{"id":4208,"date":"2020-06-03T17:19:10","date_gmt":"2020-06-03T11:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/?p=4208"},"modified":"2020-06-03T17:31:14","modified_gmt":"2020-06-03T12:01:14","slug":"an-elegy-on-koshur-burqa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/point-of-view\/kashmir-talk\/an-elegy-on-koshur-burqa\/","title":{"rendered":"An Elegy on Koshur Burqa"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like>\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Koshur Burqa By Z.G. Muhammad <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Journeying through the corridors of my childhood in a meditative mood;\u00a0\u00a0 some verses read years back started echoing in my mind like lilting tunes on Santoor played by Ustad Muhammad Abdullah Tibetbaqal.\u00a0 These verses of Agha Shahid Ali sounded as if they were mine:\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo one now comes from Kandhar,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

dear Ali, to pitch tents by the Jhelum,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

under autumn maples,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and claim descent from the holy prophet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went into a trance- a trance with a difference and started\ndreaming about hundreds of turbaned men draped in long chogas<\/em> with no daggers hanging from straps tied around their waists\npitching their tents on a wasteland between third and fourth bridges on the banks\nof Jhelum.    Thousands of men \u2018  dressed in \u2018long loose, large tunics,\u2019 many\nwearing no drawers\u2019 squatting on lush green grass listening with rapt attention\nto the discourses of most towering amongst the tent pitchers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lost in my world of imagination, I was picturising how our\nancestors dressed, I remembered, accompanying my mother to the festival held\nwith all solemnity on 6th of  Zilhajj in\nfamous Khanqah of  Mir Syed Ali Hamadani\non the banks of Jhelum. Passing through the festive crowds, I tightly held a\ncorner her   Burqa pronounce in Kashmiri\nas ber\u2019qae<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mother, my aunt and most of the women in our Mohalla\noutside their homes wore loose apparel covering them from head to ankles known\nas Koshur ber\u2019qae. It looked like a one-man-tent. I do not know if it was\nindigenous attire worn by Kashmiri women. Or, it had travelled into Kashmir\nalong with big caravans of Islamic missionaries, traders, artisans and\ntravellers from Central Asia through Afghanistan. Even today burqa,   similar to Koshur barque is in fashion in\nmany parts of Afghanistan and Northern parts of Pakistan. I also do not know if\nit had become fashionable in Kashmir during the Afghan rule or if Afghan women\nhad adopted this Kashmiri attire. Scholars, like R.C. Kak, based on\narchaeological findings in Kashmir have concluded that fashions in Central Asia\nstarted influencing Kashmir dress from first Century A.D.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mother often wore an off-white burqa.   She also had a steel-grey burqa made out of\ncloth with better fall popularly known as \u2018crepe\u2019 \u2013 she wore it on special\noccasions such as attending a marriage. \nMost common colours for burqas were black and white. Stitching this\nparachute-like outer dress of women needed specialised expertise. It comprised\nthree parts, cap, the central part and a frontal flap.  Making cap of burqa needed particular\nexpertise- cap made of exact size kept whole apparel in place. I do remember\nsome tailors in our locality only stitched caps for burqa\u2026some of them were\nknown as topisaz.<\/em> Making tent-part of\nthe burqa, needed about ten yards of cloth. To add to its fall and make it look\ngorgeous after the first half it was after every inch hemmed.  At an average, this Kashmir veil had a\nhundred hems- these hems looked like waves on tranquil waters of our placid\nlakes. The frontal flop had intricately woven mesh in front of eyes- as someone\nhas rightly said it was there the only link to the world outside world. Making\neyes in the frontal piece with thread and needle was in itself an art. Darners\ngenerally did it. Stitching cotton meshes at eye places was not fashionable. I\ndo remember in our Mohalla two tailors Abdul Gaffar Bhat, and Muhammad Janda\nwere known for their expertise in stitching Koshur Ber\u2019que. Making a good burqa\nwas an expensive affair- I remember having heard women saying that making\nKoshur Ber\u2019que was as good as constructing a house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mother and all women were adept in walking with fabric\ndraped around them, with hands kept inside burqa, I never saw them tripping and\nstumbling.   They were proficient in\nthrowing back the front part of the burqa that hanged over their face with ease\nand pulled it down with equal comfort like blinds on windows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1964, during the Holy Relic Movement, I for the first\ntime saw huge processions of burqa-clad women passing through street outside\nour home on the way to the Muslim Park, on the northern side of the Jamia\nMasjid. Almost every day the procession was led by a fair-complexioned woman burqa-clad\nwoman, in freezing temperature of January her face used to be as rubicund as an\napple. While raising full-throated slogans, moving one side of the road to the\nother with her burqa flying like the cape of modern-day he-man, she attracted the\nattention of all children of our locality. The burqa-clad women procession that\nwas an almost  regular feature for few\nduring the sixties looked like a parade of women soldiers of Iran. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was also a ticket for girls to go out for some shopping\nin the evenings. I remember, girls that generally did not observe veil wore\nburqa of their mothers for shopping at nearby cosmetic shops- with their\ngiggles they often attracted attentions of lads around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the scorching sun, while walking with my mother, many times, I took shelter under her burqa. It<\/a> used to be as shady as the Chinar tree. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many indigenous costumes, Koshur Ber\u2019qae has also\nvanished from the scene.   It has now yielded place to what popularly\ncame to be known as Arabia burqa and now that has been replaced by an abaya. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

 [ZGM1]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/fb:like><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Koshur Burqa By Z.G. Muhammad <\/p>\n

Journeying through the corridors of my childhood in a meditative mood;\u00a0\u00a0 some verses read years back started echoing in my mind like lilting tunes on Santoor played by Ustad Muhammad Abdullah Tibetbaqal.\u00a0 These verses of Agha Shahid Ali sounded as if they were mine:\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\u201cNo one now comes from Kandhar,<\/p>\n

dear Ali, to pitch tents by the Jhelum,<\/p>\n

under autumn maples,<\/p>\n

and claim descent from the holy prophet.\u201d<\/p>\n

I went into a trance- a trance with a difference and started
\ndreaming about hundreds of turbaned men draped in long chogas with no daggers hanging from straps tied around their waists
\npitching their tents on a wasteland between third and fourth bridges on the banks
\nof Jhelum.    Thousands of men \u2018  dressed in \u2018long loose, large tunics,\u2019 many
\nwearing no drawers\u2019 squatting on lush green grass listening with rapt attention
\nto the discourses of most towering amongst the tent pitchers.<\/p>\n

Lost in my world of imagination, …<\/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":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kashmir-talk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4208"}],"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=4208"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4211,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4208\/revisions\/4211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}