Jammu, house, home

Back at Jammu, my grandmother is worried. She is worried because there is a talk in that town:

All the trouble in city, all this violence over Amarnath issue, has its origin in Pandits of Kashmir. These Pandits carried their scourge with them to Jammu.

Somewhere hidden along with that brass Khos, pandit sneaked in the scourge.

My grandmother is worried that we would be thrown out of Jammu.

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Unrelated post:
Back to Kashmir, Pandit

gardens, paradise, Kashmir

Word ‘paradise’ was introduced to English language from ancient Persian words pairi (around) and daeza (a wall). Western world got to know of this word when Xenophon, a contemporary of Socrates, used the word paradeisoi to describe the great garden at Sardis built by the Persian Emperor Cyrus. From Greek the word passed into Latin as paradisum ; and then into Middle English as paradis.

Francois Bernier, the french physician who came to Delhi in 1658, during during his visit to Kashmir in 1664–65 as part of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb’s entourage, was the first westerner to call Kashmir a paradise. Paradisehis response to the abundant natural beauty of Kashmir was in fact colored by opinion of Mughals who thought of Kashmir as ‘Jannat‘ or ‘Paradise’. Bernier wrote a number of letters during his travels in India. These letter, originally written in French were later translated and printed by various publishers in a book format. The first one was published in 1670 and , naturally, Kashmir was covered under the title Journey to Kachemire, The Paradise of the Indies.

After Emperor Akbar’s conquest in 1585, Kashmir was slowly developed into a retreat for Mughals. Naseem Bagh ( Garden of Pleasant Breeze) was built during Akbar’s reign in around 1586. However, it was his son Jahangir’s infatuation with Kashmir that lead to the creation of great gardens in Kashmir. And it was the Persian influence of Jahangir’s Irani wife and her family that decided how these gardens were actually going to turn up.

At Veri-nag, the place of spring considered to be the origin of Jehlum river, Jahangir constructed a beautiful Persian styled Garden enclosing a blue watered spring. This spot, around 78 km south-east of Srinagar, is said to have been the favorite garden of his Iranian wife Empress Noor Jahan.

But, the real testimony to the Mughal fascination with Kashmir are the Iranian influenced royal Gardens: Shalimar, Chashma Shahi and Nishat Bagh.

Shalimar Bagh Srinagar Kashmir Photograph of Shalimar Garden taken by me in June 2008

Jahangir, for his beloved wife Noor Jahan, built the fabulous Shalimar Garden* in around 1619. It was originally named Bagh-i- Farah Bakhsh (meaning delightful). During the time of Shah Jahan, in around 1630 Zafar Khan, the Mughal governer of Kashmir extended the original garden, the new portion was named Bagh-i-Faiz Bakhsh ( meaning bountiful).

Shah Jahan, son of Jahangir, built the Chashma Shahi ( Spring Royal) Garden in around 1632.

Ali Mardan Khan, the Iranian man put in change of Kashmir by Shah Jahan, is believed to be the person who actually built this garden.

Chashma Shahi Photograph of Chashma Shahi, June 2008

Asaf Khan, brother of Noor Jahan, father of Mumtaz Mahal, father-in-law and wazir of Emperor Shah Jahan, built the beautiful Nishat Bagh (Pleasure Garden) overlooking Dal lake. This garden is believed to be the better planned and better located among all the three Mughal gardens of Kashmir.

Nishat Bagh, Srinagar, KashmirPhotograph of Nishat Bagh, April 2006

According to a local tale: During Shah Jahan’s visit to Kashmir in around 1633, the Emperor got completely enamored by the beauty of Nishat Bagh and subtly asked his father-in-law wazir Asaf Khan to consider handing over the garden to him. Asaf Khan was too much in love with his Pleasure Garden and choose to remain oblivious to this subtle royal suggestion. Snubbed, Emperor Shah Jahan ordered that the water supply to Nishat Bagh be cut. Nishat began to wither and would soon have been in complete ruin had a servant loyal to Asaf Khan not dared to go against the royal decree and defiantly restored the water supply to the garden. In face of such defiance, instead of being angry, in a benovalent mood, Shah Jahan passed a sanad – a royal Mughal grant that allowed the owner of Nishat Bagh to draw water from the royal stream.

