{"id":4267,"date":"2021-08-02T11:50:43","date_gmt":"2021-08-02T06:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/?p=4267"},"modified":"2021-08-02T11:54:16","modified_gmt":"2021-08-02T06:24:16","slug":"girls-college-bus-in-my-bios-cope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/editors-take\/girls-college-bus-in-my-bios-cope\/","title":{"rendered":"Girls College Bus, In my bios-cope"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like>\n

My\nBIOSCOPE <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Girl\nCollege Bus. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
ZGM<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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

It was a windy and cold December morning. Just one or two days after, schools, colleges and Kashmir University- then the only university would be closed for a long winter break- seventy days. Staying Seventy days, i.e. 1680 hours at home away from college buddies and schoolmates, was as hurtful as removing an infant from her mother’s chest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 For\nhaving missed the opportunity of making it to the Government Medical College, I\nwas downcast. Despite the despair, I had earned the bravado of fighting a\nbattle for justice by gate-crashing into the highest echelons of power. My striving\none day brought me face to face with a person in a nice greyish-blue suit,\nironed to finesse, donning a black astrakhan cap and darkest glasses- I was\ntold he was Chief Minister, Sadiq. I had never seen him before; perhaps as  Chief Minister, he was never seen publicly-\ndowntown Srinagar was virtually out of bounds for him.   I don’t\nif he frowned or smiled on seeing a gate-crasher in front of him at the stairs\nleading to his evening office, called private office. A black-complexioned,\nwooden-faced, very tall man standing behind him like his shadow had helped me\nto reach to him with my grievance. He was Mr Hafiz, then perhaps an inspector\nin charge of his security. Later on, as I got a job, I knew him a bit in\ndetail. He was a highly professional,\ndisciplined security officer who never lost his poise even in challenging times-\nand believed in no non-sense. I tiny orphan just on the threshold of my\ntwenties, that I was, made my presentation with all boldness and articulation,\nnot realizing that behind the fa\u00e7ade of liberalization, there was a man with rhinoceros\nhide and Stalinists mindset. The meeting bought me an immediate bonus; I shed\nmy shyness and timidity, but it did not get me justice. He died in a harness.\nDespite spin-doctors selling all lies about his change of heart on his death\nbed,  his death brought no tears to my\neyes. His death did not end my melancholy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 My\nmelancholy had more to do with some friends with bare forty per cent marks\nunder the shelter of a court order having been admitted for graduating as\ndoctors. It is a different story; one of them spent ten years instead of five\nyears to complete the course. The rebel in me often refused to bow before the\nfailures and disappointments- nevertheless, whenever these overwhelmed me, I\nfound the biggest hideout in one or another spiritual place. The December\nmorning I started with was one such occasion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In a\nmood of desolation, like a wanderer unmindful about his station, I took a bus\nat the Batmaloo terminus. I arrived at the mausoleum of Baba Payam-u- Din Reshi.\nThe Ziarat nestled in thick forests with billows of mist, adding a surreal aura\nto the surroundings, has been a place of solace and satisfaction for me since I\nfirst visited it with my father on a pony. That was also my first long-distance\npony ride. In childhood, I often enjoyed short pony rides in my Mohalla after\nclay-sellers from village Wunpur in \nBudgam arrived in our locality with sacks full of grey clay ( huri maitch<\/em>)  on horseback, particularly on festive\noccasions. Days before two  Eid-Milad,\nour mothers daubed the kitchen and other rooms with grey clay with green\ntincture. Some of these horsemen were familiar faces; my mother often invited\nthem for a hot cup of salt tea. But, going up to Ziarat on the pony’s back\nseven thousand feet above the sea was a unique experience. Then the Baba\nReshi,  as the hamlet wrapped in tall\npines is called after the famed disciples of Sheikh Noor-u-Din Reshi, was yet\nto be connected with Tangmarg by a metalled road and was yet to be electrified.\nEnjoying meals- rice and roasted rooster under huge earthenware lamps, with\ncotton wicks dipped in mustard oil had a medieval age romance about everything\naround. Then, no road had been built; scores of men and women who could not\nafford to hire a pony trekked the uphill journey with great devotion. But, it\nwas the first time in my life when I had visited the Ziarat towards the fag end\nof December for an inner solace. The dark clouds as dark as Sadiq’s lenses were\nthreatening, and I had no plans to stay for the night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\nI took a shortcut to Gulmarg, and on reaching to the famed meadow, massive\nsnowflakes greeted me. Coming down like fluffy cotton ropes, the snow created a\nterrifying situation for me, and it turned into a nightmare when I was informed\nthat the last bus for the City has left and there may be no bus tomorrow. I\ndidn’t lose faith in getting a ride to Srinagar. In this depressing\nscenario, I spotted a bus, continuously honking, like a man lost in a desert\nchasing a mirage; I rushed towards it with the hope of getting back home. The sixty-five\nseater bus was packed with girl students from the Women’s College, M. A. Road\nSrinagar, and it was waiting for some girls who were yet to arrive. In the\nbabbling crowd insides the bus, I spotted many a girl who knew me by face, and\nsome knew me by name. A couple of them were from our locality, and two of them,\nfor my love of books, hired novels for me from the Book Corner.   