystical look. She was beautiful, so beautiful that it would make Afzal conscious of himself as he gently rowed across the river. Naheed remained absorbed in her own thoughts.

For many days Afzal kept waiting, hoping to see her come back, hoping to see her sit at the far end of his boat, hoping she would hear the stirring’s inside his heart. The day she came he held out his hand to help her sit in the boat, their eyes met, his expressive, her silent and melancholic. When she was leaving he asked her, if she would come back again. Her eyes answered.

Whenever he thought of her after that, he could feel something flower inside him, something he thought had decayed long ago; he could feel his heart throb again. He would restlessly long to see her, but when she came they never spoke, the silence between them did, making each aware of other’s inner thoughts. Slowly they could feel the unspoken, unnamed bond between them grow; slowly they discovered togetherness and the vitality of companionship.


It had started drizzling when Naheed came one afternoon; she asked Afzal if he could row deep into the river, into obscurity. Together they looked at their flickering reflections, listened to the sound of the oar breaking the flow of the river and watched the tiny droplets of rain hurling down only to be swallowed into the unfathomable depths of the river. In that moment they wanted to find themselves in each other before they too were swallowed into anonymity. The solitude of the river was magical, it was liberating.

Afzal would share the constellation of dreams he had created, about the imaginary world that had come alive once again. Naheed too had found a repository, she would tell him about her childhood, about the child in her, about how both were usurped by cruel destiny, about her brother who was a mujahid, about how she had begged the soldiers to spare his life, about how she felt betrayed by life, about compromises; about how she found purpose in working as a courier for the mujahids, about the solace she found in rebellion, about how she wished she could erase everything and live her life, just once. She also told him about her claustrophobic marriage to Rashid, twelve years older; about how he had become a symbol of her mutilated life; about humiliation; about her hatred for him; about paranoia.

After soaking in the rain and into each other that day, they met more frequently but now every separation felt longer. Love was tormenting. He wanted to leave everything behind; any thoughts of Maryum were barricaded by his desire for Naheed. He wanted a new beginning. For her the beginning wasn’t possible without erasing the past, without annihilation.

III
Rashid-Afzal/Naheed-Maryum

Every day at twelve twenty, Rashid would pull his cart to the same corner beneath the benevolent shade of the Chinar Tree. Ten minutes later the bell at the Islamia School would ring and small boys and girls, in various shades of green, would flock to his ice cream cart for their favorite flavor. Rashid was of a sturdy built with a protruding belly; his bulging eyes, with the balding head and an unshaven face gave him a rigid and grim look. His reticence added to the stern countenance in a good measure. In his strife against poverty words were of little use; he had built his life brick by brick, layer by layer to a relative comfort. When it is a fight for subsistence, concepts of love and such have little meaning, the equation with life is simpler and more straight-forward. So when a distant relative proposed Naheed’s hand for him to his mother, he looked for happiness like everyone else would have. It was only abbreviated by some of his doubts that had accumulated after many rejections.

On the day of the wedding, he had walked to her house with a slight anticipation in his step but overcame it as soon as she had said ‘yes’ thrice. For the next few days he clumsily tried to get used to her presence but failed to notice her indifference. It took him sometime to realize that something was amiss; gradually the indifferent look in her eyes had turned derisive. At first he was dismissive of it as just his imagination, but the intensity and the consistence of her contempt made him feel small, his fears about his inadequacies had snowballed into a huge self doubt. Unable to cope with this, his angst and helplessness turned into aggression. Often Naheed would wake up with bruises and humiliation. She never retaliated, letting it just simmer inside her.

