Trapped into silence?

The article about trials of Ayaan Hirsi Ali by Sam Harris and Salman Rushdie first printed in Chicago Tribune only reminds me of the way in which the Left Government in Bengal and the Central Government are treating Taslima Nasreen.

Sample this, "...she is a unique and indispensable witness to both the strength and weakness of the West: to the splendor of open society and to the boundless energy of its antagonists. She knows the challenges we face in our struggle to contain the misogyny and religious fanaticism of the Muslim world, and she lives with the consequences of our failure each day. There is no one in a better position to remind us that tolerance of intolerance is cowardice."

If we were to substitute 'The Left Government in West Bengal' for the word West in the paragraph above, how apt would it be in case of the beleagured Taslima ?
Here's the complete article.

Today Pranab Mukerjee, India's Forein Minister made a comment about Taslima in the Parliament. He said, "... government expects Taslima Nasreen to refrain from any act that may hurt sentiments of Indian people."

Will Taslima have to stop saying or writing about what she wants to if she chooses to stay in my country?

What if?

Sheikh Abdullah's grandson evaluates two recent volumes on Kashmir and finds them well-researched and well-written even if he differs with their objectivity .

"Coming back to the what-if questions that keep echoing in my head and without going back too far—what if the Centre had not engineered the fall of the National Conference government in 1984? What if the Rajiv-Farooq accord had not taken place? What if there were no reported electoral malpractices in the 1987 elections? What if militants had not been released in exchange for Rubaiya Sayeed? The list goes on and on. As I said, hindsight is such a wonderful thing.... Knowing what I do now, I can easily say that the accord shouldn’t have been signed. Or that the terrorists shouldn’t have been released. Or that more care should have been taken to address people’s concerns about governance.But no matter how many times I ask myself ‘what if?’ it doesn’t change the fact that what is done is done. We can’t turn back the clock."

Here's the link to the article

"I am an Israeli. I live in Jerusalem."

"I am an Israeli. I live in Jerusalem. I have a story, not yet finished, to tell." This is the opening line of David Shulman's powerful and memorable book, Dark Hope, a diary of four years of political activity in Israel and the Palestinian territories. It is a record of the author's intense involvement with a volunteer organization composed of Israeli Palestinians and Israeli Jews, called Ta'ayush, an Arabic term for "living together" or "life in common." The group was founded in October 2000, soon after the start of the second Palestinian intifada.
"This book aims," Shulman writes,
at showing something of the Israeli peace movement in action, on the basis of one individual's very limited experience.... I want to give you some sense of what it feels like to be part of this struggle and of why we do it. Read more:

Make Music Not War

From Aditi Bhaduri in Srinagar

Srinagar's first pop group, Immersions, born out of a yearning for peace and normalcy, is making waves in the valley and the rest of India.

Badal denge duniya ki tasveer
We, the youngsters of Kashmir
Milegi manzil yeh hai yaqeen
Manzil hamse door nahin
Badal denge duniya ki tasveer
We, the youngsters of Kashmir
Maana hai dushwaariyan
Bebasi laachariya
Maanah hai mushkilen kayee
Phir bhi badhte hum sabhi
Phir bhi badhte hum sabhi
We, the youngsters of Kashmir
Badal denge duniya ki tasveer
We, the youngsters of Kashmir

These gentle words do not flow from any poet's or politician's pen. They are the thoughts of 27-year-old Amit Wanchoo, a medical doctor in Srinagar. With cropped hair and green eyes, he is the quintessential Kashmiri. Yet, Wanchoo's is a precarious existence. Growing up in conflict-ridden Kashmir, he has seen enough violence to last him a lifetime. A member of the minority Kashmiri Pandit (Hindu) community, his is one of the few families still left in Srinagar - they did not flee to the safer havens of Jammu when militancy was at its peak. There was a price to pay however: Wanchoo's grandfather was assassinated by the Hizbul Mujahideen in 1992, when Hindus in Kashmir were being targeted.

The tragedy only increased the yearning for calm and peace. Wanchoo's is thus a special investment in peace. "Life for an average youngster in Kashmir is terrible," he says. The transient nature of life was flung at his face every waking moment. Life in Kashmir is like walking over a minefield of bombs and IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), hoping that you will not be the victim and forgetting all about it once you have crossed the danger zone. Extremely talented, Wanchoo felt tormented every time he moved out of the valley and saw life in other parts of India. He realised how cruel life had become for the youth of Kashmir. "Like their counterparts in other parts of the world, they also have dreams. They want to do something great in life; [but they also] want to attend music concerts, have fun, go dancing, enjoy late nights out with their families and friends and do lots of other things." But the atmosphere in Kashmir was too restricting. Islamist militants had imposed bans on cinema, music, concerts - in fact, on almost all forms of entertainment.

It was out of this yearning for peace and normalcy that Immersions was born. It was a scene that belied belief - the first performance of Immersions at Tagore Hall in Srinagar. A youth group was singing and dancing on stage, performing songs in Hindi, Punjabi and English - and what's more, there was even a young and beautiful woman in their midst! This was unprecedented in the valley.