I\nthought the girls I knew would vouch for my credentials, but they chose to\npretend to be strangers. A peon of the college, a matchmaker on the bus, also\nknew me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boys\nof our locality often catcalled him for his peculiar gait- and I had never\nbooed or jeered him. In this hour of crisis, I thought my gentleness would come\nto my help. Instead, he looked at me with suspicious eyes. It cannot be denied,\nthe long bus of Girls College, interestingly named as the Women’s College that\npassed through our street for six days of the week at 9 A.M. was an object of\nattraction for boys. The most flamboyant among us, who, for their hairstyles,\ncompared themselves with matinee idols Dilip Kumar, Rajinder Kumar and Dev\nAnand eagerly waited for the bus at the two roundabouts of our locality. One\nday, in the attic of our house, I found an old issue in a monthly magazine of\nAzan; in one of the issues, there was a poem titled ‘Girls College Bus’ by  Mahirul Qadri. I don’t know if it had been\nlifted from “Faaraan” or some of the earlier magazines he edited. It\nwas a satirical poem, critical of the girls copycatting the Western fashions- it was so powerful that one\ncould parrot it one reading. Even after many decades, I remember some of the\nlines. But, in the distressful situation I was caught at Gulmarg, these lines\nhad also evaporated from my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Swathed\nwith snow from top to toe, like a snowman, I approached the driver to give me a\nlift down the hill; he gently told me, sorry, I cannot take a boy in a girl’s\nbus. Then, at the door of the bus, I saw standing three teachers of the\ncollege.  I knew them by face, and of course, by name and subjects they\nwere teaching, but none of them knew me.  Till then, none of them had been a teacher at\nIslamia College, my alma mater.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Of\nthe three, I knew Gassudin   Sahib, a physics teacher from my Zal’goor\ndays, when with passion my mates and I raced on traffic-less streets with\nswallows continuously hitting with sticks on our Zal’goor \u2013 the rubber wheel. Later\non, his son Mumtaz was my contemporary in college. Those days, we looked at him\nand two more teachers of chemistry Mir Sahib and Jaffer Sahib, with admiration\nwhen they passed through the street of our Mohalla on bicycles on their way to\nS.P. College. The other two teachers that accompanied the girls’ college\nstudents were Shama-u-Din  Sahib\n(chemistry) and Bazaz Sahib (Physics) \u2013 I don’t know if he was related to\nPandit Prem Nath Bazaz. Some of my friends knew him for his suaveness as\nsuperintendents of the examination centre at the Central jail. Those days’ many\nstudents detained under Preventive Detention Act (PDA) sat for examinations in\nthe examination centres set up in prisons. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Somehow,\nI had a strong belief that they would permit me to travel by bus up to\nTangmarg. And shivering with cold, the heart inside my frozen body was pounding\nto collapse. Once I implored them for a ride, they looked at me from top to toe\nand allowed me to travel on the bus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nstory of travelling in girls every time brought a teenage blush on my face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To\nbe continued.  <\/p>\n<\/fb:like><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My
\nBIOSCOPE <\/p>\n

Girl
\nCollege Bus. <\/p>\n

ZGM<\/p>\n

ZGM <\/p>\n

It was a windy and cold December morning. Just one or two days after, schools, colleges and Kashmir University- then the only university would be closed for a long winter break- seventy days. Staying Seventy days, i.e. 1680 hours at home away from college buddies and schoolmates, was as hurtful as removing an infant from her mother’s chest. <\/p>\n

 For
\nhaving missed the opportunity of making it to the Government Medical College, I
\nwas downcast. Despite the despair, I had earned the bravado of fighting a
\nbattle for justice by gate-crashing into the highest echelons of power. My striving
\none day brought me face to face with a person in a nice greyish-blue suit,
\nironed to finesse, donning a black astrakhan cap and darkest glasses- I was
\ntold he was Chief Minister, Sadiq. I had never seen him before; perhaps as  Chief Minister, he was never seen publicly-
\ndowntown Srinagar was virtually out of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[396,395,397,11,398],"class_list":["post-4267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editors-take","tag-girls-college-bus","tag-goverment-college-women","tag-mahir-ul-qadari","tag-z-g-muhmamd","tag-zgm-nostalgia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4267"}],"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=4267"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4274,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4267\/revisions\/4274"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}