Travels through Kashmir

Copyright: Rahul Pandita, 2008

Two songs, too many memories

When I was, I think, seven years old, a couple of songs, which I heard and saw on a black and white Weston T.V. set, tore apart my heart. Twenty-five years later they still make me drunk. My childhood sweetheart, actress Sandhya features in both these songs. You can see them here and here.

Secret Desire

I have always wondered about ambition. What is mine? Well, becoming a writer. Is it? I don't know. But here, let me share with you a secret desire of mine. I want to become this.

Poems of longing

“Have you read Ritusamhara?” she asked.

The four of them were driving out of the city. Somewhere in the northwest, a mansion lay waiting for them – an old relic of the past, which belonged to a man who had made it big in pharmaceutical business in a city along the Arabian Sea. Ritusamhara. The memories of a decade-old past occurred like a flash, very much like last-night’s perfume, which had now diffused with sweat beneath his neck.

Ritusamhara. He had held the verses close to his heart while sitting on a round-about, next to a news agency. Towards the right, a cinema-hall had been closed for renovation. On one end, a lone man sold cigarettes. A small eatery offered tea and coffee to love-lorn couples.

Even during the nights made pitch-dark
By clouds thundering long and loud
Impassioned women
Set out to meet their lovers
Their path lit by lightning flashes

The year was 1997. And he was in love.

Love? Love was like a coin coated with opium. To be kept hidden behind the cheek as it released its invisible coating in the bloodstream. The ears would turn red. Kalidasa would lend a private audience. Seasons would come gushing in. The cigarette stuck between two fingers would turn limp with sweat dripping from the palm. The pen would sprint on blank pages. The gashes of ink would decorate his hands. And the whole of his shirt in the front. There would be an orgy of words – forty pages by the time the tea-maker brewed his tea. He would then raise the cup to his lips, pretending that he was drinking hemlock.

Ritusamhara. Ten years have passed. More than ten years. The script is lost. The cinema-hall is a multiplex. There is no news agency. It is an Adidas showroom now. The tea-maker is lost. Café Coffee Days are around now. There are no pages to be filled. The coin has rusted; it tastes sour now – tamarind like.

“No, I haven’t read it,” he replies to her, “what is it?”

Ritusamhara. A nail in my heart. Remain there. Make me bleed.

Grenades as metaphors

I have come back from Kashmir, my third trip in the last two months. This time I almost got lynched at Nawhatta, in downtown Srinagar. My colleague, photographer Shome Basu was also caught badly in an incident of stone pelting.

The Kashmiris are too angry.

But in between, we got some time off and, one afternoon, the two of us went to the Ahdoos for lunch. The hotel’s restaurant was empty because, one, it is the month of Ramzan, and two, a strike had been called by the separatists, and nobody was in a mood to enjoy lunch. So, we got the seniormost and, obviously, the most experienced waiter to serve us.

We had rice, Roganjosh and Haakh.

I felt so sleepy afterwards that I was tempted to cancel all my post-lunch appointments. But after a strong Kehwa, I continued my interviews, and also managed to witness a major clash between a bunch of youth and the paramilitary forces.
This was when a young man died – a man who was not even taking part in the protests. He had just stepped out to buy toffees for his nephew when a rubber bullet him, and he died on the spot.

A day later, I met that two-year old nephew of his. He is still under shock and all his chirpiness is gone. He is almost paralysed by the shock.

Back at the hotel, the image of that boy kept on haunting me. Till Muzamil Jaleel arrived, and till midnight regaled us with his anecdotes.
As we invoked Bacchus, 'Z' drooled at Sridevi’s rain dance sequence in a film of 80s. Noticing that, Muzammil made a dig at his alleged virginity at the age of thirty-two.

“It makes no sense to watch someone hurl a grenade; one has to do it himself,” he said.

In Kashmir, only examples of grenades or bullets serve as metaphors.

Life is a half marathon

The well of my stories has not dried up – I have many stories to tell you. Like Anupam Kher says in Santosh Sivan’s forthcoming film, Tahaan, set in Kashmir: Mere liye to zindagi ek dastaan hai.

But it’s just that I am increasingly struggling with right words and a right beginning.