The water to Shalimar and Nishat Garden was (and still is) fed by a reservoir situated at Harwan, a seat of ancient Buddhist monastery. Ages ago, famous Buddhist teacher Nagarjuna was supposed to have dwelt at this place. Located at this place is another garden of Mughal built.

Near Chashma Shahi, at the foothills of Zabarwan mountains, Dara Shikoh, Shah Jahan’s eldest son, the sufi one, converted an ancient Buddhist monastery into a school of astrology and dedicated it to his master Mulla Shah. Pari Mahal or the Palace of fairies, was a place steeped in magical stories. Walter Rooper Lawrence, who visited Kashmir in 1889 as the Land settlement officer, wrote in his book The Valley of Kashmir (1895):

Strange tales are told of the Pari Mahal, of the wicked magician who spirited away kings’ daughters in their sleep, how an Indian princess by the order of her father brought away a chenar leaf to indicate the abode of her seducer, and how all the outraged kings of India seized the magician.

Pari+MahalPhotograph of Pari Mahal, June 2008

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Gar firdaus bar rue zameen ast / hameen asto, hameen asto, hameen ast

If ever there is Paradise on Earth / It is here! It is here! It is here!

– A farsi couplet of Amir Khusrau believed to have been uttered by Jahagir for paradise Kashmir.

Jahagir’s memoirs tilted Tuzk-i-Jehangiri records:

“If one were to praise Kashmir, whole books would have to be written. According a mere summary will be recorded.”

“Kashmir is a garden of eternal spring, or an iron fort to a palace of kings — a delightful flower-bed, and heart-expanding heritage for dervishes. Its pleasant meads and enchanting cascades are beyond count. Wherever the eye reaches, thre are verdure and running water. the red rose, the violet, and the narcissus grow of themselves; in the fiels, there are all kings of flowers and all sorts of sweetscented herbs more than can be calculated. In the soul enchanting spring the hills and plains are filled with blossoms; the gates, the walls, the courts, the roofs are lighted up by the torches of banquet adoring tulips.What shall we say of these things or of the wide meadows and the fragrant trefoils?”

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June, 2008

Pari Mahal, now, has fewer security personal, although the empty bunkers inside the ancient buildings have not been dismantled yet. You never know when they would be back in business. Pari Mahal, with all its blazing lights, still looks great at night. From its highest terrace, you can see more valley and less lake, for a still better view – get on top of the dome at Shankaracharya. Ignore this. On a wall near stairs that lead to the main sanctum scrotum of the temple somebody has scribbled a word – Fakbar.

Vegi Nag has fallen victim to a ghastly attempt at restoration by the government bodies. Never too popular, fewer people would want to visit it now.

Harwan is said to be in shambles and people don’t frequent it often. It still remains the source of water for Nishat and Shalimar.

Nishat, Chashma Shahi and Shalimar continue to be popular among the locals, as well as the tourists. But few tourists stroll to the higher terraces of Nishat, you find more Kashmiris there – sitting, laying out on greens or walking contently in a garden. Snake sightings are still common at Nishat. There is still some water rivarly between Nishat and Shalimar. Fountains and canals at Nishat do sometimes run dry.

People bottle ice cold waters of Chashma Shahi in pet bottle. These bottles are later even sold. Walls of the central building at Shalimar Garden, once a venue of royal love games – a  love pad – This Mughal summer house, the stones of which – locals had told Bernier – came from an ancient Hindu temples, is now a scratch pad for teenage lovers.

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*

Various meaning of word Shalimar:

Shalimar, in Sanskrit (?) is believed to mean ” Abode of love”, “House of Joy” and similar.

According to some it means ‘Abode of Lilies’.

According to some it means “the House of Kama Deva”

Maharaja Ranjit Singh believed Shala meant God and Mar meant Curse. He wanted to change the name of the garden. His courtiers told him that Shala was a Turki word meaning pleasure and mar means ‘place’.

According to another version Shalimar means “paddy growing area”

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There is a Shalimar Bagh in Lahore also. This one was built by Shah Jahan in 1641.

Then there is a Shalimar Bagh about five miles north of Delhi built by Shah JaHan. Also known as Aizzabad-Bagh ( after Shah Jahan’s wife named Aizzu’n-Nisa Begum), this was the place where coronation of Aurangzeb took place in 1658.