Call it karma, or call it sheer luck, but it just so happened that all these like-minded, talented people came together. Wanchoo's longtime friend, King Paul Singh, who is Immersions' lead singer, was already a known name in Srinagar. A Sikh by birth, Paul was born and brought up in Kashmir, and at a young age he decided to make music his career and the centre of his universe, even though "people in Kashmir neither value nor respect music," he laments. It was not exactly smooth sailing for him. There was family pressure for him to engage in music simply as a pastime and not as a profession. Moreover, there was no state support, nor infrastructure.

"There is no encouragement for the youth here," says the bearded and turbanned Paul. "And neither is there any concept of music shows." But he persisted, even as he pursued a Masters in Computer Applications (MCA) course from the Indira Gandhi Open University. He won his first prize in music when he was in class 11, at an inter-school competition in Srinagar. That's where he also met Mehmeet Syed, who was to join Immersions as the band's female voice.

Later, many solo shows followed, and Paul became a known voice in Kashmir, performing on different TV channels, on radio and even doing commercial shows in Srinagar.

It was around this time that he teamed up with Wanchoo who was then in his third year at the Shere-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences. "We had no extra curricular activity in our college, and the whole atmosphere was depressing," he recalls. On the other hand, 1,500 Kashmiris reported annually to the psychiatry hospital, and, at least, half of them were teenagers. So Wanchoo, determined to do something and inspired by the extra-curricular activities in the academic institutions in the rest of the country, organised the first musical programme in college. "There was a lot of opposition from some staff members and students, but we managed to do it on a large scale, defeating the opposition," he says.

Wanchoo went on to establish the Amit Wanchoo Infotainment Division and worked wholeheartedly to establish a group "that would put Kashmir back on the national culture map." He wrote the lyrics and Paul composed the music and sang, and together they hired other musicians as well.

Among them was Mehmeet Syed. The long-haired, doe-eyed Syed had already made her mark as a singer in Kashmiri society by this time.

"It was not considerations of peace or healing that inspired me to sing; it was simply the sound of music," she tells me candidly. "I sing for the joy of singing, first and foremost for myself, and if in the process I am able to convey some sort of a message to anyone, or provide balm to any wound, then I am only too happy." Luckily for Mehmeet Syed, her family has been extremely supportive, and she has been singing since she was in school. Like Paul, she too has won prizes at inter-school competitions and began doing shows much before she joined Immersions. In fact, she set a trend in the valley when she did video clips of her songs with models from Jammu swaying in the background. Now this style is copied by many in Kashmir. Lata Mangeshkar, Shamima Azad (the wife of the current chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir who is also a singer) and her mother, who has a diploma in music, are the sources of her inspiration.

Besides Syed, Paul also brought Irfan Nabi Bhat, 25, a talented musician who is now the lead guitarist of the group, on board. Irfan learned the guitar in the sunny island of Goa and, in 2000, was awarded the 'Best Guitarist of the Year' award by none other than the musical genius A.R. Rahman. He is also an accomplished rock singer and, together with Paul, has done several heart-stopping shows. Some of the numbers that have become a regular feature of their repertoire are songs sung by Pakistan's Abrarul Haq and Jawad Ahmed, especially Haq's "Preeto mere naal vyaah kar le, sada aitbaar kar le." Occasionally, Irfan also plays the drums, and one of his claims to fame is his ability to play the Tumbakhnari, a Kashmiri percussion instrument.

Incidentally, Irfan also pulled 25-year-old Bilal Mattaa into the group, much to his bandmates' delight because he was like the "the missing element" in their shows.

Bilal has studied classical music and is a fantastic ghazal singer, with several solo performances to his credit. He has also been selected by the song and dance division of the cultural ministry to perform at classical music festivals. An excellent keyboard player like Irfan, he too, is an audio-recordist.

In fact, both Bilal and Irfan work as audio-recordists at the Soundcraft Studio in Srinagar, which means Immersions can now do their recordings in the valley, instead of going out of Kashmir as they did earlier.

Bilal and Irfan also form a wonderful combination while rendering Sufi songs. The number that is a hit with music lovers in the valley is the Kashmiri Sufi song, "Dilbaro mein dilas kaas Ghangalah, bih balay emi chaani garmi seet."

So what is so different about Immersions?

Their songs carry comforting messages of hope. And this hope is not just reflected in the lyrics they sing but in the composition of the group as well. Immersions is an inter-religious group: Wanchoo is Hindu; Mehmeet, Irfan and Bilal are Muslims and Paul is a Sikh. And they enthral the audience with their renderings in English, Hindi, Kashmiri and Punjabi.