I also have a book to finish and at least two major assignments are to be done from Kashmir. That means I will have to go through bundles of documents on issues like Naxalism and mining in the next two days. In between, I will also have to write mails, make phone calls for appointments, take print outs of flight tickets and money from the accounts department.

Two days later, I will have to be in Kashmir.

I am also seriously pursuing running. When I began a few weeks ago, after throwing a brand new packet of cigarettes out of my car, I could barely run two hundred metres. Afterwards, I would clutch my chest and, sometimes, hold my waist for supporting my back. Now, I can run up to two kilometres. So, between running and walking, I do about eight kilometres every day.

This Sunday, at six in the morning (Yes, I get up at six these days!), along with a mountaineer friend, I went to the Lodhi gardens, and ran the entire jogging track thrice. Later, we had a buffet breakfast at eight at the nearby American Diner inside the Habitat Centre.

I intend to run a half marathon before this year ends.

Some friends have asked for a better pic of my bookshelf. I am finding it a bit embarrassing to do so. But, let me tell you, I have bought eight books in the past one week, which includes an anthology of poetry and A Blue Hand by Deborah Baker.

So far as reading is concerned, I have just finished Hari Kunzru’s The Impressionist and regret not reading it earlier. I am now reading Herzog by Saul Bellow. I like Bellow very much and am desperately looking for one of his novels called Humboldt’s Gift. I have also been searching, in vain, for Heinrich Boll’s Billiards At Half-past Nine.

If you find them anywhere, please buy them for me.

Gates open on Sunday

Sunday means thicker newspapers – the joy of reading a ‘Moby Dickish’ piece hidden somewhere between articles on Olympics and obese kids. It means drinking mugfuls of tea and cooing at the plants in the balcony. It means washing your sneakers and cleaning the bookrack with Colin. It means scrubbing your body at leisure while bathing and working diligently on the shaving lather. It means combining your breakfast and lunch – is that what they call brunch? – and then witness Pran Nath Razdan turn into Jonathan Bridgeman in a Hari Kunzru novel. It means keeping your gaze fixed at your toes till you fall asleep. It means holding discussions, while savoring roasted peanuts, with an uncle– on marriages in Jammu and Manmohan Singh’s Independence day speech. It means catching portions of Bergman’s ‘Summer with Monica’ or ‘Satte pe Satta’ on television.

Louis de Bernieres: They say that, for a madman, every day is a holiday, but they also say that insanity has seventy gates.

Let us say that, on Sunday, all those gates open up for me.

Barog's memory pill

I thought I saw you. At the eatery, next to a railway station named after a Sufi saint, you sat in one corner, your hair tied the way it always has been, stirring an empty Styrofoam cup with a spoon. Or so I thought. When the face lit in the bright afternoon sun, I could see that it was not you. It could have been you.

I wish it had been you.

Passing past the shrine, I can see a few foreigners, their eyes red with Hashish, haggling with an auto rickshaw. Next to it is a Methodist Church, which I had never noticed in twelve years. Now, as you warm inside me like a fresh teardrop, I can see the glorious brick building. I feel like stopping and going inside. As if you would be inside, your head bent on the altar. You and your silent prayers. And that faded smile, which was my unguent till its memory became a pill to be kept under the tongue, the moment I were to die.

It is strange how I have gradually stopped feeling anything. The thought of Narcissus in an empty Bombay milk bottle doesn't conjure up as much as a twitch. Or the thought of those wild, red berries in dried milk tins, hanging beneath the moss-laden rooftop of our imaginary cottage. Or the memories of tangy nimbu-soda in the student centre of Punjab University campus.
Or the memories of those mad, vagrant motorcycle trips to Kasauli and, on the way, leaving a dried tulip for the English Engineer, Mr. Barog, who ended his life after failing to make two tunnels meet. Or getting those silly pictures clicked in over-sized Himachali caps. Or singing “Hoga tumse pyaara kaun…” like Rishi Kapoor and Padmini Kolhapure, pretending a friend's sofa to be the train top. Or sitting in the last row of a late night show of “Kranti,” using popcorn as a ruse to hold hands.

Today, someone asked me if I had seen a film recently. I looked at her and said nothing. This evening I then went and bought a lone ticket for a romantic film. I asked for the last row. The girl at the ticket counter looked at me for a moment and then silently handed me one. On my way inside the hall, I picked up a bag of popcorn.
The seat next to me remained vacant. I imagined you sitting there, locking your fingers in mine. The popcorn remained untouched. I left at the interval.