Both are an imitation of the Shalimar Bagh of Kashmir.

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And finally, there is Shalimar The Clown.

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Etymology of word ‘Paradise’: From William Dalrymple’s City of Djinns: A Year In Delhi

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Recommended read: Relating Paradise to Kashmir’s Historical Gardens at KashmirForum.org

download Books on Kashmir for free

Here is a list of must have books on history of Kashmir. Most of these books are travelogues written by early visitors to Kashmir. These books used to be out of reach of common readers and could only be found in labyrinth of some great library. Or, due to antiquity of these books, were priced out of reach of curious readers. Now, thanks to initiatives by Google , many online libraries and Project Gutenberg, these books in .pdf and .text format are available to all for free.

Here are the links:

Francois Bernier (1625 – 1688), French physician and traveler, visited Kashmir in 1664–65 as part of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb’s entourage. He is regarded as the first westerner to have described Kashmir.

Travels in the Mogul Empire By François Bernier
Translated by Irving Brock
Published 1826
Format: pdf
Size: 10.5 mb
Link, Google books

Another edition of this wonderful book:

Travels in the Mogul Empire,
edited by Archibald Constable,
(1891)
Format: text and pdf
Link, Columbia University Libraries

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Kashmir is also mentioned travels of Marco polo (1254 – 1324), famous trader and explorer from Venice who was one of the first western travelers to walk the Silk route to China.
His two volume travelogue can be downloaded here

The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 1, 3rd edition (1903)
Format: text
Download Link, project Gutenberg

The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2
Format: text
Download Link, project Gutenberg

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George Forster, an English traveler in the service of East India Company, arrived in Kashmir in April 1783.

Letters on a Journey from Bengal to England, through the Northern Part of India, Kashmir, Afghanistan, and Persia, and into Russia, by the Caspian Sea
By George Forster
Published 1808
Volume 2: This one covers his travels in Kashmir
Format: pdf
Size:13.6 mb
Link, Google books

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In 1822, William Moorcroft, a British East India Company veterinarian and his assistant, George Trebeck traveled through Kashmir while attempting to reach Central Asia.

Travels in Ladakh and Kashmir
By William Moorcroft and George Trebeck
Volume 2
Published 1841
Format: pdf
Size: 7.8 mb
Link, Google books

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Victor Jacquemont (1801 – 1832), french botanist visited Kashmir in around 1831.

Letter from India: Describing a Journey in the British Dominion of India
By Victor Jacquemont
Published 1835
format: pdf
size: 8 mb
Link, Google books

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Godfrey Thomas Vigne, an English travelers visited Kashmir in 1835.

Travels in Kashmir, Ladak, Iskardo, the Countries Adjoining the Mountain-Course of the Indus, and the Himalaya, north of the Panjab with Map.
By G.T. Vigne
Published 1844
format: pdf
size: 10.9 mb
Link, Google books

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Some more books by travelers:

A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil
By T. R. Swinburne
(1907)
Format: text
Download Link, project Gutenberg

Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet
By William Henry Knight
(1863)
Format: text
Download Link, project Gutenberg

Chenar Leaves: Poems of Kashmir
By Mrs. Percy Brown
(1921)
Format: text
Link, archive.org

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Perhaps the most important book in its field, a book by Reverend J. H. Knowles, The founder of modern missionary schools in Kashmir.

A Dictionary Of Kashmiri Proverbs and Sayings
(1885)
J. H. Knowles
Link, archive.org

The book ( in pdf and text) there is not complete. It list proverbs only up till K.

Updated with a link pointing to the complete book.
For some more proverbs, you can check out the previews of same book at Google books

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Walter Rooper Lawrence visited Kashmir in 1889 as the Land settlement officer and wrote an exceptionally informative book on Kashmir.