A thousand thoughts and a thousand conflicts jostled in Afzal’s head – about Maryum, about his kids, about life with them, about life without them, about the world without Naheed, about the world beyond the mountains, the translucent water, the desolate river. The entire trajectory of his life spread in front of him as he stood, unsteadily, opposite the Chinar tree waiting for Rashid’s cart. His hands were trembling when he put his hand inside the pocket of shirt and trying to remember the directions from Naheed: pull the pin, throw in 6 seconds. He could feel its coarseness, its absoluteness, its violence; he could feel the life in it and the death in it. In one moment he had made his choice, in another he wanted to turn back. But the mesmerizing beauty of Naheed and escape from a dreary life stood in his way. When he saw Rashid in the distance, he could feel the turbulence in his head pulling him apart. He felt a churn in his abdomen and a pungent fluid rose through his stomach to his head, his eyes were blurry and a haze spread in front of him. Everything was indistinct except the beautiful face of Naheed, everything was abrupt, his pulling the pin, the bell ringing, his falling to the ground and the dust rising. When it settled the Chinar had been maimed forever, its leaves were burnt and the shades of green had turned red.

Broken Ice

That year winter had set in early and it looked like the sun was on a long sabbatical. Early mornings at this time have a grayish tinge to them; everything including the air is still; puddles of last night are covered with a thin crust of ice; and icicles, long and sharp, hang from the corners of thatched roofs. But all this wouldn’t deter Showkat, wide eyed, fair and skinny boy of eleven, from walking down to the bakery to buy four lavasas for the family breakfast. It had taken them long since the death of Ramazan, his father, to have four proper meals a day. Ramazan was an expert at thrashing walnuts, a task that requires great athletic skill and concentration. But on that fateful day he was caught off guard by the loud sound of a blast and gunfire, the shock making him lose his grip and life too. After that Showkat’s elder brother and sister left school midway. Zubair now worked at a shop in Sopore and Gulshan had learnt weaving carpets apart from assisting their mother Fahmida in the fields. On his way to the bakery Showkat, red nosed by now, enjoyed breaking the sheets of ice with a stick in hand. He liked to hear the crisp sound it made and feel the cracks spread under his rubber shoes. At his age innocence is unadulterated and the spirit to explore small pleasures still alive. Ahad Kak, the baker, wore a worn out conical cap to cover his bald patch and a pleasant nature to cover his not so happy past. His repertoire of anecdotes and stories matched his fifty plus years and with these he garnished the loaves of bread. But nowadays only a few people sat to listen to his stories which were also now mostly about crackdown in the neighbouring villages, the gun battle in the town and whispers about the boy who had crossed over to become a mujahid. Now he would only remove one panel of the darkened wood shutters to protect against the cold and any unwanted attention. Invariably Showkat would be his first customer of the day and he liked the cheerful disposition of the boy. The boy was fascinated with the light glowing from the pit of the tandoor, its warmth and even the musty smell. Amma mot, the village lunatic would also come and sit in sometimes. Many in the village believed he was a dervish with spiritual powers and often asked him to bless their kids and help them get over their problems. He would always oblige.

That morning, Showkat reached the bakery a little late. He hadn’t been able to sleep properly after Zubair told him about Prince, the neighbour’s son who had returned as a mujahid. Showkat was curious and wanted to know how a mujahid looked like and behaved, even though he had seen Prince wander around the village all his life. But now he was a hero, the whole village would be talking about him, he carried a kalshinkof which in Showkat’s imagination made him invincible. All the thoughts had made him toss and tumble in his bed the whole night. Ahad Kak was worried, he felt there would be a crackdown in the village soon and wished Prince had been more circumspect about his return to the village. He had heard about crackdowns where the whole village men would be made to assemble in the fields and paraded before masked informers. Sometimes military would take away few of them only to return them with bruised self – esteem and bodies. Showkat only worried about not being able to play the cricket match, if there was a crackdown. Childhood is unencumbered by other conflicts of the world, those invented by the grown-ups. So when they heard the grunting sound of the army trucks outside, Ahad Kak could feel beads of cold sweat on his forehead. When the vehicle stopped outside and a soldier appeared at the door one could hear a loud thud coming from his chest. Even though there was no crackdown, being accosted by a soldier rattled Ahad Kak. Showkat had to translate the request for a cup of tea him. Satpal Singh, was in his mid forties, his handle bar moustache contradicted by the serene look of his eyes. Placing the gun carefully in his lap, he sat on the ledge of the shop sipping the hot noon chai along with the assortment of kulchas and bakirkhanis that Ahad Kak had quickly managed to put on the tray. Showkat’s eyes had grown ever wider with curiosity; he had never seen a soldier so up close, real and human. When Satpal asked him his name, and pronounced it back with a little stretch Shookaat, the ice had broken between them. He wanted to know if the gun was a kalshinkoof, Satpal good-naturedly told him to worry about his cricket bat instead. He told him that he also had a son, Arjun who was a little older than Showkat, perhaps a little taller too. He was talking through memory having seen him more than a year back, the yearning in his voice was palpable.