Sitting alone at a café later, I imagined being with you. And I thought I would cry. I took out from the secret pocket of my wallet that pearl, which I had picked up from your necklace you said you had worn on your last school farewell.

I kept it like a pill under my tongue, as if I were to die.

Bullshit again

There has been a heavy spell of rain. As it fell on the top of the airconditioner fitted in my room window, I closed my eyes, listening to the pitter-patter of the raindrops. Then I got up and made myself a cup of tea.

I have a bad throat which hurts badly.

Actually I am bullshitting; I have nothing to say.

Geelani's shit and Hindu "hit"

Every morning, Syed Ali Geelani sits on a white porcelain commode, probably imported from Saudi Arabia. His shit, full of anti-India sentiments, travels through pipes to the Wular Lake in his hometown Sopore, in Kashmir, and contributes, on a daily basis, to the shrinking of what used to be Asia’s largest fresh water body. Over the years, Geelani’s morning ritual has been responsible for shrinking the lake area from 202 square kilometres to 30 square kilometres. In Srinagar, meanwhile, his other colleagues, who have been on the streets to force the cancellation of land allotment to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board, citing ecological reasons among others, do the needful with the Dal lake, adding their bit to the 35 million litres of sewage, which is pumped daily into the lake. On top of it, they run houseboats, where clueless Indian families bite into succulent Goshtaba and get photos clicked in traditional Kashmiri attire.

Together with the government and a former Governor, the Geelanis of Kashmir have turned our sentiments into a Draupadi, each party gambling with a loaded dice.

Last year, it was powdered ice. On television, they showed the Governor’s men, with their boots on, inside the sanctum sanctorum, enhancing the size of Shivling as if it were a female model in dire need of a silicon implant. Then, this year, we were shown visuals of an artificial, marble Shivling being made in Udaipur, Rajasthan which, we were told, would be put inside to enable the piligrims to have a “complete darshan.”

To hell with you all! You think, people are spending money on their Kashmir travel and they have to have a “paisa vasool” through the darshan of a full-size, artificial Shivling. For you, a visit to Amarnath may be picnic. For us, it’s a way of life.

My early memories of our tryst with Shiva come from an aunt who would, every morning, sing Ateebheeshan katubhashan, Yama kinkar patli…, her eyes brimming with tears, begging Shiv to be present when the Yama took her to another world. It meant decorating Shiv as a bridegroom, with silver foil and bel patra, every Shivratri, when snow would reach till our bedroom window. It meant that dream which my father saw as a young man with a new job, in which Shiv appeared and guided him through some confusing office accounts. It means my sister trying to explain to her friends: “We are Shaivites.”

So, you see, I don’t care whether you get that land or not. I don’t care for your darshan as well. But please, leave that Shivling alone.

Yesterday, in an Indian Express photo, Rajnath Singh was caught offering a ladoo to Venkaiah Naidu. Both men could not hide their glee. In the election season, they couldn’t have asked for more. On NDTV, they are showing five men and a woman in Jammu – BJP supporters – wearing Vaishno Devi bandanas, shouting slogans for the benefit of cameras.

“Jo Hindu hit ki baat karega, wo hi desh pe raaj karega.” The woman almost looks like the one in Jammu’s Bakshi Nagar, who washed the walls of her cowshed with cheap distemper, and offered it to my uncle’s family for renting, immediately after our migration from the valley in 1990.

Of course, after almost two decades, we are welcome in Kashmir. Last year, they even allowed the Janamashtami procession. So, as long as we come for a weekend trip, stay in a hotel or a houseboat, buy carpets and shawls as souvenirs for family and friends, we are most welcome. But what about our houses? Our jobs? Our orchards? Errr… you see, Pandit ji, we cannot guarantee your safety. The Afghanis don’t spare us, either.

So, you please stay in Jammu. We will come and visit you. And, of course, you have your ration cards. Pandit ji, you must be a little optimistic. Jammu is not that bad. Now you even have replicas of Kshir Bhawani and Hari Parbat. I must leave now… for Islamabad… sorry, Anantnag.