It is this that is perhaps endearing them not just to Kashmiri youth, but gradually to others beyond the state. Many NGOs in Kashmir and in Jammu have invited them to perform. The group has played at numerous charity shows too. There have been write-ups in the print media, and local TV and radio channels, as well as major national TV channels like CNN-IBN have broadcast their shows. The team has been invited to perform in major Indian cities like Chandigarh, Kolkata and Mumbai and also has invitations from the Islamabad-based Young Doctors Association and a university in Lahore.

In 2004, the group released their first music album, titled Sukoon. Though it was not released under the Immersions banner, it was a collaborative effort. Wanchoo produced it, Paul was the solo vocalist and Irfan and Bilal played the music. Omar Abdullah, president of the National Conference, released the album, which soon became a hit in the Punjab and Jammu. The group's first album under the Immersion's banner is expected next year.

When a Pakistani FM channel interviewed Wanchoo for a programme featuring Sukoon in 2006, he was flooded with friendship mail from across the divide. "It would be wonderful to perform in Pakistan and extend our hand in friendship - that is the only way to survive." The 27-year-old, whose role models are Kishore Kumar and Jagjit Singh, is also extremely fond of listening to Nusrat Fateh Ali and has made up his mind that "if I ever go to Pakistan, I will visit his mausoleum."

Immersions has had its share of problems. There was virtually no support for the band, neither from their families nor from the community or the state.

Moreover, the group has received numerous threats, many of which, to their dismay, came either from close friends who were jealous of their success, or rivals in the field. Two instances are still stark in their memory. One of them took place in 1999, just before a charity programme for leprosy patients. It was a time when diktats to observe purdah and a dress code had been announced by militant groups in the valley. Tickets for the show had already been sold when Wanchoo's family got a call informing them that if their son went ahead with the programme, he would meet a fate similar to his grandfather's. A tense Wanchoo was about to call off the show when a line from a song of the Bollywood film Lagaan wafted into his ears: "Baar baar haan, bolo yaar haan, apni jeet hau, unki haar haan." He decided to go ahead with the programme, only to discover later that the caller was an acquaintance in event management. He got a similar call in June this year threatening to blow up his home if he did not cancel a scheduled programme. And this time there was actually a blast near his house, but the culprit again turned out to be an acquaintance.

These incidents only serve to make the group more determined than ever to carry on their mission. Immersions' last major performance this year was in August at the Centaur Hotel, to mark the theme of global warming. Paul composed the lyrics, which he rates among his best - and not without reason. The description of a world wracked by global warming can easily double up to describe the conflict-scarred landscape of Kashmir:

"Mujhe yaad hai jab bachpan me taaza hawa aati thi
Mujhe ghar ke har kone se khushboo se mehek aati thi
Ab kya hua saara jahan itna kyon hai veeran
Banjar hai kyon yeh zameen, banjar hai kyon yeh aasman.

The valley of love

BADRI RAINA

Incalculable suffering of the past decade or more has helped the people of Jammu and Kashmir rediscover the old values of Kashmiriyat, something that expresses itself first and foremost as an overwhelming desire for peace and non-abrasive coexistence.

In Dal lake, Srinagar, a shikara (houseboat) waits for tourists.

A WEEK, it is said, is a long time in politics. With respect to Kashmir, a week can indeed be a very long time. As life gets busier and busier, and time and space become more and more precious in terms of profit-making, `up-market' approaches to problems require that we solve them even before we have understood them. Or that we understand them in instant, post-modernist ways. Thus, for example, globally, `terrorism' has been identified as a simple enough expression of `Islamist' ill-nature, and the answer has been located in quashing `terrorists' with extreme force. Such emphasis on the products of history envisages that the processes that inform them are relegated. Our historical sense is thus labelled not sense but nuisance. It is another matter that, be it Afghanistan or Iraq or Palestine or Kashmir, such market-driven impatience leads the world every day into more intractable problems, belying the elementary postulates of rational existence. Current `advances' in science and technology thus go hand in hand with monumental and potentially catastrophic historical illiteracy. Often, of course, as with respect to Kashmir, it is not so much a question of illiteracy as of a coercive refusal to acknowledge that the problem bears dimensions that refute the construction we have chosen to place upon it. We recall what Karl Marx had underlined penetratingly that the trick that informs bourgeois revolutions is that the method of science will be used to the hilt to master nature, but strenuously prevented from any application to cognise social relations.

As I report on my two-week visit to the Valley (June 8-21), however, some watershed markers of Kashmir's modern history are best recapitulated as informing points of reference. If the changing times there are to be harnessed towards desirable conclusions, those markers must not be lost sight of. For a century between 1846 and 1947, the most comprehensively oppressed section of Kashmiris was Muslims, who had next to no presence in rural property, or the services and hardly any education. Indeed, when Sheikh Abdullalh came with an MSc degree from Aligarh in 1930, he was the first Kashmiri Muslim to have gone that far. As a peculiar form of serfdom obtained among the Muslims (called `begar'), it is small wonder that the first political organisation floated by the Sheikh should have been called the Muslim Conference; the appellation may have seemed to connote a merely communal concern but, in fact, took in a much wider reference to class oppression - much as Dalit politics expresses class inequities in addition to social realities. This, after all, was the reason that the Sheikh was able to draw support from distinguished Pandit intellectuals of the time as well.