Valley of Kashmir
by Walter Rooper Lawrence
[Link, archive.org (may slow down your browser, wait for couple of minutes for the book to load)]

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update 1/2/09

Travels in India and Kashmir.
by The Baron Erich von Schonberg.
1853.
London: Hurst & Blackett
Volume 1, Last few chapters of the book deal with his travel to Kashmir
[Link, archive.org,.txt ]

Volume 2, deals more extensively with his travels in Kashmir  
[Link, archive.org, .txt]

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update 9/2/2009

Kashmir 
Described by Sir Francis Younghusband
Painted by
Major E. Molyneux
1911
London, Adam and Charles Black
[Link, archive.org, .txt]

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Update 17/2/2009

This particular travelogue heavily quotes from the works of earlier visitors to Kashmir, making it quite interesting.

Letters from India and Kashmir

By Duguid, J
written 1870;
Illustrated and annotated 1873.
London: George bell and Sons(1874)
[Link, archive.org, .txt]

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 Update 14/3/2009

Travels in Kashmir And The Panjab,
from German of Baron Charles Hugel with notes by Major T.B. Jervis, F.R.S
By Karl Alexander A. Hügel

Translated by Thomas Best Jervis

Published 1845 (In German published in 1841 )
[Google Link]

Karl Alexander A. Hügel, was a contemporary of G.T. Vigne, and visited Kashmir in around 1835. The two foreign travelers even met each other in Kashmir.

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Update 14/4/2009

These books were meant a a guide for the early travelers to Kashmir

The Happy Valley: Sketches of Kashmir and the Kashmiris
By W. Wakefield (1879)
[Link, archive.org, .txt]

A Guide for Visitors to Kashmir.
By John Collett (1884)
[Link, archive.org, .txt]

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Update: July 31, 2009

Beyond The Pir Panjal: Life and Missionary Enterprise in Kashmir” (1912 )
By Ernest  F. Neve.
[Link, archive.org]

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The list here keeps growing as and when I find more. Do leave the link in comment if you know of some more.

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Update: 25/5/2013
For reference to more books on Kashmir:

The definitive index to Kashmir Images through the ages 

pandit woman in Traditional Kashmiri Dress

traditional dress of kashmiri pandit women

old lady in traditional Kashmiri pandit dress: Tarang, pheran,

kashmiri old lady in pheran and tarang

28/10/2007

Jammu

I had gone to attend a dear cousin brother’s wedding. On the night of his yajnopavit (sacred thread) ceremony someone mentioned that in a nearby hall, hosting guests of some other wedding, there is an old lady dressed in traditional Kashmiri pandit costume.

I went to that hall along with a cousin sister and took these photographs using her camera. It felt odd as I went there uninvited. People, mostly woman, were sitting in the hall forming their own mini groups. The old lady was sitting in a corner all dressed. I walked up to her, said ‘namaskar‘ and gave her a hug – touching the feet of elders is not the protocol among pandits, at least not yet. I asked her if I could take some photos of her. For her age, the lady was surprisingly shape minded and cheerful. She was kind enough to let me take her photographs. No, in fact she was delighted.

I went back and showed the photographs around. Everyone was delighted. In the 90s this ‘sighting’ would have been nothing special, but in this millennium, it was almost a miracle. It got people taking about old days. I remember many times being told stories of grand old pandit ladies who, during kabali raid of 1947, asked their families to leave them behind on road as they didn’t want to slow down their families while they were fleeing from murdering horde of Muslim tribal people and Pakistani soldiers.

In 90s, people remembered old ladies who had never been out of kashmir and then suddenly ‘post-migration’ found themselves in Jummu. Many of them, traveling in local buses – ‘meta’dors‘ or ‘muk’bus‘, would often ask the conductor to drop them off to their home, but on being asked, would give their address as some place in kashmir. The conductor, invariably some dugur boy, dugur kot not yet out of his teens, would yell, “Mata’yee,” his voice getting drowned in film music blarring from a pair of speakers kept under the seat next to the door, “aa yammu hai!” Amused and laughing, to the rest of the passengers and to the rest of the world in general, he would ask, “Ku’dru aa gaye yara ay kashmiri!”

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Panditani by Fred Bremner

The picture on left titled ‘A Panditani [Hindu] Kashmir’ was taken in 1900 by famous photographer Fred Bremner. Just like the lady in the photographs above, the woman in left photograph is wearing tarang (head dress), pheran (traditional kashmiri gown) and athoor/dejhoor(in the ears).