Ahad Kak who had by now regained his composure partly, watched suspiciously. After a while he picked the courage to tell Showkat to run back home, as his mother would be waiting. For the next many days Showkat would spend a lot of time with Satpal, telling him about his heroics in cricket, the few friends he had and inundating him with his insatiable curiosity. Satpal would in turn tell him about the world outside; of places that Showkat hadn’t heard of; of his village in Rajasthan; of the desert where the sun showed its prowess, mercilessly; of how he hoped Arjun would study to become a collector and his daughter got married into a good family. He would tell Showkat to also study hard and make something out of his life because that was the only salvation for the poor. A few times Showkat would get some walnuts from home and share it with him and Satpal would read letters from home to him. Even Ahad Kak had started feeling that Satpal wasn’t like the rest of the uniformed men but his doubts stayed. On days when he wasn’t there, Showkat would come searching a few times a day and whenever there was talk of a gun battle he would think of Satpal, his son and the all hopes he carried. The instincts of a father and the longing for one had started to coalesce. It wasn’t that Showkat was immune to what was happening around; Zubair would often feed him with happenings in the town, as he added new words to his vocabulary – curfew, aazadi, interrogation, mukhbir, torture, shaheed and many such. News kept trickling in, news about the massacre of fifty people at Gawkadal, about the mass rapes in a distant village in Kupwara, about an ex-politician who was hung, about more boys crossing over, about somebody’s kidnapping. War has its way of cutting short childhood, turning dreams into nightmares, imagination into jaded ideology. War also has a way of simplifying choices, you are either on this side or you are on the other, there is no midway.

Showkat and Satpal still met, even though it was for lesser time and the conversations were more about banal things. Sometimes Ahad Kak would also join them, the worry lines on his forehead had grown deeper and more intricate. He would often not come out of his house, in his own way he was trying to close the door to the winds blowing outside.

After the Friday prayers Showkat was very restive, passions usually flew as the village head sermonized about fighting the enemy; about saving the honor of daughters and sisters and about valour filled with all the relevant historical references. Showkat was unable to comprehend the conflict brewing inside him. For now he was able to banish the thought of seeing Satpal as one from the other side. The notions of freedom, sacrifice, suppression and such are yet to be understood by his age but those of human bonds and love are. Satpal often appeared to be in a pensive mood and sometimes exhausted also. His unit had been involved in many operations of late. In one of the fights two of his men had got serious injuries. In another they had shot down two militants, barely eighteen year old boys; a sudden sadness had overtaken him at that moment, his thoughts had wandered towards Showkat. He felt revulsion towards his helplessness, his inconsequential existence and being overpowered by the oppressive shadow of death. Darkness descends very early during the winter and nowadays few dared to venture out late. With nothing much to keep himself busy, Showkat was already half – asleep when he heard rapid footsteps in tandem. His heart leaped when he heard gunfire soon after, first the intermittent knocking of a kalshinkoof and then the stutter of a machine gun. More knocks and more stuttering followed. Suddenly the neighbourhood was swathed in sharp white light, almost making it look naked. The sounds went on for many hours, for a while there was absolute silence and then a wail went up tearing the skies. Prince was killed, martyred. It was the darkest night in the village and the longest; no one slept or went home. Ahad Kak, was shattered, the turmoil of his fifty years had returned, his only son had died at a young age in an accident. Restlessness occupied Showkat, as tears rolled incessantly.