The Pandits, meanwhile, lived by their wits, maintaining their indispensability both to the Dogra rulers and to Kashmiri Muslims, but sharing with the latter deep ethnic intimacy. The one time that the Pandits found cause to express resentment with the establishment was in the early 1920s when the Maharaja began importing Punjabi bureaucracy into the State service. Thus, in 1924, the Pandits were to raise the slogan `Kashmir for Kashmiris'.

Impelled by the syncretic Sufi Islam of the Valley, which intersected everywhere, and accreted Pandit folklore, practices and modes of worship (the second day of Sivaratri celebrations in Kashmir is called Salaam), and by what seemed the socially radical and secular dynamics of the `National Movement' shaped in the main by the preferences of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, Abdullah rechristened his political organisation as the National Conference. Thus, when Muhammed Ali Jinnah visited the Valley to plead his communal thesis with Kashmiri co-religionists, he received significant rebuff. As the Partition set the subcontinent aflame, Gandhi said the only light he saw was in Kashmir. The invasion in October of 1947 found a dithering Maharaja and an undefended Valley. Abdulllah's party of the plough, however, organised Kashmiri masses across communities in heroic resistance to the invader; rows upon rows of disciplined Kashmiris marched - with wooden sticks and wooden rifles in hand - to the ringing slogans Hamla Avar Khabardar/Hum Kashmiri Hein Tayar, and Shere Kashmir Ka Kya Irshad/Hindu, Muslim, Sikh Itihad. Had Kashmiri Muslims then desired to join Pakistan, there was nothing to stop them (something that the Togadias of our time need to ponder).

The installation of the popular government led by Abdullah yielded the Naya Kashmir programme with two revolutionary axes of transformation, namely, land to the tiller, and free education up to the post-graduate stage. In the Kashmir Constituent Assembly, the Sheikh pronounced both the desire of the Kashmiris for maximum freedom and the conviction that a Sufi Kashmir could not tie up its future with a theocratic Pakistan. The Delhi Agreement of 1952 followed, to be incorporated as Article 370 into the Constitution.

Even as that historic covenant between the Centre and Kashmir began to be subtly but systematically undermined, a new class of college-educated Kashmiri Muslims emerged by the mid-1970s, only to find that their future remained effectively confined to the less-than-meagre opportunities that obtained in the State. This new articulate and politically aware class also began to see that political democracy was to be denied to them as well. As Yusuf Shah of the Muslim United Front was cheated, among others, of electoral victory in the Amirakadal constituency in 1987, he was to transform into Salahuddin of the Hizbul Mujahideen; the bullets were to follow. Since then, the incredible cupidities of the major political formations were to ensure that the darkness remained unrelieved. In fact, the most deleterious occurrence with respect to the `Kashmir Problem' has been the convergence between fascistic `nationalism' at home and the designs of a new, unchallenged imperialism emanating from one single nation abroad.

LET me say with responsibility that during my two-week stay in the Valley, I travelled freely and without `incident' to all parts - north, south, west, east - and to every nook and corner of the city of Srinagar, including the `forbidden' down-town. Having left Kashmir some 42 years ago, my first endearing recognition is that no magic works as well in Kashmir as the ability to speak the language. Clearly, as an interventionist, this was a huge, initial advantage. Let me also say that the persons and groups I interacted with included Kashmiris of every conceivable definition - shikarawalas, itinerant furriers, retailers, hoteliers, office-goers, students and teachers at the university (where I was privileged to lecture on two separate occasions), artists, ex-militants, legislators, and a thousand-strong-mass of people at a public meeting. This is not to speak of `tourists' who, in large numbers, seemed to be having a `good time' indeed. That new lessons have been imbibed across the board was in evidence everywhere; confidences-in-vernacular available to me leave me in no doubt of that reality. The coordinates of the change that has come over the Valley seem as follows:

With the exception perhaps of the hard-core Geelani faction, disenchantment with the jehadi tehrik seems total. The erstwhile supporters of jehad whose allegiance followed a patently communal logic - among them the non-Kashmiri-speaking Muslims who have felt a closer ethnic bond with similar co-religionists across the Line of Control (LoC) - acknowledge, however sadly, that the General Pervez Musharraf-run `client' state of Pakistan (client to the United States) is no longer either a worthwhile or a realisable option. Young people from such families, whom this writer had known a decade ago to spew rabid `Islamist' fervour, today poke fun at Musharraf's strutting entrapment between an obsolete theocratic project and the diktats of an `anti-Islamic' imperialism. An important element here is also their greater willingness to see opportunities of personal advancement in newer technologies and correlated institutions in a market-driven world of seemingly undifferentiated scope. A proliferating access to the visual media has made accessible to such young people the burgeoning desire for peace, democracy, and modern development among wide sections of the urban elite within Pakistan, and the articulate critique of such elites of the Pakistani state works as a decisive influence. Those others whose allegiance to the idea of Pakistan has been less literate, more subliminal, curse that country for having betrayed Kashmiris in the way in which the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) today pours scorn on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. That disgust is captured in the eloquent Kashmiri phrase Pakistanus gao Dakistan, that is, `May Pakistan suffer annihilation'.