Meanwhile, 290 kilometres away from Jammu, as those yellow Border Road Organisation milestones would tell you, a man, a free man, sits on a Kashmiri carpet, beside a hookah, tearing apart choicest pieces of lamb. His name is Farooq Ahmad Dar.

You know him very well. He is also called Bitta Karate.

The day Indira died

We heard the news first on the All India Radio. Immediately afterwards, film songs were taken off air and one could only hear strains of Sitar.

Indira Gandhi, the daughter of Kashmir’s most worthy son, Jawaharlal Nehru, had been shot by her Sikh bodyguards.

I remember, father was about to leave for office. In the weak autumn sunshine I was playing my usual game of “Headquarters” – a game in which I would be an Indian soldier, destroying Karachi. Imagining worn-out Eveready battery cells as dynamite, connected by woolen thread, I brought the “enemy’s” port city to its knees almost every day.

And now, I loped after my father, who informed his brother about what he had heard on the radio and together they sat huddled, not knowing what to do. They kept on taking a name, which I had heard just a few months ago from father: Bhindranwale.

Many years ago, before I was born, father’s family had visited Amritsar where my father’s sister, who was a young girl then, was operated upon for an ailment. Among other things, father vividly remembered the serenity inside the sanctum sanctorum of the Golden temple and the piping hot paranthas which he had devoured in a dhaba. Upon Indira Gandhi’s directions, the army had laid siege to the temple, in June 1984, flushing out extremists led by Bhindranwale. I was eight years old.

In retaliation – I couldn’t figure out the connection then – some Muslim men, in order to show solidarity to the Sikhs, had stormed into the Hanuman temple, built on the banks of Jhelum, near one of the seven bridges, in Srinagar, and hurled the deity’s idol into the gushing waters below. It was a sad moment indeed, more so for me, since my sister and I would pass that temple every day, while on our way back to home from school, and, on every Tuesday, sister would buy boondi from her pocket money and offer it to the God. All this while, I would look at the sadhus, who assembled there, their bodies smeared with ash, and matted hair looking like pieces of rope, smoking their chillum.

More than an hour passed. The All India Radio said that Indira Gandhi was taken to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences; they said her condition was critical. My uncle looked at father. He was now turning the knob of the radio. After a few minutes, a crackling voice appeared. It belonged to a BBC news reader.

“Mrs. Indira Gandhi, India’s prime minister has died.”

I don’t remember whether father or uncle spoke after that. In the meantime, my sister came back from school. She was distraught; her friends, Mubina and Ghazala had danced on the road outside the school when they heard of the assassination. There was celebration everywhere in the valley.

The time had come to act, I thought. As the family sat glued around the Bush radio set, I sneaked into the kitchen garden. In a polythene bag, I collected raw tomatoes. They were my hand grenades. Tying the bag around my waist, I waited for “them.”

Hilal, our neighbour’s son and few years older to me, appeared on the wall dividing our house. He and his brothers would often sit on that wall, asking us to give them some apples from the tree in our garden.

“Can you sing Jana Gana Mana…?” I shouted at him.

He looked at me as if I had gone crazy. Then he spat at the flower bed beneath him, on our side.

I don’t know when my hand went to my waist and I began throwing a volley of tomatoes at him. One hit him in the eye and burst there. He was caught unawares. He let out a cry and fell backwards.

Soon, we would see images of a young Rahul, who had lost his grandmother, his arms clutched around his father who wore dark glasses.

In Delhi, meanwhile, a massacre had begun. Our old Sikh carpenter was devastated; his sister lived with her husband in a west Delhi colony. Later, we came to know that her husband was killed – a mob put a burning tyre, filled with petrol, around his neck like a garland.

Three days after Indira Gandhi died, my mother’s mother, who had turned senile in her old age, began to see visions of two men aiming at her with a gun. I had grown up hearing stories from her. There was a poster of Charlie Chaplin in my room, and, for many days after I had put it there, she would burn incense sticks in front of it, thinking Chaplin was Englishmen’s God.

On the fifth day, she passed away in her sleep.

In another five years, I would have to leave Charlie Chaplin behind. In another five years, we would be queuing up to receive tomatoes in relief camps.

After all, we were refugees now.

