Of A ‘Cardamom’ Pandit- Sycophancy And Bureaucracy    .   Those days eavesdropping had become my second nature – something instinctive. In wee morning hours, swinging copper Doodha lota like a pendulum and waiting for my turn at the milk sellers shop just outside the small gate to the Martyrs graveyard, I secretly listened to the conversation of elders standing in front of the milk shop. From a shortage of firewood in the government depot and monthly ration at the ‘Shali ghat’ to the last nights Zarb-I-Kaleem program from   Azad Kashmir Radio Trarkhal, they talked about everything happening in their lives Besides, the milk shop, it was routine for me to visit, the shop of Muhammad Kak and Salam Kak, the famous tobacco seller in our … Read entire article »

Nostalgia Ode to A Peon Z. G. Muhammad Our school was one of the top schools in the city. In the late fifties on the first day when I entered the school gate for being admitted in class three, I got a unique sense of belonging to it.  The three- ‘steeple-minarets’ E-shaped building housing the high school looked to me like yet another Khanaqah and the teachers their heads adorned with turbans of all colors- white, green, yellow and pink like pirs at hospices.  Despite the awesome grandeur of the school building soothing my eyes the fright of meeting new teachers and new classmates had robbed all smiles from my rubicund face. Someone has rightly said, ‘power of a smile can heal a frozen heart’. On being greeted with a … Read entire article »

My Memoir July 13, Commemorating Valour and Martyrdom  By Z. G. Muhammad  The Martyrs day! July 13!   My siblings, friends, and I waited for weeks together for this day.    My mother announced the day byy starting cleaning of the house like on all other religious days; Eid-ul-Fitar, Eid-ul-Adha, Urs-e- Nabi, Meraj-ul-Alam and festivals of other saints buried in our locality. It was a full week of cleaning in our home. She paid a lot of attention towards cleaning of the Kani, the top floor of the house. Windows of this floor opened on two sides towards the main road and presented a panoramic view of the road leading to the martyrs’ graveyard. Even the attic of the house, which remained abandoned for the whole of the year caught her … Read entire article »

Koshur Burqa By Z.G. Muhammad Journeying through the corridors of my childhood in a meditative mood;   some verses read years back started echoing in my mind like lilting tunes on Santoor played by Ustad Muhammad Abdullah Tibetbaqal.  These verses of Agha Shahid Ali sounded as if they were mine:  “No one now comes from Kandhar, dear Ali, to pitch tents by the Jhelum, under autumn maples, and claim descent from the holy prophet.” I went into a trance- a trance with a difference and started dreaming about hundreds of turbaned men draped in long chogas with no daggers hanging from straps tied around their waists pitching their tents on a wasteland between third and fourth bridges on the banks of Jhelum.    Thousands of men ‘  dressed in ‘long loose, large tunics,’ many wearing no drawers’ squatting on lush … Read entire article »