{"id":4221,"date":"2020-10-13T13:04:17","date_gmt":"2020-10-13T07:34:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/?p=4221"},"modified":"2020-10-13T13:23:44","modified_gmt":"2020-10-13T07:53:44","slug":"of-slipshod-days-and-matinee-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/editors-take\/of-slipshod-days-and-matinee-shows\/","title":{"rendered":"OF SLIPSHOD DAYS AND MATINEE SHOWS"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like>\n

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

\"\"
Z.G. Muhammad <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Z. G. Muhammad <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Should I call them slipshod days?\u00a0 No, they were carefree day,\u00a0\u00a0 really happy go lucky times. I had just passed my matriculation examination and joined Islamia College of Science and Commerce- a college founded by last Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Bakshi Ghulam Muhammad. It was a fantastic job he had done for our birth burg.\u00a0 It was first Commerce College in Kashmir. Those days most of the boys aspired to be doctors and engineers. And Islamia College was making a remarkable contribution by sending more than sixty per cent boys for engineering and medicine. I remember most of the boys who took admission in commerce had not heard of the subject before and had very little knowledge of this discipline. Except for children from a few small-time business families, most of the boys who took admission in this college were from lower-middle-class families. Many of the boys were first-generation educated. It was not out of fluke that Bakshi established a college at a site that had been earmarked for a slaughterhouse- he had a vision- a clear vision to provide future business leaders to the state from the families of artisans, craftsmen and other working class. Many captains of business that played a role during the past three decades were a product of this college.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I did not go for commerce but chose science as my subjects-\njoining college was a dream realized. My peers and I during our schools days\ndreamt of entering college, not for a big reason- the advantages that we saw in\njoining college was that no schoolbags bulging out like belly of potbellied\ntheology teachers would sling from our shoulders. We would not face any cane\ncharge from drillmaster for not coming in uniform to school- there will be no\nuniform. There would be no taboos on our movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On joining college, \u201cLet Us\u201d was the first new word that we\nlearnt. We had heard phrases and idioms like let up, let down, let on, let out\nand even parroted phrases like \u2018let the cat be out of the bag\u2019, \u2018let sleeping\ndogs lie\u2019, \u2018let the genie be out of the bottle\u2019 \nbut this word we had heard never. This word that meant truancy for us\nhad been coined by some student but had become very popular with boys in other\ncolleges also. This unique idiom had its wings. The moment some boy whispered\nit in the class- it travelled like an electric current from one corner to another.\nFor different boys, it meant other things. \nThe word \u2018let us\u2019 for a group of boys meant playing cards during\npractical class under the canopy of a Chinar tree in the backyard of college- some\nboys preferred near by graveyards for shuffling cards. For us \u2018Let Us\u201d, meant\nskipping practical classes and going for a matinee show in the Shiraz Cinema\nand sometimes in the Neelam Cinema. Mostly we missed practical classes in\nPhysics. Prof. Ubaid Ahmed, our physics teacher, was from UP. He was a perfect\ngentleman.  In our college days\nthere   Srinagar had five cinemas, the\nRegal, the Palladium, the Neelam, the Broadway and the Shiraz and three more\ncinemas were under construction, the Khyam, the Firdous and the Naaz. Matinee\nshows mostly started at 11 A.M and ended up at 1.Oclock. During matinee shows\nthe cinemas would mainly exhibit English films and some cinemas would show old\nHindi films.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember having seen some best English movies on Roman and\nGreek history and Second World War during matinee shows. The matinee show was\nmost \u2018suited\u2019 to us. After watching the morning show, we would return to\ncollege and attend classes. Those days\u2019 parents would hardly allow their\nchildren to watch a movie- watching a movie was seen as good as promoting\nobscenity and immorality. It was unimaginable during our college days to watch\nan evening or night show in a cinema. Still, many boys from our Mohalla who had\ndropped out a school level and had taken to carpet weaving and other crafts had\nthe liberty to watch the evening shows and even late-night shows in cinemas. It\nwas always interesting to listen to them after they had watched a new film.\nMany of them had mastered the craft of storytelling, and it was as good as\nlistening to a soundtrack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember, a boy who was nicknamed as  \u201csusral\u201d- after a film by the same title that\nhad Rajinder Kumar in the lead role. The film was a big musical hit. And every\nboy in the Mohalla wanted to see this movie on its first day.  The boy nicknamed \u2018susral\u2019   was working as a coppersmith. He saw the film\non the first day of its showing.  To boast\nof watching this movie on the very  first\ndays- he told his friends, \u2018 I am the person who saw \u2018Susral\u2019 on the first day,\nI got the first ticket, I was first to enter the cinema, and I occupied the\nfirst row in the hall.\u2019 For his boasting he was nicknamed as \u2018susral\u2019- most of\nthe boys in the locality knew him by this name only and I never even tried to\nknow his real name- and remembered him by the same name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember Habibullah Najar, a walnut wood furniture maker\nin our locality. He was total illiterate but was a great lover of Hollywood\nmovies. He never watched any Hindi films and called them trash, but he hardly\nmissed a Hollywood movie. He was the only person in our locality who did not\nadmire Dilip Kumar but was a great fan of actors like Gregory Peck, Omar\nSharief and Anthony Quinn. I often thought he was watching English films just\nfor the sake of it and understood nothing. I many times spotted him inside the\nShiraz Cinema watching a matinee show. One day after leaving the cinema, I made\na point to know what he understood from the film- no moment I touched the\nsubject, he narrated the whole story. The film had communicated him better than\nme. He perhaps had a far better an IQ than me and understood the language of\ngesture better than we understood word of mouth\u2026..The beauty of our birth burg\nwas that many an unlettered had a far better grasp of social and political\nissues than literate, and cinema more particularly films on the second world\nwhich they called \u201cGerman War\u201d communicated to them better than they did to us.\n<\/p>\n<\/fb:like><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By <\/p>\n

Z.G. Muhammad <\/p>\n

Z. G. Muhammad <\/p>\n

Should I call them slipshod days?\u00a0 No, they were carefree day,\u00a0\u00a0 really happy go lucky times. I had just passed my matriculation examination and joined Islamia College of Science and Commerce- a college founded by last Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Bakshi Ghulam Muhammad. It was a fantastic job he had done for our birth burg.\u00a0 It was first Commerce College in Kashmir. Those days most of the boys aspired to be doctors and engineers. And Islamia College was making a remarkable contribution by sending more than sixty per cent boys for engineering and medicine. I remember most of the boys who took admission in commerce had not heard of the subject before and had very little knowledge of this discipline. Except for children from a few small-time business families, most of the boys who took admission in this college were from lower-middle-class …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3,5,319],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editors-take","category-kashmir-talk","category-memeiors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4221"}],"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=4221"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4223,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4221\/revisions\/4223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}