At dawn the police jeep came, the four constables carried Prince and left him in the courtyard on the bench covered with a layer of snow. With a broken tooth and the distorted face, he did not resemble the handsome face that had walked the streets with a teenage swagger. He was barely twenty two. A few hours later he was buried. Disbelief was followed by anguish and then the outrage. Someone picked up the first stone and hit the police jeep. More followed and the rifle butts answered. One of them struck Amma mot; he hit the ground muttering something and then the last word...Allah. The destiny’s orphan belonged to everyone in his death. Fear could not longer bridle the fury that followed.

The sequence of events had completely insulated the two worlds of Showkat and Satpal from each other. The sat on the edges of an emotional fault line. On the fourth day after the death of Prince and Amma mot, people started coming in from the adjoining villages for the fateha, the prayer for the departed. The calm was fragile as the soldiers lined up near the burial ground. People had started assembling, suddenly there was a commotion, a slogan went up and people joined in, cries for freedom resonated across. Satpal was fighting hard to restrain his feeling when he saw Showkat from the distance in the front. Again someone swung the first stone. This time it was Showkat. The crowd pushed ahead throwing stones, with-standing the teargas shells. Showkat led the way, till he saw Satpal as their moist eyes met. Showkat froze, his hands were shivering, in the cacophony he could only hear only one sound, his own crying, his hands wouldn’t let go of the stone and his heart wouldn’t let him hurl it. And then almost on an impulse he swung his arm and hit the stationary jeep. The lines had been drawn. Satpal felt abandoned and wanted to withdraw to the vacuum. He wanted to undo everything; love, care, life. There was an order to fire. The metal touched the skin. But he could feel nothing. He saw Arjun running towards him, to save him, to protect him. Orders were shouted again – Satpal Singh Fire. Everything was opaque and dark now. A shot was fired and the air went still again.

The Outsider

It was my first trip home after almost two years and my excitement was just leaping high and above. Waiting at the airport for a delayed flight, I was already dreaming about the fragrance of flowers, the gushing streams and the majestic view of the mountains. Along came the childhood memories of walking into the mustard fields, sitting by the chinar tree all by myself, watching the Lidder flow or just admiring the tempting cherries. Soon I was overflowing with nostalgia. But these images weren’t the only thing that tied me to my home, to Kashmir. There was something more, something organic, something earthy, something peculiar. Something that is so integral a part of the portrait that it almost goes unnoticed. As I landed in Kashmir I wanted to absorb, accumulate and hoard everything to my memory forever. Perhaps I had been away for long enough to have developed the curious eye of a visitor, I started noticing things that were so characteristic of the place. And then it stuck me, these were the things that gave the place its character, it own individuality and it was these small seemingly mundane that made it unique and different. One of the first things I noticed was the bus plying on the highway. It stood out with its ornate design, and rich colours and even the shape. Having travelled by bus for almost 20 years I had never seen it, the way I did now.

The boxed shape of the hand cart so much characteristically Kashmiri making you wonder what lies inside the storage box

The food of Kashmir has been celebrated and talked about a lot but not the bakery. From the elitist kulcha to the plebeian lavasa there is so much choice

The brick houses with the sloping corrugated tin roofs ( in some villages one still finds a few mud houses with thatched roofs). I also came across a wooden granary which are or were so much part of any farmer’s house.

A village woman wearing carrying a samovar on her head to the fields is such a beautiful and a charming image. The pheran and the head dress gives it exotic feel. Add a man with a skull cap wearing a tweed jacket on a pathan suit and the picture is complete

There may no romance, no gloss to these things but they are so inherently part of our identity that makes them so endearing. And till the time we are overwhelmed by the influences of modernity, let us celebrate them, let us preserve them.

Fallacy

The mirror shows me a fallacy, an image that doesn't resemble me. Accustomed as I am to fragmented, splinterred parts of my self, the multiples of my individuality, each begining with me and each a whole but never complete Boistrous, paranoid, agile, morbid, sacrificing, arrogant pieces held together by the momentum, the motion of life like of the hands of an clock. Undefined, elusive, unlimited I want to grow, to be myself undettered by the cohesiveness of the glass. I choose to live each image, each notion, each pattern, each source.