Lighting oil lamps at the Kheer Bhawani temple near Srinagar.

Perhaps the most telling source of repugnance with the jehadis is centred around the experience that most of them have used the gun either to amass wealth, or to get any sort of job done (from property-grabbing to college admissions, marriage deals and appointments), or generally to acquire social power and recognition - all of that inimical to the `mission' and, in popular parlance, more in the nature of `commission'. One of the results is that either the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) no longer feels the confidence to give calls for hartal, or, when it does, it is sniggered at and largely observed in the breach.

The old sentiment for azadi remains real, but with new caveats. One, that total independence is simply a bit of a pipe dream. Many made the point to me that Pakistan has never endorsed that option anyway. Some are even willing to embrace the thought that separation from both India and Pakistan, were that to happen, could very well turn Kashmir into an imperialist enclave and playground, with catastrophic consequences for Kashmiriyat.

As to religious freedom, Javed, the itinerant furrier, makes the point that whereas Kashmiri Muslims have always enjoyed complete religious freedom, it is not unusual to find mosques in Pakistani cities fired upon, or Shia Muslims attacked by Sunnis. This concatenation of perceptions, imbued universally with the incalculable suffering of the past decade or more, has, as I found in all my interactions, led to a surge and sentient rediscovery of the old values of Kashmiriyat, something that expresses itself first and foremost as an overwhelming desire for peace and non-abrasive coexistence.

A rapid, and alas, all-too-brief enumeration of the treatment I received best illustrates that change. The hotel that charges some Rs.1,200 for a room charged me but Rs.600 accompanied every day by a bouquet of felt intimacies; the famous bakery establishment that makes giant bakerkhanies only upon order gave me all I wanted accepting nothing in return; the sisters, Neelofer and Ayesha, upon hearing me ask a boatman-vendor at Nehru Park in the Dal for a cup of Nuna Chai, dragged me and my wife home to a dilapidated houseboat, whereupon the mother not only gave us the choice cup but a dear old familiar shower of the sweetest Kashmiri blessings; at Kheer Bhawani, the two elderly Muslims who see to the infrastructural requirement of worshippers could restrain neither a tight hug nor their precious tears; at a party hosted by a well-known Kashmir Pandit doctor, who spent close to three months in captivity with militants, a highly respected Muslim bureaucrat turned the evening into a saga of Kashmiri songs and made moving lament as to how it is the Pandits who had taught `us' all `we' know, and why would they not come back; my breakfast at Soz sahib's turned out to be a feast of not only converse, but also the rarest of Pampore Sheermal, of which I received a carry-home gift; and if you wanted to share one of those spontaneous experiences of Kashmiriyat try this: upon my return from Kheer Bhawani it is the gracious Mrs. Soz who asks me what the colour of the water in the holy pond was. Legend has it that the water changes colour, beckoning good or bad times.

Kashmiri Pandits are spoken of with regret and deep poignancy - regret that they should have exited in the face of a shared fate, and poignancy at the thought of the suffering they have had to experience away from `home' and at the thought also that soon they might return to `complete' Kashmir. At the airport shop, the gentle Muslim owner poses the question whether many more Muslims have not been killed, and expresses the hurt that Pandit `brethren' rarely remember to mention the sufferings of their Muslim `brethren'. Also commented upon is the sad irony that while the Muslims seek to free themselves of jehadi pressures, influential sections of the Pandits should veer towards right-wing Hindu chauvinism.

At the university, my audience of young men and women listen with an intensity born of the deepest life-experiences. Their analysed openness and warmth renders shallow my experiences as a teacher at Delhi University. Yet, the trapped agony in their bright eyes, the questions they pose with gentleness, tear me apart - How do they make a future in a country where Gujarat happens, where the Togadias openly seek to recast the state as a majoritarian, fascist one, and where the government of the day seems not just helpless but closely allied in consenting silence and non-action?

The public meeting organised by the State unit of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), led by its secretary Mohd. Yousuf Tarigami, to greet Member of Parliament Somnath Chatterjee, visiting the State as the Chairman of a Parliament Standing Committee on Communications, provides clear proof of the credibility that democratic politics is beginning to enjoy. The Mufti Mohammed Sayeed-led government is seen to mean well and to be working with honest purpose.

