{"id":4129,"date":"2019-04-07T12:54:37","date_gmt":"2019-04-07T07:24:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/?p=4129"},"modified":"2019-04-07T13:00:58","modified_gmt":"2019-04-07T07:30:58","slug":"prison-tales-a-ride-in-girls-college-bus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/editors-take\/prison-tales-a-ride-in-girls-college-bus\/","title":{"rendered":"Prison Tales: A Ride In Girls College Bus."},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Examination in Barracks <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\u2018Some slices of the past one holds close\nforever.\u2019 Like a magical potion, they lift spirits in moments of despair. Saturday,\nDecember 23, 1972, is one such date that has\ngot imprinted on my mind. In October of that year, I had got admission in the\nEnglish Department of Kashmir University, thanks to Dr M.S. Want.  Nonetheless,\nlike thick dark, ominous clouds, the blues of a previous couple of years still lurked in my mind, and sometimes feelings of dismay distressed me.\nIt was a windy and cold morning, in a\nmood of desolation, like wanderer unmindful about the station, I took a bus at\nthe Batmaloo terminus arrived at the\nmausoleum of Baba Payam ud Din Reshi seven thousand feet above sea level,\nnestled in thick forests with billows of mist adding a surreal aura to the\nsurroundings. The mausoleum of the saint, who said farewell to his life of ease\nand royalty and prayed in dense forest for seeking God\u2019s blessings had for me\nits own solace and serenity. From, here I took a shortcut to Gulmarg and on\nreaching to the famed meadow snowflakes greeted me. Coming down like fluffy\ncotton ropes, the snow created a threatening situation for me, and it turned into a nightmare when I was\ninformed that the last bus for the City has left and there may be no bus tomorrow.  In this depressing scenario, I spotted a bus, continuously honking, like a man lost in a\ndesert chasing a mirage, I rushed towards it with the hope of getting back\nhome. The seventy-two seater bus was packed with girl students from the Women\u2019s\nCollege, Srinagar, and it was waiting for some girls who were yet to arrive. In\nthe babbling crowd insides the bus, I spotted a few girls who knew me by face\nand name also, two of them were from our locality, one of them hired novels for\nme from the Book Corner.   I thought the girls known to me would vouch\nfor my credentials, but they chose to pretend as\nstrangers. The peon of the college, also a matchmaker, who was jeered by boys\nin our locality for his peculiar gait, even\nknew me. He too avoided me. Swathed with snow from top to toe, like a snowman,\nI approached the driver to give me lift down the hill; he gently told me sorry I cannot take a boy in a girl\u2019s bus. Then,\nat the door of the bus, I saw standing\nthree teachers of the college.  I knew\nthem by face, and of course, by name and\nsubjects they were teaching, but none of them knew me. Till then none of them\nhad been a teacher at Islamia College, my\nalma mater.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the three, I knew Gassudin   Sahib, a\nphysics teacher from my Zal\u2019goor days, when with passion my mates and I raced\non traffic-less streets with swallows continuously\nhitting with sticks on our Zal\u2019goor \u2013 the rubber wheel. Those days, we looked at him and two more teachers of chemistry Mir\nSahib and Jaffer Sahib with admiration when they passed through the street of our Mohalla on   bicycles\non the way to S.P. College. The other two\nteachers that accompanied the girls\u2019 college students were Shama Sahib,\n(chemistry) and Bazaz Sahib (Physics) \u2013 I don\u2019t know if he was related to\nPandit Prem Nath Bazaz, but some of my friends knew him for his suaveness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the friends\non the university campus knew both Gassudin\nand Bazaz, as superintendents in the examination halls inside the Central Jail,\nSrinagar. Like in 1965, in the early seventies hundreds of students from\ndifferent colleges including professional colleges and Kashmir University had\nbeen jailed under the Preventive\nDetention Act (PDA). The then vernacular media in Srinagar more particularly\nthe Daily Aftab and the Daily Hamdard had initiated a sustained campaign against the detention\nof students in such large numbers and expressed concern about their academic\ncareer.  The campaign had caused a visit of the then Health and Jail Minister\nLone and Home Secretary G. M. Mir to Jail for an on spot assessment.  And after the meeting,\nthey had decided against taking students in buses for sitting in the examinations in different centres in various\ncolleges and resolved setting up centres inside the jails. Scores of students\nsat for the examination in TDC-I and TDC\nFinal Examination in these examination centres inside the Central Jail. Most of\nthese boys later in life made top academicians, professionals and\nadministrators. Syed Mir Qasim, then Chief Minister,   takes pride\nin autobiography for this decision of saving the academic career of  hundreds of incarcerated students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coming back, to Gulmarg, seeing the three teachers\nabout to board  the bus the heart inside\nmy frozen and numb body was pounding to collapse and explaining my position, I\nrequested them for a lift. The three looked at each other. The word Okay from Gassudin Sahib like waves of fire flashed my\nface and brought warmth in my frozen body- I was asked to sit in the front seat\nand not to look back. Travelling in a girl\u2019s college bus from Gulmarg to\nSrinagar filled with songs, giggles, jeers punctured with catcalls towards me\nwas a unique experience hard to forget. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Nostalgia <\/p>\n

Examination in Barracks <\/p>\n

ZGM<\/p>\n

\u2018Some slices of the past one holds close
\nforever.\u2019 Like a magical potion, they lift spirits in moments of despair. Saturday,
\nDecember 23, 1972, is one such date that has
\ngot imprinted on my mind. In October of that year, I had got admission in the
\nEnglish Department of Kashmir University, thanks to Dr M.S. Want.  Nonetheless,
\nlike thick dark, ominous clouds, the blues of a previous couple of years still lurked in my mind, and sometimes feelings of dismay distressed me.
\nIt was a windy and cold morning, in a
\nmood of desolation, like wanderer unmindful about the station, I took a bus at
\nthe Batmaloo terminus arrived at the
\nmausoleum of Baba Payam ud Din Reshi seven thousand feet above sea level,
\nnestled in thick forests with billows of mist adding a surreal aura to the
\nsurroundings. The mausoleum of the saint, who said farewell to his life of ease
\nand royalty and prayed in dense …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editors-take","category-kashmir-talk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4129"}],"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=4129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4131,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4129\/revisions\/4131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}