Too much Hemingway

There is some wine in the cupboard and a half bottle of whiskey. A country song is playing on the space radio, and I am drinking some coffee. I cannot have wine; I am on medication – some strange-sounding antibiotics have been prescribed to me for an infection which no one has been able to figure out.

I have been reading too much of Hemingway and, I am mesmerized with Paris, wine, typewriter – not necessarily in that order. I think I will make myself an Omelette tomorrow. I can put slices of tomato in it and perhaps toss a few mushrooms in as well.

My heart beat in rest mode is 65. A friend says that is too good. He has gone off to another city to meet another friend. Probably they would be having beer and talking about me. They might be feeling sleepy now since it is almost midnight.

I think I am sleepy too. But before I hit the sack, I must read more Hemingway.

I think the doctor I went to has a secret lover.

I think I must stop reading Hemingway.

I need to write

There is nothing to write about these days. There is no turbulence; my imagination has turned lame and I have no crutches to offer.

Actually, it is very important to discipline oneself in order to be able to write. The American writer, Philip Roth is believed to have kept for a long time two small signs near his desk: “Stay put” and “No optional striving.” Optional striving, as one profile of his describes, includes everything except writing, exercise, sleep and solitude.

I promise I will have little optional striving if at all I have to have some. From now on, I will write regularly. Today, time is on my side. Tomorrow, it will move on.

I need to write everyday. Without fail. I have to stay put.

Looking at obituaries

Is it important to have a cigarette stuck between my two fingers when I look at obituaries? I don’t pay much heed to this question that only I have thrown at myself. For now, I only look at the pictures of the dead.

The first photo looks like one shot for a matrimonial alliance. Face tilted towards one of the studio walls, lips stuck together, almost in an embrace, and one end of the Sari hiding the seemingly sharp shoulder blade.

And now, the photo of the young woman, sent to a newspaper office along with a few lines, which most of the mourning families usually tend to stick to:

The sunshine of our lives, the prayer of our hearts…

There would be other pictures too, probably stashed away in an old purse or in a cupboard above the television set in front of which the family sat for dinner every night, watching morbid soaps: a picture taken during a college farewell ceremony (remember, she was adjudged Miss Smile), another taken during a family vacation (she wearing a straw hat and staring at the lens, her thoughts somewhere else), yet another at a wedding (she looking dreamily at the henna-stained palms of the bride).

The family is probably still in mourning. Must be, since at least two inches more than usual of newspaper space has been booked.

Memory is short-lived. With each passing day, with each passing moment, she would be remembered only in occasional spasms. And then life will ease itself into a routine. After the mourning period is over, the only person who might remember her is an old, toothless grandmother, as she feels her prayer beads between her feeble fingertips.

Death, I suppose, snatches everything.

I cannot look at the next photo. My cigarettes are finished.

The story that never took off

More than a year ago, I tried working on a story about a man, born in Kashmir, immediately after the land was formed out of the water body.

It went on like this:

In the beginning there was only water.

Even one’s thought could not go beyond it without getting wet. Nothing escaped it. Water overwhelmed. It shocked. Its massive tongue devoured everything.

And then, one day, the Earth woke up.

It yawned and the mountains trembled. The tremors created a massive vent, which sucked the entire water, like marrow from a bone. Someone, I do not remember now who, told me that I was born immediately afterwards.

My ancestors broke up from their group, while travelling through the mountains of Hindukush. My mother was carrying me in her womb when the breakaway group arrived in the newly-formed land.

The water had left its mark everywhere. The land was still a slush at most of the places. But something about the place stuck them so much that the group decided to settle there. And that is where I opened my eyes, escaping narrowly from being strangulated by the umbilical cord.

The professor of Calculus

He walked alone on a frosty winter morning. Fresh snow had fallen in the night, and the sky was overcast. Beneath the soft cushion of the fresh snow lay hidden a muddy crust of ice, capable of breaking the bones of the children and the aged, should they slip over it.

He walked fast, trying to keep pace with the calculations his mind had gotten into. Inside the long pheran, the stitches of which were torn from one side, the thumbs of his both hands moved together over the lines around his fingers.

It was over these lines, many years ago, that his father had taught him counting and, the habit had stayed with him. He no longer attempted simple problems of addition or subtraction. It ran much deeper now, so much so that people around him thought he had gone mad.