Read more about traditional Kashmir pandit dress at ikashmir

For more old photographs of Kashmir check this

Eighty-Three Days: The Story of a Frozen River

Summer of last year, I found my grandfather reading a book titled Eighty – Three Days: The Story of a Frozen River by Dr. S.N. Dhar. Curious, I decided to take up this book.

The author, in twenty three stories, writes about being held captive by Kashmiri militants for eighty three days and surviving to tell his tale. The book provided an insightful look into the early days of militant movement in Kashmir. His kidnapping took place in the early days of militancy in Kashmir when most of the pandit families had already left Kashmir. Being a doctor, believing himself to ” a popular civilian”, the author had decided to stay on in the valley. On March 31, 1992, he was kidnapped from hospital premises by men of Al Umar group of terrorists. He was held as a hostage by them for eighty three days and this books is as much an account of his captors as it is of his captive days.

He writes, “The first casualty of a violent situation is truth, […].”

A casual reading of the book, and you may conclude that he was suffering from Stockholm syndrome. He portrays his captors as emotional human beings even though he is aware of their taste for violence. Some may even conclude that he is clenching tight the last remnants of an invented idea known as Kashmiriyat and at the same time is looking for the remains of this ideal in his captors also, hoping that Kashmiriyat lurks beneath the violent extremities of their minds and actions. The author never forgets that his captors are Kashmiri, maybe a crucial reason behind his safe release. In the years to come, as the violence in Kashmir grew beyond comprehension, Kashmiris died and a new breed of mujahid arrived. Maybe, the author realizes that he could have never survived among the new breed of extremists.

Dr. S.N. Dhar was finally released on June 22,1992, liberated from his eighty-three day ordeal. He continued to live in the valley.

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Found names of some old teacher of Tyndale Biscoe School in the author’s acknowledgment to this book. He writes:

In school I had the privilage of being taught by remarkable teachers like Shambhunath Kachru, Shivji Kaul, Nand Lal Bakaya, Arjan Nath Sapru and Peer Salamuddin. They nourished my intellectual self and tried to prepare me for upholding the school motto, ‘In all things be men.”

Will add these names to wiki page of Tyndale Biscoe School

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For those interested in buying the book:

Buy Eighty-three days- The story of a frozen River from Flipkart.com

Off to Kashmir, Vinayak

Naturally, a pilgrimage.

It has been (let me fetch a calculator) eighteen years since I left the place.

I am going to the adobe of Khir Bhawani, situated at village Tula Mulla. According to a famous local religious belief, the Goddess used to drink blood in Lanka of Ravana, but in Kashmir, she developed a sweet tooth, hence the Khir in the name. A writer once linked the revival of Khir Bhawani cult in the late 19th century to the rise of Queen Victoria led British influence in the region. But, this is not the post about that.

This is about the trip.

I am going with fourteen of my family members and relatives. My parents are surprised and delighted that I am going to a temple.

I have been to Tula Mulla earlier, I must have been seven, but I still have some vivid memories of that trip and some not so vivid memories of that place.

The reason:
When I returned home after that trip, the same day, I managed to baldy burn the index finger of my right hand.

The cause: I draped a polythene bag around a twig taken from a broom, and lit it up for the pure joy of watching little droplets of fire. I picked up this trick from some kids after having watched them do it at Tula Mulla. Or may be I got the idea from watching all the aartis and all the diyas.

The happening:
A little droplet of fire fell on my finger. Hot molten plastic melted onto my figure, glued onto its skin, burning it all the while. Afraid. I removed the plastic.Pain. Running water, tap, put toothpaste on it, Colgate, and still it burned. A few days later as the wound started ballooning up, Burnol was applied. In a few days the wound punctuated as burn wounds often do. Watery for days. And then the wound started to heal itself. It stopped being a bother. In a few months, the wound completely healed leaving an oval smooth skinned small scare on my index finger.

The affect: The scare is still there. There are days when I check up on it to make sure that it is still there.
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I am happy.

Santosh in Kashmir


7 June, 08.

A Kashmiri, was lying on the ground in obvious pain.
A Punjabi had hit him.
He now sat and spit out tinges of blood.

In the background someone can be heard exclaiming:

Ha yemis’ha Tchu, yaara, khoon ye’vaan!

