My Memoir: My Father Part VI. Story of Two Alis- Ordinary Kashmiris
Part VI Part Six ‘The father did not join political discussions in the Radio Room with the news loving neighbours. Perhaps the reason was fear of snoopers and gumboots reporting it to those in the saddle and fear of earning their wrath.’ Nevertheless, when I wrote it at the start of this memoir, it was not suggested that he was snobbish, uninformed, or ill-informed about political happenings. Even if he may be detesting politics and the contemporary … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Kashmir-Talk, NostalgiaKashmir, Z. G. Muhammad
My Memoir and MY Father. Of Jashan-i-Kashmir Days by ZGM
My Memoir: My Story My Father Part IV Mothers are a massive influence on children; it may sound a cliché, a trite, but it is as good truth as the sun rises in the east. ‘They are the bones of the spine, as someone has said that keeps children straight and true. The way my father was, his disposition and demeanour did tell he was his mother’s child. She was a wonderful human being, her supplications like her … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Kashmir-Talk, Memeiors, NostalgiaKashmir, NostalgoaKashmir
Torrents of Terrors- An Unusual Obituary
FROM MY ARCHIVES Torrents of Tears. Monday 6.10 AM: Stealthily stealing their way through peaks of Zabarwan hillock, virgin sunrays as usual out of their profound adoration, had just kissed the golden spires of the minarets of the Shrine of Dastageer Sahib that something ‘beyond language’ had happened. Something one could not have imagined even in ‘creepy, bloodcurdling dreams’ had befallen- raging flames had engulfed my ‘spiritual abode’- the home of my ‘inner self’ since boyish days. The moment my son broke this news to me, as the poet says, my ‘world in stupor lied’. Shocked– crashed to the core, I felt my whole being was up in flames, and I was being consumed bit by bit. I felt melting like the candle on an ornate candle stand. During my over fifty years of … Read entire article »
Filed under: Kashmir-Talk
My Days in Bombay- Looking for spiritual solace in film nagari
Haji Malang My Days in Bombay – A spiritual Journey My Days in Bombay- Spiritual Journey of Downtown Boy Looking For Inner Solace in Film Nagari Off To Haji Malang ZGM Many spiritual experiences can’t be captured in words. Offering late-night prayers during sultry days on an islet with the soothing breeze blowing on all sides from the Arabian Sea had a unique spiritual elation. Perhaps, it was as good an experience as that of whirling … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Kashmir-Talk, Memeiors, Z. G. Muhammad
Myean Kath – Life Writing Of An Educationist.
Shamla Mufti Everyone has a tale to tell and a nostalgia to share. Nostalgia is cathartic but equally a life-writing that goes beyond biography. It not only ‘encompasses everything from the complete life to day-in-the-life, from the fictional to factional’ and connects us with others and their immediate past, social and cultural moorings. Some days back, a doctoral thesis by one of our young United States-based scholars Hafsa Kanjwal, Assistant Professor of History’ the University of Michigan, guided me to reading a life-writing … Read entire article »
Filed under: Book Reviews, Kashmir-Talk
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
PUNCH LINE
REVIEW OF TWO BIOGRAPHIES OF S M ABDULLAH Punch line By Z.G. Muhammad ‘Oh! It is a whopper sandwich.’It was my instantaneous reaction after finishing reading yet another book on Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah. It was the second book I read about him during the past month. The first one that I mentioned in some previous column was Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah- Tragic Hero of Kashmir by Ajit Bhattacharjea; an octogenarian journalist in Kashmir is generally counted amongst the ‘sympathetic’ for his earlier book the Wounded Valley. His book on Sheikh Abdullah, though based on secondary sources, is readable and quite enjoyable. He has beautifully built up Abdullah story from the memoirs of Sheikh Abdullah, B.N. Mullick, Syed Mir Qasim, Karan Singh and Nehru- Sardar Patil correspondence and other sources. He undoubtedly has blended extracts from his source material and his analysis with deftness to present … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Kashmir-Talk, PUNCH LINE, Z. G. Muhammad