Dinanath’s entire life, one could say, revolved around Calculus. A professor of history, who was also a Marxist, had met Dinanath during a marriage ceremony and is said to have remarked later, “Calculus is the opium of the masses.”

Dinanath was still solving equations when he crossed the Ganpatyar temple. The sound of bells along with multiple voices of people singing hymns in praise of the elephant God, Ganesha, could be heard on the road outside, and, in fact, till the last corner of the street.

Beside the temple, the old milkman was beginning to set up his shop. He sat on a goatskin with a Kangri kept next to him. From the circular loop of wicker, on the top of the earthen pot, hung a silver spoon, used to stir the burning coal inside.

“Oye Dina,” the man shouted when he saw him, “where are you headed towards, in this cold wave?”

Dinanath stopped. His fingers stopped as well. He turned his head and looked at the milkman. And then, without uttering a word, he moved on.

On the wooden bridge – one of the seven built over the river Jhelum, Dinanath stopped. He leaned over the railing and looked at the water. That was when his neighbour, Ratanlal spotted him.

“Dinanath,” he said sarcastically, “are you done with your mathematics? Are you contemplating jumping into the water?”

Dinanath looked at him and, then, he looked back at the grey waters.

“I don’t need to jump over to establish contact with water,” he said slowly, almost weighing his every word.

Ratanlal laughed. “What do you mean, my learned Sir?” he asked.

Dinanath touched the railing and, with the knuckles of his right hand, he began hammering against it. And then he said: “You see, Ratanlal, I am on the bridge, the bridge is on water; bridge bridge cancel, I am on water.”

And then he let out a smile. As Ratanlal looked, Dinanath’s hands went back inside the pheran. It was time for some more Calculus.

(In this story, I have tried to imagine the world of a man, who is believed to have lived in Srinagar around the Habbakadal area - a man who, it is said, was in love with mathematics and philosophy)

Photo courtesy: kplink.com

Three cheers for daughters

Just like that! With this sentiment, Avinash of Mohalla started a new blog after he became the proud father of a baby girl. Aptly titled, Betiyon ka Blog (Daughter's Club), this little space became a meeting point of all proud fathers, and of course, mothers.

Ravish, for example, put a few sound clips of his daughter Tanini's attempt at singing. Vibha Rani wrote about how her daughter Toshi is trying to spend her holidays. Kavita wrote a heart-wrenching poem on female foeticide.

The blog has now won the Laadli media award for gender sensitivity.

If you are a proud father or mother of a girl, you are most welcome to become a member of the blog. Since I am still growing up myself, I plan to put a few anecdotes about my darling niece, Sharanya. Among other things, we both love to watch Mr. Bean movies. Sharanya thinks I look like Mr. Bean.

As far as I know, that is the best compliment she can give to anyone.

A graphic novel on Indian television

A couple of years ago, I created a mini graphic novel for Sarai. A friend, Irfan, who is the only sensible guy in the entire Radio FM industry had been trying hard ever since to put this novel online. I sent a CD to another friend, Avinash, who runs perhaps the most popular blog in Hindi, Mohalla. But owing to my rich technological skills, the CD was found out to be blank.
After waiting for any initiative on my side, and getting tired of waiting, Irfan has finally taken pains to scan a copy, page by page, and now, it is online.
You can see it here.

Gods' court marriage

I am late again. It is close to midnight as I drag my feet, climb the eighteen stairs that lead to my first-floor flat, and gently knock at the door with my car keys. A faint cough sounds from inside – that is my father’s way of telling me that there is no need to knock again, he is awake. In a moment the door opens and I am let in.

My clothes reek of cigarette smoke. My dinner is kept on the table, covered with my mother’s old shawl to keep it warm. After tearing open the day’s posts – bank statements, old copies of magazines which should have arrived a week ago, books, free passes – I sit down to eat. On the table, beside a reclining Ganesha, there is an almanac and a tattered copy of Shiv Mahimnastotram.

“Don’t eat anything impure tomorrow, it is Ashtami,” my father’s voice almost gets drowned in the hum of the ceiling fan. A siren begins to blare somewhere and, on the road below, the watchman, probably drunk by now, strikes the electric pole with his cane.
By “impure”, my father implies eggs, meat, and, if possible, alcohol also. Every month, a day before the Ashtami, my father issues this advisory.