The Kashmiri was a forward and the Punjabi a defender.
Or maybe it was the way round.
Anyway, the game resumed.

Last night, I was watching on TV a Santosh Trophy quarterfinal league match between J&K and defending champions Punjab, and it turned out to be shocker. Santosh Trophy, India’s premier football tournament whose history goes back to the year 1941, is this year being held in Kashmir and is being sponsored by J&K Bank – possibly the richest institution in the J&K state since all the state coffers are with them. Football isn’t new to Kashmir, in fact, Kashmiris had their first “impure” brush with a football in around 1905 thanks to the head of a Christian Missionary School. Kashmiris are perhaps among the first in India to have learnt the game from the British; and yet, the rest of the story is only of neglect and general apathy.

The stands looked entry but the sounds of the TV suggested there was a healthy crowd in the Stadium. Srinagar field looked a bit green, if not too green. The TV coverage was sloppy as usual: at the moment of a corner kick, the camera looked more interested in making one read a banner hung in the crowd, and as usual there were no ‘action-replay’.

Scoreboard reading nil-nil after sixty minutes of play may not seem like telling of an exciting match, but those who know Indian soccer can certainly call it a hard fought match. I wanted my home team J&K to win. Although the goalie looked a little sloop,
I thought the team was playing fine. But then in the 68th minute, Punjab scored and all hell broke loose. Horror. It was Kashmir all over again on TV.

The camera was now panning on a section of the crowd that you thought didn’t exist, and there was much screaming and yelling. The camera zoomed onto a boy in the stand laughing and yelling, raising a fist in the air. Some other faces looked worried and sad faces. I thought I heard a cry peculiar to Kashmir. The game stopped. A few men in Khaki were looking towards stand, a few of them looking aggressive waving a laathi. The camera zoomed in on to a stone lying on the football field, stayed put for a few seconds. The cameramen, who had earlier trouble covering corner kicks, were now in their elements; it seems they were covering a more familiar subject.

This wasn’t the end of it.

The crowd started to surge forward. They broke the fences. The players started running. The Punjab players started running, the J&K player were walking back calmly and almost looking sad. Or may be it was a sad scene. A J&K player in white jersey ran in the direction of the fleeing Punjab players in yellow jerseys. The crowd running amok had by now captured the field, perhaps wondering what now.

Zee Sports breaks into an Ad:

How is the situation in Kashmir?
Tense.
Bengal has the corner.

And then they start telecasting some motor racing event where the graphics are in French.
My thoughts went to the “Kapil Dev incident in Srinagar” that my father often recounts. Indian Cricket Team was playing West Indies in Srinagar, and the crowd gave a feeling to Kapil Dev that he was in Pakistan. Finally, my thoughts went back to a scene from the football match: hands of that sleepy looking Sikh goolie of Kashmir team, missing the ball in a comic fashion and a defender kicking the ball out of danger area, saving what would have been a shameful goal.

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According to the Press Trust of India (PTI), a clash between the media persons and the organizers for alleged misbehavior by the latter distracted the crowd who started pelting stones towards the area of commotion. Quoting an official it says “The match will resume for the remaining 22 minutes at 0800 hrs tomorrow at the same venue”

Hope they won.

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Kashmir eventually lost the game.
During my trip to Kashmir, the subject of this particular football match did crop up in an entertaining conversation with the Kashmiri driver of my rented vehicle. The fellow turned out to be an avid football fan and according to him: the real cause of the trouble was the fact that Punjab scored the goal from the half line. The outrageous goal shocked the local crowd who believed that the ball was in the non-offensive half of the field at the time of the play – hence it should have been a ‘no goal’.
Hence the trouble.
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You may also like to read about:
The Argentinean football coach who got bashed up in Kashmir (May 30, 2007)
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A photograph from National Geographic Magazine, Vol 40, 1921


The Shalimar Bagh by Muriel A.E. Brown

THE SHALIMAR BAGH

(A Mughal Garden on the Dal Lake)

Shalimar! Shalimar!

A rythmic sound in thy name rings
A dreamy cadence from afar

Within those syllables which sings

To us of love and joyous days
Of Lalla Rukh! of pleasure feast!
Of fountains clear whose glitt’ring sprays
Drawn from the snows have never ceased

To cast their spell on all who gaze

Upon this handiwork of love
Eeared in Jehangir’s proudest days

Homage for Nur Mahal to prove.

