{"id":825,"date":"2012-05-07T00:00:28","date_gmt":"2012-05-06T18:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/?p=825"},"modified":"2012-05-07T00:03:34","modified_gmt":"2012-05-06T18:33:34","slug":"my-nostalgia-story-of-a-generation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/editors-take\/my-nostalgia-story-of-a-generation\/","title":{"rendered":"My Nostalgia Story of A Generation"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like>

 <\/p>\n

I am a witness- witness to an era. So is the whole crop of my generation and the generation after. Born and brought up in a city, should I say of defiance or desolation; I have been the witness- in the words of a poet \u2018 to the threshing of the grain\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

Something eerie was there in the zephyr- yes the morning breeze that blew across our city; it sang different cradlesongs for us. Songs, which for over three centuries have mixed with chilly wintry winds and soothing summer breezes. That taught \u2018us no love for the authority but for the defiant\u2019 and abiding love for the \u2018commoners\u2019- the devout. I do not remember in my childhood having ever seen a minister walking through our streets or visiting our school- top man \u00a0\u00a0ever to visit our school would be the school inspector. I remember every majzoob<\/em> pacing barefoot in freezing winters in our city. I remember every friar and mendicant walking through Bazaars in ward four but I do not remember having ever seen an \u201cassembly member\u201d pacing through the streets or the maze of lanes that even today like un-deciphered manuscripts reveals unspoken to the discerning eyes.\u00a0 \u00a0However, I have foggiest idea about an election- perhaps 1957 in which Ghulam Rasool Renzu of Khanyar was pitied against Gazi Abdul Rahman of Maharaj Gung. It is for a slogan \u201cMashalee Sundooq Ko\u2019 Vote Doo<\/em>\u201d that lives buried somewhere in the hinterland of my mind that I remember this election. It was friend, Dr. Abdul Wahid, who sometime back narrated an interesting incident about this election: \u2018Gazi Rahman, who was independent candidate with tacit support of Bakshi Sahib accused his rival Renzu being a communist and not believing even in Nikah- <\/em>and Renzu \u00a0\u00a0next day with his Nikah-Nama<\/em> in his hand countered his rival at a public gathering near Nowhatta.\u2019<\/p>\n

Those days when pegging pictures of leaders on \u00a0clay \u00a0\u00a0daubed walls of Bhataks <\/em>(drawing rooms) was in fashion, I \u00a0<\/em>do not remember having ever seen picture of \u00a0any minister or even then Prime Minister adorning\u00a0 walls of our house or \u00a0\u00a0the houses\u00a0 of my friends Bashir, Majid, Ayub and Nazir. Or on the drab walls of shops and workshops of our neighbors, the darners, the coppersmiths, the tailors, the woodcarvers and the walnut wood-polishers. Contrary to this \u00a0pictures of the then jailed leaders Sheikh Abdullah and Mirza Afzal Beg along with that of Allama Mohammad Iqbal, with beautiful verses of the poet in ornate papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 frames adorned the walls of shops and houses. Out of greater boldness, some political workers like Abdullah Sodagar and Qadir Shakhsaz outside my first school provocatively displayed pictures of these leaders in front of their shops earning ire of powers that be. \u00a0A year or so back, \u00a0I wrote in this column, my first introduction to the second Prime Minister, Bakshi Ghulam Muhammad was a picture of his, carrying a willow-vat filled with bricks on his shoulder in Muhammad Kak, grocer\u2019s shop in our Mohalla. In blood and flesh, my peers and I saw him and some of his lieutenants only on 13 July ahead of a great pageant of flowers and drumbeaters on top of a bedecked truck. It was the day to remember the martyrs of 1931.<\/p>\n

Truthfully, the prime ministers, ministers and political hanger-on\u2019s that were many in our childhood had no attraction for us. They made no difference in our life but it were the legendary ordinaries that counted for us.\u00a0 We looked at them as larger than life. I remember a lineman – Abdullah Bijli and his brother Hassan. He was dwarf, his brother was taller, and it was he who carried the ladder for him. They looked like characters picked up from Charlie Chaplin\u2019s movies placed on the streets in our locality. Mostly at dusk, the twin was much sought-after for fixing a fuse or restoring a disconnected electric service line.\u00a0 Sitting on a tailors shop in Daribal<\/em> and puffing smoke from the Hubble-bubble he looked like El Cid in his kingdom. With his area of operation starting from Gojawara to Nawpora, he was a king in his own right.\u00a0 Sometime back, it was iconic newsreader Abdul Rashid Banday, who reminded me of this legendry lineman and \u00a0about the authority he wielded. Those days the news about an inspection by electricity department caused goose bumps in people. Out of fear people not only latched their doors but placed massive limestone mortars on their doors\u2026this too has its own history.<\/p>\n<\/fb:like><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

 
\nI am a witness- witness to an era. So is the whole crop of my generation and the generation after. Born and brought up in a city, should I say of defiance or desolation; I have been the witness- in the words of a poet \u2018 to the threshing of the grain\u2019.
\nSomething eerie was there in the zephyr- yes the morning breeze that blew across our city; it sang different cradlesongs for us. Songs, which for over three centuries have mixed with chilly wintry winds and soothing summer breezes. That taught \u2018us no love for the authority but for the defiant\u2019 and abiding love for the \u2018commoners\u2019- the devout. I do not remember in my childhood having ever seen a minister walking through our streets or visiting our school- top man \u00a0\u00a0ever to visit our school would be the school inspector. I remember every majzoob pacing barefoot in freezing winters …<\/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":[3],"tags":[53,8,88,89,11],"class_list":["post-825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editors-take","tag-abdullah","tag-kashmir","tag-kashmir-hindus","tag-nostalgia","tag-z-g-muhmamd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825"}],"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=825"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":828,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825\/revisions\/828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}