Kashmir Cultural Notes – The Rice-man Chefs of Kashmir The Rice-Man ZGM Other than politics, which has continuously been picking our minds like woodpeckers on tall pine trees, gossip about wazawan dominates our discourses during the marriage seasons. In olden times, even during our childhood, it comprised seven to nine dishes, and as we advanced in our age, it also started graduating from cuisine to cuisine. Today, on average, the number of the multi-cuisine lamb mutton dishes has gone up to thirty-five- in many cases, more particularly the feast for bridegrooms, the number ranges from fifty to seventy. In our childhood, chicken dishes were not part of the Wazawan. These perhaps were added to multi-cuisine dishes in the late sixties. Many an expert Ashpazs had then seen it as spoiling to the sanctity of the traditional wazawan. Though our elders before 1947 frequented … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Featured, Kashmir-Talk, Z. G. Muhammad
Hassan My Younger Sibling- An Obituary On My Childhood —
Nostalgia Hassan My Younger Sibling An Obituary on My Childhood ZGM He is gone. My other half of me, my younger sibling Hassan, like white and puffy dandelion disappeared in the thin of air without a whispering breeze blowing across. He left so fast and forgot even to jot down a parting note- some reminiscences of the whole childhood and boyhood we had lived together- if he had forgiven me for breaking his terracotta toys, ripping … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Featured
Ambassador Yusuf Buch: As I See Him
Yusuf Buch, as I see him In search of a genuine intellectual voice PUNCHLINE by ZG Muhammad Some time back, I had written there was no Edward Said on our side. My lament was more out of concern rather than critique. I believe that an intellectually stimulating discourse on Kashmir was missing and so far it had been pathetically routine and blatantly ‘de- intellectualized’ projection of the Kashmir case that had vexed it thus far. I had written … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Featured
My Bombay Days: Looking For Manto In the Island of Giants
Nostalgia Island of Giants ZGM The tinsel world of India has an intrinsic charm- a beauty that makes its distinct from any other metropolises in the sub-continent. Those, who adopt the city as their abode remotely move out of it. Those who live in it hardly forget about it. For many, like me, the city in all its shades rings like Dr. Faustus mesmerizing lines on seeing the Helen of Troy, ‘was this the face.’ Like a magnet … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Featured, Perspectives
Kashmir Dispute and “Conspiracy Theory.”
PUNCHLINE Modi, Patel and Kashmir By Z. G. Muhammad To add scholarly flavor to their presentations some academics, love to use grand-sounding clichés. Of the many trite phrases used by them, ‘Conspiracy theory’ is a popular cliché with a particular brand of academics in our land. Once, they find points and arguments based on the historical realities or on the hard facts raised by a speaker or a question posed by a participant in a seminar … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Featured
Kashmir Understanding “Peace of Weak” and “Peace of Brave”?
Punchline Interlocution and ‘Peace of Weak” Z. G. Muhammad It is an irony of sorts. Interestingly, for a good friend of mine, otherwise acquainted with Kashmir problem I have become bête noire – not that he does not like my looks but for his belief that while discussing ending of the seventy-year-old political uncertainty in the state, I more than often dwell upon the genesis of the dispute and write on factors that have perpetuated it. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Featured
Prof. Hameedah Nayeem Looks at Significance of the Story of Downtown Boy
What is in a Title? Significance of the title Story of Downtown Boy— and the Issues thereof Prof. Hameedah Nayeem Last week when two books were released in the university’s Ibni Khaldoon Hall, It set me thinking about the significance of the title of G M Zahid ‘s (Z.G. Muhammad’s) book- Srinagar, the City of Culture and Resistance: Story of Downtown Boy as a pointer to understand its genre. On the one hand, it is about Srinagar, the … Read entire article »
Filed under: Featured, Kashmir-Talk