Read more... Comments (3)
Sameer Bhat
The Symbol
The year is 1984. On a crisp February morning the space shuttle Challenger made its first landing at the Kennedy Space Center. It was a heady time in Kashmir too and Farooq was at his flamboyant best, ruling his fief, riding to Gulmarg on a thap-thap motor with the poor DIG trailing in a police jeep, pure Bollywood style. Little Gujjar girls hiking the alpine forests, wet firewood on their delicate heads, would stop in their tracks to see the prodigal scorch rubber. That kind of peaceful...
Unidentified
Inexplicable things keep happening in our stomping ground. When everything looks calm and peaceful, mysterious men appear from nowhere and slaughter a few blokes, before disappearing into the dark of night. Only the dead know who their executioners are and corpses seldom speak. Nary a word. Friends and family weep quietly on sad evenings, while neighborhood dogs bark in a fierce readiness, outside. Anonymous assassins roam the streets.
The blame game had already begun. Two poor girls have...
The blame game had already begun. Two poor girls have...
The flag bearers
Srinagar is cold in January. As cold as charity. Chilay-Kalan reigns supreme, like a polar bear in a blizzard. Only two things keep the mercury rising in the middle of winter: Srinagar’s smokey Harisa pinds [joints] and the nutty right-wing BJP’s sudden brain-fart to hoist the Indian flag on Lal Chowk’s clock tower.
Jan 6, 1993: A town torched
There was sound of a huge bang that morning, like someone blowing up a cartful of dynamite. Just before the cockcrow. Most of the townspeople were asleep. The dawn prayers had thin attendance, mostly because it gets very cold in January. By nine o’clock a military patrol was out, doing rounds of the main marketplace. Suddenly gunmen emerged from a narrow alley and shot random bullets at the party before quickly disappearing in the maze that old Sopore is. Taken rather off guard, the...
Chilay-Kalan with a Karakul
It is cold as a well digger’s arse in Srinagar. The valley has just slipped into the nippiest part of winter, locally called ‘Chilay-Kalan’, which lasts all of 40 days. There is something about the 40-day Chila [epoch]. If the Tabligi jamaat [band for spreading faith] somehow gets hold of you around this time in Kashmir they are likely to whisk you away for a period of 40 days. And you will never ever be the same, I swear. Apart from mosque Hamam’s, Harisa pinds [joints] are just...
Confusion in the times of conflict
Sometimes in our confusion, we see not the world as it is, but the world though eyes blurred by the mind.
~ Anonymous
We are as confused as a hungry baby in a topless bar. We find it hard to differentiate between a yellow school bus and a white police wagon, especially on weekends. As a principle we don’t like to fight in the cold because we aim better in June. But dejection is quite commonplace in our neck of woods. Since that perfidious damsel – variously called Azadi – didn’t...
~ Anonymous
We are as confused as a hungry baby in a topless bar. We find it hard to differentiate between a yellow school bus and a white police wagon, especially on weekends. As a principle we don’t like to fight in the cold because we aim better in June. But dejection is quite commonplace in our neck of woods. Since that perfidious damsel – variously called Azadi – didn’t...
Audacity of hypocrisy
Aesop, the Hellenistic slave, narrated a profound tale in the winter of 6th century BC. The story is simple but the message remains relevant 2700 winters later. A Bee, queen of the hive, buzzed her way to Mt Olympus to present Jupiter some fresh honey. Jupiter, delighted with the offering, promised to give her whatever she wanted in return. The Bee thought for a while and then said, “Please give me a stinger, so that I can hurt whoever might come to take my honey.”
Jupiter didn't quite...
Jupiter didn't quite...
Wintry tales
Only the curer whose love makes me drunkOnly that hand, if it wants can cure me!Requirement is not a test of my tears Eyes, not carriers of rain laden clouds!~Shahi-Hamdan, Amir-Kabir
Bub, bunkers and beyond
There is an unseasoned mutiny in Mulk-e-Kashmir this summer. The boatsmen in Dal have revealed to intrepid journalists – clad in bullet proof vests – that the usually calm carp fish have been nibbling away at their oars of late. The defiance, it seems, has drained into the lake. A little ahead of the weed-infested Dal, an entire company of CRPF with chest-nut color guns in their hands, fingers on the trigger, chased a few hundred street urchins through a tulip garden, completely...
Page 7 of 8