For his fair Queen he built these courts
With porphyry pillars smooth and black

Whose grandeur still expresses thoughts
For her that should no beauty lack.

The roses show ‘ring o’er these walls
Still fondly whisper love lurks here

And still he beckoning to us calls
By yon Dai’s shores in fair Kashmir.

~ Muriel A.E. Brown
Chenar Leaves: Poems of Kashmir (1921)
Mrs. Percy Brown
Published by Longmans,Green and Co (London) in 1921.

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Shalimar Bagh Srinagar Kashmir Photograph taken by me in June 2008

Muriel Agnes Eleanora Talbot Brown dedicated the collection of verses to the memory of her father, the late Lt.-Col. Sir Adelbert Cecil Talbot ( b. 3 June 1845, d. 28 December 1920) who was the Resident of Kashmir from 1896 to 1900. Earlier he had also been the Chief political resident of the Arabian (Persian) Gulf (for Bahrain, Bushire, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the Trucial States) from 1891 to 1893.
Muriel Agnes Eleanora Talbot was married to Percy Brown, art historian famous for his work on History of Indian architecture ( Buddhist and Hindu, 1942 ). Percy Brown was at one time the Principal of Mayo School of Art, Lahore and curator of the Lahore Museum.He also served the post of principal of Government School of Art and Craft, Calcutta and Curator of the Government Art Gallery Calcutta. In his later years, he settled in Kashmir and was instrumental in guiding some local Kashmiri painters, musician and other artists. He died on 22 March 1955 in Srinagar, Kashmir, India.

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Read this for history of Mughal Gardens of Kashmir

Get the complete set of poems from Chenar Leaves: Poems of Kashmir at Archive.org

Patrick French, Rage Boy and Kashmir

I did not want to go back to Kashmir, did not want to destroy a fragile memory with sights of guns and roadblocks.

Writes Patrick French in Younghusband: The last great imperial adventurer, a book that was first published in 1994. For writing the wonderful book, the author even trailed some of the footsteps of Francis Younghusband, hiking right up to Rohtang Pass and taking up a challenging journey through Gobi Desert. Younghusband represented British government in Kashmir for a period of three-year starting1906 and ending in 1909 with him leaving India forever.
This would have been an important stop for Patrick French but he couldn’t trail Younghusband’s footsteps into Kashmir. In the Chapter titled Fame in disgrace and diversion in Kashmir, he writes:

The State of Jammu and Kashmir was exploding in anger, Kashmiri separatists detonating bombs and Indian paramilitaries responding violently.

This was the fiercest period of insurgency in Kashmir and he couldn’t go to Kashmir, a place which he had visited earlier (in the 80s) when the place was still a “pastoral idyll”. Still at that time, there were “dark mutterings against Indian rule” and the conflict was only “simmering”. The book does not offer much on Kashmir conflict, the roots of which Patrick French discusses rather in detail for the chapter Midnight’s Parents for his book Liberty or Death: India’s Journey to Independence and Division (1997).

Then last year, Patrick French wrote an article in Daily Mail, a paper notorious for its conservative voice ( and for this reason often reffered as Daily Hail), introducing the readers to The surprising truth about Rage Boy, . Patrick French traveled to Kashmir, a trip he acknowledges to be the first in the last 20 years, he had been last there as a teenage backpacker who spent his days enjoying the “pastoral idyll”. This time, he was taken by a local reporter to ‘the Gaza Strip of Kashmir’ to meet the ‘Rage boy’ and French ended up meeting Shakeel Bhat, a rather eccentric Kashmiri boy who became America’s hated poster-boy of Islamic radicalism. The article starts with him quoting various dissuasive voices from the web, and in turn the comments that his article got, is ironic.

Read the full article by Partick French here.
(Don’t be put off or turned on by the images that you are going to see to the right of the page)

Also, read this report to read about the toll that the ongoing conflict is taking on psychological health of Kashmiris caught in the conflict zone.

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According to
The Hindu :
Having finished writing Naipaul’s biography The World is What it is, Patrick French is now working on a sequel to his 1997 book
Liberty or Death: India’s Journey to Independence and Division
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