All those who address the meeting (Chatterjee, Tarigami, Soz, the Mufti, and this writer briefly) draw felt responses, even applause, at the programmes and ideololgical directions that are shared. Departing from its unsavoury record, the Congress(I) behaves with a new-found patience and wisdom; the group led by Tarigami provides both secular credibility and democratic energy; and the Mufti educates without euphoria or despondency. One senses, however, that soon this government will have to determine how the `healing touch' policy may be extended/transformed into a desirable political conclusion. Although the first formal demand for `secession' from the Union in post-Independence India came from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), correctly understood as a demand, at bottom, for devolution of democracy and power, it has been a tragedy that similar demands from Kashmir have tended to be read as `Islamist'. In changing times, perhaps, it will be appropriate to revisit the autonomy question in ways that such devolution is made available to all provinces of the State.

In an article written in a special number of Seminar, this writer had suggested that Kashmir be seen as a `window to India', not just as a showpiece of secularism but fraught with consequences for the entire nation-state. This requires, foremost, that Kahmiris - and not just the territory - be embraced as the very best of Indians. And if I say that they are not just among the brightest of us but also the most loving, do not read that as an expression of hopeless ethnic subjectivity.

May I also keep my word to the many citizens of Srinagar to say that the city deserves drinking water quality, far better roads, and avoidance altogether of the driving habits of New Delhi.

Dr. Badri Raina, Professor of English at the Delhi University, writes on cultural and political issues. This article is based on his recent visit to Jammu and Kashmir.

VALE OF KASHMIR INDIA 1930's

Srinagar view

Kashmir’s Rage Boy is not all that angry

Focus | Yusuf Jameel

Srinagar: It is a story of a "larger-than-life" character. The fuming face of Muslim anger over the real and perceived tirade against Islam and the believers, the man who has been nicknamed "Rage Boy" and is a blog favourite in the West and beyond, is actually a mundane man among Kashmir's belligerent youth.

But encouraged by the kind of hype the media and "Islamphobia" campaigners have given to him over the past many months - his irate face appears on clocks, beer mugs, thongs, T-shirts - a 29-year-old Srinagar youth is now thinking global. He with likeminded activists is preparing to launch a new political party to "defend Muslims,'" interests across the globe. Reacting to his being America's most hated poster-boy of alleged Islamic radicalism, Shakeel Ahmed Butt said, "I know they hate me but I'm not bothered at all. The invective, though tenuous and part of anti-Muslim bias, has rather encouraged me to do more for my brethren."

Mr Shakeel, a failed militant whose "biggest achievement" is carrying out an unsuccessful sneak rifle-fire attack on the cavalcade of senior Congress leader and then junior minister at the Centre Mr Rajesh Pilot, along the Boulevard here during the heyday of insurgency feels elevated enough to say, "I'll soon decide on my political future. I would dedicate rest of my life for the cause of Islam and the Muslims." His reverie is; "All the 56 Muslim countries must join hands and fight back the enemies of Islam. They must severe ties with the governments and the nations that affront Islam, the Qur'an or the holy Prophet." He also wants Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Islamic nations to "withdraw their money from the American banks in order to bring it to its knees."

The so-called "Rage Boy" who turns up at almost every major or small demonstration to express anger about any move or incident that is seen as anti-Islam or anti-Muslim, be it Danish cartoons, the Pope's swing at Islam, knighthood to Salman Rushdie, Israeli's military actions against the Palestinians and Lebanon, the American invasion on Iraq and strikes in Afghanistan or the Srinagar sexploitation scandal, said that he does not believe in any ideology but Islam. "I don't subscribe to socialism, secularism or Gandhi-ism but Islam and Islam alone and would reconcile to nothing except liberty for the sake of Islam," Mr. Shakeel told this newspaper at a classic Kashmiri urban house built of exposed brick and timber with windows made of delicate wooden fretwork in the city's Malik Angan neighbourhood where he lives with his mother and her five other sons and their families.

As our photographer Habibullah Naqash and I walked into the patio of the house to meet the 'Rage Boy' at a mutually decided time, a man in his early forties rushed out to inquire about us and the purpose of our visit. On being told who we are, he said, "No, he is not here." But he had asked us to come to (his) house for the meeting, the man who turned to be Mr Shakeel's elder brother was informed. "Ok, ok, let me find out," he said and after steering us to a small room on the first floor of their house, went away. A few minutes later, Mr. Shakeel came in and after the customary exchange of pleasantries suggested that we should shift to a more "luminous" room on the third floor. We agreed. There, he, for about one hour, spoke about his family and his own life and future plans.

