{"id":4120,"date":"2019-03-31T11:18:29","date_gmt":"2019-03-31T05:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/?p=4120"},"modified":"2019-03-31T11:25:36","modified_gmt":"2019-03-31T05:55:36","slug":"prison-tales-our-spring-pastimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/editors-take\/prison-tales-our-spring-pastimes\/","title":{"rendered":"Prison Tales: Our Spring Pastimes"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like>\n

Nostalgia<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our\nSpring Pastimes <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

ZGM\n<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Some birds\nare not meant to be caged\u2019, that is how best I can pronounce childhood of my\nmates, siblings and myself. When spring \u2018dressed in all its trim, put a spirit\nof youth in everything\u2019   like swallows\nin wee hours we flew out of our homes as arrows from a quiver. Nothing could\nhold us back. The fright of standing on a stool in class or receiving a cane\ncharge on our palms   for incomplete homework could not pin us to our\nreading desks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rash of almond blossoms at the foothills of the hillock\nattracted us like honey bees  to  Devi Anagan, the compound of Sharika\nBhagwati, one of presiding deities for my teachers Shamboo Nath, Arjan Nath and\nothers. Once in a year some of them visited the temple of the goddess with unique\noffering \u2018Taher Charvan\u2019<\/em>, – rice\nboiled with turmeric, oil and salt mixed with cooked liver of goat for pleasing\nthe goddess.  \u2018Taher<\/em>\u2019 spoke of cultural bondage between Kashmiri Hindus and\nMuslims.  For seeking God\u2019s blessings,\nMuslims also cooked Taher<\/em>, but it was\nnot prepared with goats\u2019 liver. It was distributed  on a tramee\n<\/em>big copper platter distributed amongst the devotees at   mausoleums of native saint Hazrat Sultan\nSheikh Hamza Makdoomi  and Hazrat Sheikh\nBahauddin Gunj Baksh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The month-long almond blossom festival at the tail end\nof  the hillock used to be  a  grand\npageant with tattoo makers from Punjab squatting on both the sides of the dusty\nroad,   magicians performing tricks to big crowds and\nchildren waiting for enjoying a ride on manually driven roller coasters on the\nsides of the main venue adjacent to Sangeen Darwaza, second main entrance to\nBadamwari on the Western front. Like many other children besides  enjoying eating water chestnuts roasted in a high-quality\ngrass under the canopy of almond trees and making garlands out of fallen petals\n we had few other pastimes, one of them\nwas  looking for thrush birds- and\ncatching   this singing bird was a dream for my younger\nsibling Hassan, my mates and me. For caging a thrush bird, preparations started\none or two days before the Sunday.  It\nstarted with purchasing  of a long reed\nfor one or two annas for making a Chookhabur-\n<\/em>(noose trap). Making  this device   in\nitself was an enterprising job. The bold among us would pull out a long hair\nfrom the tail of a standing horse at Nowhatta Tonga Adda  for making a noose. The noose was tied with cobbler\u2019s\nthread  to  the most tapering side of the reed. Cobbler\u2019s\nthread was known for its strength. Armed \nwith  Chookhabur, <\/em> like\nsoldiers  in enemy territory we stealthily\nand silently  walked into almond  orchards in morning hours and tried to put\nnoose into necks of many thrush perching on almond trees  but   hardly we ever had the luck of getting a\nsinging bird. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Going up the hill, for entering into the nineteenth-century\nfort atop was a passion with almost all children in our generation. The fort\nwas opened to the public on two days during almond blossom celebrations  and  on\nsome  Hindu festivals. For us, the fortress\nwas as mysterious as the legend about the hillock.  For having heard stories, cannons were fired\nthree times in a day;  at dawn, noon time\nand dusk and the country\u2019s flag  was\nhoisted on the skyscraping mast  at\nsunrise and pulled down at sunset had aroused curiosity in us  to know what was inside the magnificent\narchitecture. More than anything it was stories associated with the fort that\nincreased inquisitiveness in us  about\nthe fort; some stories like the last Sikh Governor Sheikh Imam-u-Din fighting\nditched battle against the soldiers of Gulab Singh in the Hari Parbat\nCantonment and defeating his soldiers, with leftover three hundred soldiers\nalso surrendering having passed on from generation to generation were part of\nfolk tales. Some agonizing stories,  some\nof the course blend of fact and fiction about brutalities inflicted on people and\nleaders were breastfed to us. For these  stories, the fort  in our imagination was an emblem of oppression,\nterror and intimidation in the centre of the city. Most of us believed stories\nlike  that one of our leaders during his\nincarceration had been made for dipping his fingers in boiling oil as gospel\ntruth. There might have been an element of exaggeration in these stories. Nonetheless,\nthe fort after 1846, was most gloomy dungeon worst than infamed  Bastille of France. So terrifying was the dungeon\nof Hari Parbat even an idea sent shivers down the spine of some European\ntravellers like E.F. Knight, author of \u2018Where Three Empires Meet\u2019.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a couple of  occasions, after vying our way through the\nsmall entry inside the fort, like a man after an earthquake rummaging through\ndebris for something precious we searched in ruins our horrifying  history and walked away from the fort  with some old cannon as souvenir back to the\norchard, for enjoying some more hot water nuts. <\/p>\n<\/fb:like><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nostalgia<\/p>\n

Our
\nSpring Pastimes <\/p>\n

ZGM<\/p>\n

\u2018Some birds
\nare not meant to be caged\u2019, that is how best I can pronounce childhood of my
\nmates, siblings and myself. When spring \u2018dressed in all its trim, put a spirit
\nof youth in everything\u2019   like swallows
\nin wee hours we flew out of our homes as arrows from a quiver. Nothing could
\nhold us back. The fright of standing on a stool in class or receiving a cane
\ncharge on our palms   for incomplete homework could not pin us to our
\nreading desks. <\/p>\n

The rash of almond blossoms at the foothills of the hillock
\nattracted us like honey bees  to  Devi Anagan, the compound of Sharika
\nBhagwati, one of presiding deities for my teachers Shamboo Nath, Arjan Nath and
\nothers. Once in a year some of them visited the temple of the goddess with unique
\noffering \u2018Taher Charvan\u2019, – rice
\nboiled with turmeric, oil and salt mixed with cooked liver of goat for pleasing
\nthe goddess.  \u2018Taher\u2019 spoke of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3,319],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editors-take","category-memeiors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4120"}],"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=4120"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4124,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4120\/revisions\/4124"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}