Anonymity

The silhoutte of the last ship on the horizon faded into anonymity as the sun wrapped itself in the clouds. My acquaintance with her lasting a few moments just enough to enamour me to her blue mast, her quiet presence against the soft sound of the waves hitting the shore. Her grace and beauty stood against the grandeur of the ocean.Her ephemeral presence and the certainity of her absence made happiness and sadness inseparable in a single moment.
Perhaps I would never see her blue mast again, perhaps I would never know about the journey she had made, perhaps the memory of her drifting away with the waves would also fade away. Each thought struggled against a recalcitrant heart unwilling to acknowledge the agony of separation The vast emptiness of the ocean now a reminder of her transitory presence. The enormity of the loss woke me up to the insignificance of our desires, the meaninglessness of existence, its impermanance and the irony of an eternal moment.

Intution

Deep deep inside in each one of us there is a small little corner, secluded, hidden...unknown to the world...it is this corner we seek in our solitude, it is here that we search for that something which will make us complete. Often the search has no face, often there is no end to it, often it is just the tunnel with just a flicker of light. But it is this little tiny speck of light that keeps many of us going, the hope that someday we will see our self, our soul in full radiance.
Till that time this small little corner is the source where you seek yourself. The search for oneself is the most exhilarating journey; it is the most seductive of all romance as layers come off slowly and gradually. The answers are never loud, never explicit, never absolute just intuitive, just a feeling, a hint. You discover, you learn, you absorb, you evolve.
The journey continues...

The school bus that never came!

Perhaps most of us have a story that connects us to ourselves, telling us who we are, a reflection into ourselves. I too have many small ones; stories that have perhaps made me what I am, these aren’t just random memories; they are the roots of my existence, the edifice of my being.
My first memories from my childhood are when I must have been 5 years. Every morning my grandfather would walk me to the bus stop, hold me a one rupee coin and seat me on the bonnet next to the driver asking him to drop me near the school 6 miles away. Sometimes I would get a lift with a neighbour on his bicycle and on a lucky day in a jeep. How I wished for a school bus then!
School wasn’t very exciting and all I remember is the time I spent day dreaming on the back benches. Life was simple with the small joys that came along - the pristine blue sky, the first flakes of snow, the weekend game of cricket and many such not so hard to get pleasures of life. It was also about the small things I coveted and couldn’t get. If at school I would have to settle for an orange bar instead of the ‘milk’ bar that wouldn’t fit my pocket money, at home it was the Comic books that were always borrowed from my cousins or the Sunday movie that I would want to catch at the neighbour’s house often from outside the window.
When I grew a little older I wanted a bicycle, in my little imaginary world it was my vehicle to my dreams, of simple heroism, of the romance with life, of freedom. The bicycle, a blue second hand one, came for a day. It was returned the next day for being expensive. For many days I would visit the repair shop and hope the owner would just see the disappointment in my moist eyes and gift it to me.
Till date the most treasured thing has been the cricket bat gifted to me by papa. It was perhaps the first thing that was completely mine, I was proud to own one. Battered and bandaged it lived on for many years.
I have always been a recluse and perhaps it has something to do with the days I spent playing cricket alone against the wall, my little sister being no good at it and the cousins staying away for reasons not comprehended by childhood.
In college when I lived on my own in a hostel I splurged, on books. The conflict was small when the choice was between clothes and books; it became bigger when it had to be between a meal and a book. I often chose the latter. One of the most distressing moments came when all the 200 of them were eaten away by moths. Not a single word was left.
My kid sister who used to call me her little daddy was everything that I wasn’t, lively, vivacious and full of life. Born on Ist April she was a prankster. And I thought it was a prank when she left the world without saying a single word to me. But I truly believe she is back in my life this time as my real daughter, Mayaa.
After many years I still prefer the orange bar, have bought many books and yes I still ride a bicycle with the same enthusiasm. But today I enjoy everything that life has given me and try to fret less over what it hasn’t. Life after all has its own way to even it out.