{"id":1216,"date":"2012-10-24T10:51:17","date_gmt":"2012-10-24T05:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/?p=1216"},"modified":"2012-10-24T11:50:27","modified_gmt":"2012-10-24T06:20:27","slug":"i-am-proud-i-am-a-srinagar-downtown-boy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/editors-take\/i-am-proud-i-am-a-srinagar-downtown-boy\/","title":{"rendered":"I am Proud! I am a Srinagar Downtown Boy"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like>

The Downtown Boy<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>Everyone in Kashmir has a story to tell. \u00a0\u00a0The octogenarian has a tale to tell- he has seen towering South Asian leaders at best of their eloquence addressing hundreds of thousands in the Muslim Park and in our own Red Square. \u00a0The septuagenarian has his stories to tell about the royal river procession and Russian Communist leaders in majestic boats rowed through the Jhelum. And their rehashing the \u2018dominant discourse\u2019 and giving it proletarian flavor. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That born \u2018at the stroke of midnight hour, when world was sleeping and India awoke to freedom\u2019 and when \u00a0South-Asian Muslims after gusty storms like \u00a0weaverbirds were dexterously making a home out of straw, has his narrative to share. Moreover, the Young man bubbling with fervor and boiling with fury has his own sordid tales to tell. Most of these tales will be never told but buried with their possessors.\u00a0 No chronicler sitting amidst army of books in his closet, with blinds drawn on windows will ever tell these stories.\"Downtown<\/a><\/p>\n

Inspired by \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Nirad C. Chaudhuri\u2019s,\u00a0\u00a0 first book in English, ”The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian,” many times, I thought of writing an autobiography- and telling my tale. It has been my dream to tell story of Kashmir like him from \u2018fiercely independent view point\u2019. And with \u2018stubborn honesty\u2019 make others feel living a life as led by me and my peers with all our agonies and ecstasies. Like him as a \u2018man of culture\u2019, I wanted to beat them at their own game and write the people\u2019s narrative.<\/p>\n

I am not a political leader- towering or dwarf,\u00a0 \u00a0popular or self-appointed, a \u2018lion\u2019 like the \u2018Lion of the Desert\u2019 or a paper tiger-\u00a0 I am Downtown Boy-\u00a0 brought up in alleys, lanes and by lanes that\u00a0 continue to be mute witness to the greatest events in the history of Kashmir- and writing its own narrative even today. \u00a0Nevertheless, who would be interested in the life of an ordinary downtown boy? – projected as a defiance incarnate. To pin him down the vocabulary has been corrupted. In our modern lexicon the word \u2018downtown\u2019 has been denuded of \u00a0the sheen with which it was born at place of its origin, New York, \u00a0where it was referred to \u2018as \u2018city\u2019s core and central business district usually in geographical, commercial and community sense.\u2019 \u00a0To tailor it to the requirements of the \u2018dominant\u2019 discourse\u2019 it is portrayed as \u2018the most wretched and disreputable part\u2019 of the thousand year old city, \u00a0harbor of muggers, an insalubrious abode of \u201cthat Sheikh Sin, the Thief of Thieves\u201d- in famous short story with Kashmir in backdrop, \u201cThe Prophets Hair\u201d.\u00a0 Now this part of the city is no more counted as \u201ca storybook \u00a0\u00a0unfolding like an epic- a saga brimming with tales of chivalry, bravery and courage. In which every word is breathing with life telling chivalrous stories of resistance against the desperadoes and the marauders that dared to crossover the impregnable mountains guarding the land from millenniums.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My story is the story of any other downtown boy- an embodiment of resilience. The downtown boy has been the protagonist of all the resistance movements. In 1865, merciless soldiers drowned him in a tributary of the river Jhelum at Zaldagar, Nawab Bazar for raising \u00a0voice against the brutal tax system before the laborers at Chicago rose in revolt- \u00a0\u00a0In 1924 revolt against communal and discriminatory wage system and corruption, he made his presence felt as \u2018King\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 In July 1931, he was at the scene of carnage outside Srinagar Central Jail, suffering bullets, butts and batons, when the newly catapulted leaders to the centre stage of Kashmir politics were having siesta. The courageous downtown boy gasping for breaths whispered in the ear of the leaders:<\/p>\n