I don’t know how to use the almanac that has guided my family and thousands of others for generations. For us, the Kashmiri Pandits, the entire life cycle is dictated and, perhaps, led by the minute calculations of the planets. For as long as I can remember, a thick, blue book has been arriving at our home every year around Shivratri and then, for the rest of the year, our lives are governed by it. Every month, on Ashtami, for instance, my father keeps a fast, after consulting the almanac.

The almanac decides everything for us – when to get married, when to enter a new house, when to buy a new car or when to join a new job. The last one is a very touchy issue at my house since I change my jobs so frequently that even the muhurat – the auspicious timings – fall short.

Over the years, though, the almanac has somewhat faded from our spiritual consciousness. There are times when my father no longer remembers the Shraadh – the death anniversary of my grandparents; on those days he is supposed to keep a fast. After he has had his breakfast, he then remembers it all of a sudden. But by then it is too late.

He spends the rest of that day looking at the wall in front of him.

Barring Ashtami, no other auspicious days such as Amawasya and Purnamasi are remembered any longer. Even if they are, no one cares about them any longer.

Even our festivals and marriage ceremonies have changed altogether. Shivratri, for instance, would be at least a week-long affair back home in Kashmir. I remember, as a child I would accompany my father to Habbakadal, built on the banks of the river Jhelum. We would get fresh fish and then earthen pots required for the puja from the Muslim potter.

For other puja paraphernalia, we would visit Kanth Joo’s tiny shop. The old, toothless man would be sitting on a cushion and over his head was a pulley through which ran thread used for tying up small and big bundles of almonds, cashew nuts, silver foil, vermillion, lotus seed, sugar cones, chestnut flour and what not.

At home, mother would cook three varieties of meat and fish curry apart from spinach and, of course, the Haakh. The electrician, sweeper and many others would come and ask for small tokens of money. The children would play with sea shells and men would gamble for the sake of fun.

In the spring of 1990, no ceremonial conch would be blown in the Pandit households. We were too scared. On the roads, young men, their LT jackets stuffed with weapons, roamed around, looking for potential targets.

On the fourth day of Shivratri, a hush prevailed on the banks of the river. Families arrived silently, to immerse the gods in the water.

In the dark waters, devoid of floating earthen lamps, the newly-wed Lord Shiva and the goddess looked as if they had eloped and then solemnized their marriage in a court.

In Jammu, and elsewhere too, we now have Chowmein stalls in marriage parties. Instead of Lalded, the youngsters would rather listen to Latino. The marriage ceremony itself, which took close to eight hours, is now finished in two or three. Nobody has time.

Jobs are waiting. Traffic signals are waiting. Friends who don’t what Ashtami is are waiting.

The next day, I am at the press club with a group of friends. There are fish fingers and grilled chicken on the table. I pick up a piece and bring it closer to my mouth.

Suddenly, I remember last night.

I remember the look in my father’s eyes and the cream-coloured wall.

“One fresh lime please,” I tell the waiter.

To Sir, with love

The story of an award-winning, upper-caste Geologist who is silently changing the lives of underprivileged children, most of them from lower castes, in a remote corner of India.

A fan has finally started working. But it is not that electricity has reached Kunaura, a small village, around 23 miles from Lucknow, the capital of eastern state of Uttar Pradesh, one of the major centres of rebellion during India’s first war of Independence in 1857. It’s because of a few solar panels which have been erected on the top of the Bhartiya Grameen Vidyalaya (Indian rural school) building, which has been running here for the past 35 years.

More than the blades of the fan, this new development has energized Dr. S.B Misra and his wife Nirmala. With the searing summer heat already knocking at the doors, they are glad that at least children in one classroom can breathe easy now.

The fan is a milestone in a journey which began in Canada in 1967 with three words: Kya kiya jaaye? (What to do?). As a young Geologist, Dr. Misra had come a long way from his village, adjacent to Kunaura. Though the village was not very far from Lucknow, it was light years away from development. As a child, Dr. Misra had walked for hours on non-existent roads to attend school. He had studied hard during hot summer nights, devoid of electricity. And now, in Canada, his entire future lay in front of him – bright and promising. More so after he had made a very important discovery – a 565-million-year-old fossil that is the oldest record of multi-cellular life on earth.