Born in 1978 to a Kashmiri artisan family which has now spread its handicrafts business beyond the Valley, Mr Shakeel was not a gifted child to his parents. He gave up his studies when he was still in Class 12 at a government-run school in Srinagar's Bana Mohalla locality. His father Ghulam Qadir Butt was cherished by his neighbours and friends as being a devout Muslim. Though not associated with any political party of his time, he was known to have a propensity towards the thought of Kashmir joining Pakistan, which did not happen and the events unfolding in post-1947 Jammu and Kashmir left him disillusioned. "But he never took part in active politics and instead dedicated his time and energy towards the upbringing of his children - six sons and two daughters," Mr Shakeel said. But a bloody incident that occurred way back in 1986 changed the family profile. As the Muslim United Front alliance was pitted against the National Conference-Congress combine in the state Assembly elections, the police raided the cluster of houses in their locality in search of the ruling alliance's opponents. The policemen on barging into Butts' house allegedly threw Mr Shakeel's 18-year-old sister Ms Shareefa out of an upstairs door. She broke her spine and died from her injuries six years later. While she was still fighting for her life, Mr Shakeel decided to "stand up and fight for a bigger cause." As the insurgency was reaching its peak, he joined Al-Umar Mujahideen which was emerging as one of the most feared militant outfits, particularly in Srinagar. On Februaty 5, 1991, he with the outfit's deputy chief Naeem al-Haq crossed the Line of Control using the Lolab valley track and returned home after two-and-a-half months as a trained militant who knew how to use a Kalashinkov and explode a grenade.

But without making a mark as a "mujahid," he was seized by the BSF during a cordon-and-search operation in a Srinagar neighbourhood on September 24, 1994. "Prior to my release on February 2, 1997, I was kept at different detention centres and torture chambers run by the Army, the BSF, the STF (local police's counterinsurgency Special Task Force) and was tortured even by the Ikhwanis (the renegades working for the security forces)," he charged. Days after his release, another tragedy struck the family. The STF men raided their house to look for Mr Shakeel but he was not there. They, he alleged, beat his 75-year-old father instead, leaving him with a broken leg. The senior Butt spent the rest of his life bedridden.
Since his release in a larger group of 135 militants and other separatists, Mr Shakeel claims he has been briefly detained by the police about 300 times, mainly during street protests. He feels proud that he has been lodged in all the police stations in Srinagar and the main ones in the towns of Baramulla, Sopore, Kupwara, Pulwama and Anantnag. It was during his stay at Srinagar's Kralkhud police station last month when two senior police officers had visited him to offer they would find him a suitable girl to marry. He added, "They were ready also to do all that would be required to rehabilitate me and said that they would drop all the cases against me if I quit going to demonstrations."

But Mr Shakeel wants to marry a girl of his choice - a non-Muslim from any part of the world whom he would only convert to Islam. He vividly remembers his father often taking him to mosques and edifying him about two important principles of life: do not be greedy and help Islam to spread its teachings the way our Sufis and seers did. He also recalls how he as a child would love to wear a blue services' cap and then stand up in front of his father to yell "Aadhi rooti khanyan ge, par sar nahi jukayen ge."

He pledges to continue to do what he has been doing for the past few years - ranting in demonstrations against "injustice" wherever it takes place. Asked if he also felt for the non-Muslims if wronged, Mr Shakeel retorted, "Yes, of course. I do feel equally for them. I was injured when the police came in the way of the procession taken out against the massacre of 35 innocent Sikhs at Chattisinghpora. They broke my head with a lathi."

He said that he has turned down an offer made to him by a group of Kashmiri attorneys that they would on his behalf file a case against those who project him as a bad boy of Islam.

"I told you I'm not bothered. Why should I? It gives me some relief that I've been able to, at least, startle the enemies of Islam." He also said that a Western journalist had recently asked him if he knew where Osama bin Laden was. "I told him that he lives in the heart of every Muslim." What Mr Shakeel also knows is; "an infidel feels terrified of a true Muslim.

"That is why they are exaggerating what I've been doing. This they do only to tarnish the image of Islam." But the so-called "Rage Boy" insists that he should not be blamed for that.

Similarities, not differences, key to a new understanding

By Neha Trivedi

A new film by Ajay Raina uses cricket as a peg and rekindles hope of peace between India and Pakistan

WAPSI: The Return . A film that travels through Pakistan, with cricket fans, during the Indo-Pak Cricket series returns not only to Pakistan and to the now 58-year-old partition stories but to much more. Returning to the core of the India and Pakistan divide, returning to the core of many of the problems that keep resurfacing on either sides of the border under different names and at different times.
Wapsi: The Return is directed by Ajay Raina, whose first film, Tell them the tree they had planted has grown now, had won the Golden Conch and Best National Documentary Award. Raina, a Kashmiri Pandit who was forced to leave his home, straddles a troubled history and a difficult present, and the film reflects his feelings on the Kashmir issue and his views of the Indo-Pak struggle, on the conflict in his homeland.


