{"id":3701,"date":"2018-07-29T07:06:48","date_gmt":"2018-07-29T01:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/?p=3701"},"modified":"2018-07-29T07:30:51","modified_gmt":"2018-07-29T02:00:51","slug":"shamala-muftis-memoir-and-my-nostalgia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/editors-take\/shamala-muftis-memoir-and-my-nostalgia\/","title":{"rendered":"Shamala Mufti’s Memoir And My Nostalgia"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like>

 <\/p>\n

Nostalgia <\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

Connecting To \u00a0A Memoir<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

ZGM\u00a0 <\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

<\/h3>\n

Everyone has a tale to tell and a nostalgia to share. Nostalgia is cathartic. Nonetheless, it is equally a life-writing that goes beyond biography. It not only \u2018encompasses everything from the complete life to day-in-the-life, from the fictional to factional\u2019 but it also 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 scholar Hafsa Kanjwal, Assistant Professor of History\u2019 the University of Michigan guided me to reading a life-writing \u2018Chilman-se-Chaman,\u2019 by Prof Shamla Mufti- a name that has been part of the collective memory of a whole generation of girl students. \u00a0 \"\"<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/h5>\n
Chilman-se-Chaman is a wonderful blend of protest against an archaic social system,\u00a0 struggle of young women against \u00a0patriarchal eccentricities, memories, and nostalgia. I instantaneously established a bond with\u00a0 the book-\u00a0 a sort of the\u00a0 relationship not only with the times of the author but also with the family of the author. Taking me down the memory lane, it connected me to my teachers, school days and days at the campus. Father of the author, Saad-u-Din Chisti was my theology teacher in class seven. Mufti Ghulam Din, husband and Master Salam-u-Din her brother-in-law, were Principal\u00a0 and Headmaster of the two schools; I received my education from.\u00a0 Mohammad Amin Chisti, a noble and humble man, was registrar of Kashmir University during my student activism days on the campus, and one of the nieces of the author was my contemporary at post-graduation level. \u00a0Moreover, it provided me a slit with a telescopic lens \u00a0\u00a0to peep into the social structures, customs, traditions, values, practices, and\u00a0 institutions of my father\u2019s and grandfather\u2019s times. Filliping through the pages of this beautiful memoir written in chaste Urdu, on umpteen occasions for my kinship with the downtown ethos and culture, I felt I was going through a compilation of the nostalgia, \u00a0my column. \u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n
The first chapter of the book \u2018Chisti Kocha,\u2019 Sona Masjid, the lane author was born and brought up \u00a0\u00a0mirrors the social scene as obtained during her \u00a0childhood in the twenties of the past century. The house of the author was on the banks of Kuti-Kul, a tributary of the Jhelum river. The rivulet, for the Maharaja\u2019s soldiers drowning to death twenty-nine Muslim artisans in 1865,\u00a0 for raising their voices against the brutal taxes is part of our sacred history and popular narrative. \u00a0Taking us to the historical past of the area she \u00a0tells us that in the family manuscripts, nikahnamas and other documents of the family the area is mentioned as Bagh-e-Yousef- \u00a0the palace of the last sovereign king of Yusuf Shah Chak is believed to have been in this garden. \u00a0The rivulet gushed with translucent waters for the whole year. She also takes us on tour in and around her birth burg and introduces us to \u00a0gardens lie the \u2018Headow garden.\u2019 These gardens \u00a0had disappeared years before I was born. \u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n
\"\"<\/a>Though nostalgic in tone and tenor, the author in this chapters intimately looks at the life of the boat women and women from the elite time. Those days drinking \u00a0water tapes\u00a0\u00a0 at homes were a rarity. In summers women, when everything around drowned in pitch darkness, \u00a0\u00a0went for a few quick dips in the rivulet. Young girls would do some swimming also. \u2018The only pastime for the elderly women were visiting the Jamia Masjid on Friday to listen to sermons delivered by Mirwaiz Molvi Yusuf Shah mostly \u00a0bordering on seeking penance and forgiveness from Allah instead of on knowledge and research. In writing , a yard of cloth cost two and half-anna, and \u00a0it cost seven annas for making a male-trouser, but many could not afford to make a touser, author of Chilmen-se-Chaman \u00a0gives us a vivid picture of economic deprivation of \u00a0the Muslims of Kashmir during the Dogra rule.<\/span><\/h5>\n
There are subtle protests of the author against the class distinction \u00a0in the Muslim society that existed between natives and immigrants- that had arrived from Central Asia. \u00a0She also tells us how a dress code such as two types of headgears \u2018Kasabas\u2019\u00a0 had been evolved to differentiated natives from the descendants of the saints from Central Asia.\u00a0 Quoting Prof. Shams-u-Din Ahmad, She writes \u2018Kasaba\u2019 had come to Kashmir from Central Asia- and there it was worn by one and all.<\/span><\/h5>\n
Making a mention of her teachers, Shamala Mufti tells us that her English teacher was Miss Birjees Mirajudin, she always insisted her students \u00a0to read books outside their syllabi. She is remembered in history as \u00a0Birjees Gani Rentoo, who was arrested by Sheikh Abdullah and sent to a jail in Jammu for presenting a memorandum to UNCIP team in 1948 at Srinagar and then exiled to Pakistan.<\/span><\/h5>\n
Shamala Mufti\u2019s nostalgia is our socio-cultural history. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/fb:like><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

 
\nNostalgia
\nConnecting To \u00a0A Memoir
\nZGM\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Everyone has a tale to tell and a nostalgia to share. Nostalgia is cathartic. Nonetheless, it is equally a life-writing that goes beyond biography. It not only \u2018encompasses everything from the complete life to day-in-the-life, from the fictional to factional\u2019 but it also 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 scholar Hafsa Kanjwal, Assistant Professor of History\u2019 the University of Michigan guided me to reading a life-writing \u2018Chilman-se-Chaman,\u2019 by Prof Shamla Mufti- a name that has been part of the collective memory of a whole generation of girl students. \u00a0 <\/p>\n

Chilman-se-Chaman is a wonderful blend of protest against an archaic social system,\u00a0 struggle of young women against \u00a0patriarchal eccentricities, memories, and nostalgia. I instantaneously established a bond with\u00a0 the book-\u00a0 a sort of the\u00a0 relationship not …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[338,325,337],"class_list":["post-3701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editors-take","tag-life-writing","tag-nostalgia-zgm","tag-shamla-mufti"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3701"}],"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=3701"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3708,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3701\/revisions\/3708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}