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 association, I hardly realized that my bonds with this mosque dedicated to Hazrat Ghaus-e-Azam, Syed Abdul Qadir Geelani were so stronger that nothing could stop torrents of tears gushing from my eyes. On seeing the flames consuming structure after structure, pillar after pillar and winds fanning ashes of the best woodworks, I felt as if the whole nation had been put on a pyre.  To mollify my bruised and bleeding heart, louder I repeatedly recited the verse from the Holy Quran, “Surely we belong to God and Him shall we return’…
The 250 years old mosque and Astana housing his relics were epitomes of our religious heritage and culture. The story did not end there; these were not just symbols of Kashmir identity. Over the centuries, they had become part of the psyche of common people- in hours of crisis and distress involuntarily; a Kashmiri would invoke the blessings of the eleventh-century saint. The boatman pulling upstream his heavily loaded barge and labourer pushing his tumbrel up a steep road would draw strength- by crying louder Ya Peer Dastageer.

So deep has been the saint’s influence that people, irrespective of their religious beliefs continue to vow ‘Dasgeer’s path spontaneously’. 
I do not remember when I have offered my first prayer in this mosque, but there was hardly a day when I did not visit the shrine during my boyhood. After offering Namaz in the mosque, I often had a feeling that my duas were granted, and I always left the mosque lighthearted and purged of all burdens. Something inexplicable.

 Published on :

14 Mar 2015, 5:43 AM

2 min read