But 1967 was also the year when parts of India reeled under a severe drought. And then there were those three words: Kya kiya jaaye? which Dr. Misra and his friends had scribbled on a notebook.

It was time to make some tough decisions.

By the time Misra returned to India, and got married to Nirmala, the foundations of Bhartiya Grameen Vidyalaya (BGV) had been laid.

In 2008, the roll-call in the school is 720 students. A majority of them are from the lower castes. It’s not that they don’t have an option of studying in the nearby government schools. “It’s because BGV is as renowned as Welhams (a very renowned school in India) here,” quips Dr. Misra.

As we enter the school premises, the classes are on, and except the sound of recitation of tables from a junior class, there is not a whimper of sound to be heard anywhere. Nirmala, who is the principal of the school, looks at the campus and a faint smile appears on her lips. “It was my husband’s dream, but for me it became the greatest challenge of my life,” she says.

On May 14 in 1972, Dr. Misra and Nirmala got married. Dr. Misra had laid only one condition for marriage: The girl should share his vision of a school for the rural children. Before marriage, Nirmala had never seen a village but she had a passion for teaching. In less than two months after her marriage, the couple landed at Kunaura. Initially, Nirmala would make a round of villages, asking people to send their children to the school. “In order to avoid offending local customs, I would draw a veil over my face while talking to them,” remembers Nirmala. In between, a rumour spread that Misra had come back because his mental condition was not fit and he had been advised to take rest. Nevertheless, in the first year, fifty students joined the school.

A few of Misra’s colleagues, who shared his passion also helped initially. One of them was VVN Rao, a physicist, who helped build the school building.

But in two years, all of Misra’s savings were exhausted. So it was decided that one of them would have to take up a job. “Since it was I who would earn more salary, I left,” says Dr. Misra.

Meanwhile, Nirmala had given birth to twin sons. And now, in the absence of her husband, she was required to run the school. That meant a walk of eight miles to school and then the same distance to reach home. There were no roads and during monsoons, the narrow path would turn into a swamp. “Nirmala didi would cross through knee-high slush of mud and dung and then, after reaching school, she would change into a spare sari kept in her bag,” remembers a teacher, who has been with the school since beginning. Later on, the kids joined their father in Nainital where Dr. Misra had taken up a job, while Nirmala kept running the school.

In all these years, BGV has literally changed the face of this part of Uttar Pradesh. The first child who went to school from a village called Jafarpurua – known for producing dacoits – came to BGV. Today, another boy from this village, who studied at this school and went on to complete his Masters in Economics teaches here. Another teacher, Banke Lal cycles to school every day from his village, 13 miles away. “Every day, a few staff members of a nearby school accost me, and put pressure on me to join them, but I always refuse.”

For parents here, it’s a tough decision sending their children to BGV. In government schools, they provide children with meals, something that BGV cannot afford. “One day I asked a child if he was feeling well. He said no; he had a stomach ache. I realised later that he was simply hungry,” remembers Dr. Misra. Another positive development has been a steady increase in the enrollment of Muslim children. “Those families now prefer our school to their madrassas,” says Nirmala.

Even after these years, the lack of funds means that there still is no electricity in the school. “Bringing it to the school will cost 50,000 rupees which we don’t have right now,” rues Dr. Misra. Recently an Indian company and an NRI has donated some money but there is a lot that needs to be done. The temporary roof over few classrooms needs to be changed. Pointing towards her chair, Nirmala says, “ This is the chair I got here in 1972.”

How difficult has it been to run this school? “It’s a battle between Eklavya and Arjuna,” says Dr. Misra.

In the meantime, the fossil Dr. Misra had discovered in Canada has just been named after him – Fractofusus misrai. Initially, a deep conspiracy had taken place, hatched by Western scientists to deprive Dr. Misra of his credit. But his family fought a sustained battle; one of his sons actually learnt HTML programming to put his father’s case on the Internet. And finally, the Misras won.

Dr. Misra is now writing a story of his life in his book, The story of an ordinary Indian, which will appear later this year. But for him, it is, perhaps, this school which is his reply to the eternal quest of Kya kiya jaaye.

(The school really needs support. Those who want to help can contact Dr. S.B. Misra at 91-94155-60309 or 91-522-4010 640)