OF SLIPSHOD DAYS AND MATINEE SHOWS
By Z.G. Muhammad Z. G. Muhammad Should I call them slipshod days? No, they were carefree day, really happy go lucky times. I had just passed my matriculation examination and joined Islamia College of Science and Commerce- a college founded by last Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Bakshi Ghulam Muhammad. It was a fantastic job he had done for our birth burg. It was first Commerce College in Kashmir. Those days most of the … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Kashmir-Talk, Memeiors
Our Childhood Spiritual Odysseys
A view of Srinagar City Nostalgia Growing up amongst Friars By Author Z G Muhammad There was something beautiful- something extraordinary about our city. It is incomprehensible. At least, I have not understood it. Something has been about it that had made hundreds of Saints, Sages and Sufis converging on it, making it a permanent abode and ultimately the final resting place- the shrines. The lofty minarets and spires of these shrines, centuries after continue to wrap up the city I was born in and brought … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Kashmir-Talk, Memeiors
July 13, Commemorating Valour and Martyrdom
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 »
Filed under: Kashmir-Talk
An Elegy on Koshur Burqa
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 »
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Children Fundraisers Of Kashmir
Author Stories about the thirties, in our childhood, were not that old. Every elder in the family had a story to tell about one or the other martyr of July 31, 1931, buried just three hundred yards from our house. They remembered stories of the movement against the Maharaja like textbook lessons. Even an old small earthen pitcher painted green had a story to tell about fundraising for the movement against the monarchy its discriminatory rule. The pitcher often made my mother nostalgic; … Read entire article »
Filed under: Kashmir-Talk, Memeiors
A WORD WITH PULPIT
UNITY OF UMMAH IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN SECTARIAN DIVIDE Pulpit A Word With Pulpit I want to have a frank talk with ‘the pulpit’. I believe that I will not be committing any blasphemy in stating my mind to the preachers and sermonizers in my part of the world. Like an overwhelming majority, I was born and brought up in a Muslim family and have not received any formal education in Deen. I have not been a student of any seminary or theological school. Conscious of my limitations and lack of religious scholarship in articulating my concerns I will avoid taking recourse to any dogmatic school of thought but will strive to put my point of view before the sermonizers and preachers not as polemicist but as a humble student … Read entire article »
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Ramzan And Our Childhood
Our Religious Schooling By Z.G. Muhammad Reminisces how so sweet they may be, have their poignancy. Many a time writing about my childhood, I feel like Shelly that I am writing, an ‘epitaph of the glory fled’. Believing, ‘the loveliest and the last, is dead’, I hear the cry inside me, ‘Rise, Memory, and write its praise- for now, the Earth has changed its face, a frown is on Heaven’s brow.’ Grand Mosque Srinagar Indeed, the earth has changed; childhood has fled. It cannot be brought back. Every year on the sighting of the Ramadan moon this harsh reality dawns on me but still, memories, make me bask in the spiritual ambience that overwhelmed our part of the city on the commencement of the holy month. I remember the Sahar Khawan during our childhood would not only just beat drums ferociously to wake up … Read entire article »
Filed under: Editor's Take, Kashmir-Talk, Memeiors