\u201cI ask nothing more <\/em><\/p>\n

Than to die in my country <\/em><\/p>\n

To dissolve and merge with the grass, <\/em><\/p>\n

To give life to a flower <\/em><\/p>\n

That a child of my country will pick, <\/em><\/p>\n

All I ask <\/em><\/p>\n

Is to remain in the bosom of my country <\/em><\/p>\n

As soil, <\/em><\/p>\n

Grass, <\/em><\/p>\n

A flower.\u201d <\/em>\u00a0(Fadwa\u00a0 Tuqan).<\/p>\n

I am witness to an era. So have been all my peers and siblings. \u00a0I have seen the towering leaders at the peak of their popularity roaring like lions at the Martyrs Graveyard pledging that they would never betray the scarlet blood of the young buried under the chiseled tombstones. I have seen them cheating the trust of the people and betraying their cause yet claiming that they had not changed the goal but the track from meter gauge to broad gauge. I have seen the erudite leaders slickly entrancing the intelligent and making them sing their songs. I have seen Marx with his Das Kapital \u00a0\u00a0hanged in broad day light by Doctor Faustus of the day for power. I have seen lascivious and lewd ruling the roost. Ours has not been all story of betrayals but also of sacrifices. \u00a0\u00a0In our part of the city, most of the political workers were selflessness incarnate. Living famished life political workers like Ghulam Ahmed Mir, Dalal, Hassan Zargar, Hassan Tainsaz, Rehman Darzai and Naba Tanga stuck to their cause like a rock. These people provide warp and woof for the biography of downtown boy.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Every downtown boy has been a Spartacus in his own right. Unmindful of consequence, the unlettered Shafi Sheikh, Mana Khor, Ahad Sheikh, Rashid Gani and many others challenged the mighty in heavy boots. Every downtown boy in true sense has been Hamza of modern Arab poet Fawad Tuqan who died at the age of 82 and was described by Guardian as on who forcefully expressed a nation’s sense of loss and defiance.<\/p>\n

Like Hamaz the downtown boys have been telling poets of \u00a0the land:<\/p>\n

\u2018\u2026\u2026.our land has a throbbing heart,
\nit doesn\u2019t cease to beat, and it endures
\nthe unendurable. It keeps the secrets
\nof hills and wombs. This land sprouting
\nwith spikes and palms is also the land
\nthat gives birth to Freedom fighters .\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<\/fb:like><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Downtown Boy
\n\u00a0Everyone in Kashmir has a story to tell. \u00a0\u00a0The octogenarian has a tale to tell- he has seen towering South Asian leaders at best of their eloquence addressing hundreds of thousands in the Muslim Park and in our own Red Square. \u00a0The septuagenarian has his stories to tell about the royal river procession and Russian Communist leaders in majestic boats rowed through the Jhelum. And their rehashing the \u2018dominant discourse\u2019 and giving it proletarian flavor. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That born \u2018at the stroke of midnight hour, when world was sleeping and India awoke to freedom\u2019 and when \u00a0South-Asian Muslims after gusty storms like \u00a0weaverbirds were dexterously making a home out of straw, has his narrative to share. Moreover, the Young man bubbling with fervor and boiling with fury has his own sordid tales to tell. Most of these tales will be never told but buried with their possessors.\u00a0 No chronicler sitting …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[8,12,13,125,10],"class_list":["post-1216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editors-take","category-perspectives","tag-kashmir","tag-nowhatta","tag-srinagar","tag-srinagar-street-fighters","tag-zahid-g-muhmmad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1216"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1222,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216\/revisions\/1222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}