The opening shots of the film present the strange situation of people awaiting visas to go to Pakistan: special visas are offered to cricket fans even as those who long to go across the border to visit relatives have to wait for their papers. Through the next 60 minutes, the camera travels the streets of Lahore and Delhi, the towns of Pakistan, and revisits stories of the people, bringing forward a “real” depiction of the Indo-Pak relationship.
It shows you both what you would have liked to see and what might come across as unpleasant reality. But what it ultimately leaves you with is the hope of the real possibility of peace within the two countries rather than romantic ideas of the neighbor we are separated from.
The movie raises several issues through brilliantly chosen scenes of everyday life. Scenes of news headlines where cricket headlines compete with news headlines about Kashmir; or the conversation on the streets of Lahore between the visiting Indians and the locals which narrow down to the ‘Kashmir’ issue and the status of Muslims all over India or the candid admission of a taxi-driver that the demolition of the Babari Masjid in India resulted in the demolition of a temple in Pakistan. Each scene is permeated with the intensity of the issues, yet flavoured by the realization that the people are so similar.
The film moves to Harappa, the site of the Indus Valley civilization, exploring the ‘common heritage’ and the depiction of the origin of civilization when no Hindu or Muslim existed. The reconstruction of history on the other side of the border clearly emerges in the commentary at the Harappan museum as it dwells on the advent of Muslim rulers and their influence on India.
It’s the voiceover that provides the shock of the present, as a series of shots from streets in Lahore, abandoned during Partition, to similar ones in Kashmir and Gujarat are accompanied by the commentary: ‘And a year ago, I was in Kashmir looking at streets similarly left behind by the Kashmiri Pandits and a year before that in Gujarat.’ No stronger indication is needed of the common thread that runs through the story of displaced people, of the violence that their lives were subjected to, of the sense of ‘difference’ that led to bloodshed merely because we failed to look at the similarities.
The film draws on the message of sufi followers who dance to music and celebrate their love for God, neither Hindu nor Muslim. Their final message is a powerful plea: ‘that instead of looking at all our divisions cant we look at similarities…the spiritual impulse which is part of the land be it Islam or Hinduism’…
Talking to this writer after the screening of the film, Raina felt that the ‘Kashmir issue’ is not so much about the so-called clash of Hindu-Muslim Civilizations. What irks is the feeling that the ‘so-called secular forces have not been able to take their debate forward’, he said,
There is a sense of confusion and hopelessness amongst Kashmiris today and there is a greater need to voice alternative opinions, he felt. Recalling the narrative of the houseboat owner in his first film, he pointed out that Independence was a higher ideal and striving for a higher ideal should lead to regeneration of society. “But this has not happened in Kashmir. Society has instead collapsed. There is a disjoint between what you want and what you are striving for”, he felt.
Raina also perceives a strong sense of defeat amongst Kashmiris today especially since so many had ‘believed in the movement at one point in time and had invested everything in the movement’. Now, he continued, you see a sense of personal defeat as well.
“While a similar thing happened in Punjab, the people of Punjab had moved on but in Kashmir, people have invested so much they would still want to hold on to it. That’s the state Kashmir is in now. They won’t criticize India but they will want to maintain that sense of alienation”, Raina felt.
For Raina, the solution lay in ‘first acknowledging and recognizing the problem, stressing on similarities and moving beyond our single religious identities. The Hindu-Muslim identity had become part of our psyche more after partition when it has become a tool. This is true of Kashmir also. It is when this has happened that vested interested have played their roles. We need to move beyond this single identity. We have many other common identities, Identities of us probably fighting the same system, identities of class, occupation. We need to stress on these.’
‘There is hope in education, economic growth. To become involved in leading our daily regular lives, to move beyond our only religious identities. Today in Kashmir, as my friend says in the film, people are more religious that before,” said Raina, wondering whether the heightened religiosity amongst youth indicated a major shift in society.
Raina’s films drawing to the need to stress on similarities, but along with an identification and recognition of the problem. As he put it, ‘WAPSI is not only about returning but to start over again, and it’s also about a new beginning.’

How far from being human

A brief note on Raina’s first film - Returning Home: Tell them 'the tree tree they had planted has now grown'.

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The film began as a personal journey for the director, to return to his home.
In Kashmir after 11 years. As the Director says, the film was “an attempt to overcome the fear of going back. And in the process talk to whoever we could” In a very subtle but strong way, the film communicates to us so much more than what is apparent. By bringing forward all the opinions that are not apparent in the regular news and political debates of Kashmir.
The opening line of the Film are evocative but soon bring into sharp forcus a deep sense of betrayal: “When my parents built our new house in Srinagar, they also planted trees on the boundaries of our compound thinking that some day our children, grandchildren would reap their fruits. The fruits we reaped instead is years of continued exile from our home cause we believed India is our country!”. And that is enough to get across to you the sense of betrayal that the.
Was trust the main casualty of the Kashmir conflict? Raina tries to leave the sense of betrayal Kashmiri Pundits have felt since the mass exodus in 1989 and find out whether the walls of mistrust can be broken.
Through the film, one hears several opinions and what clearly emerges is the realization that none of the groups seem to have obtained what they set out to grasp. Everyone seems to be worse off, from the JKLF representative who said, “when the movement began, it was different, and we all take sometime to realize our mistake’ or the board at one of the many graveyards in Kashmir reads ‘Lest you forget, we’ve given our today for tomorrow of yours’.
Everywhere, one cannot escape feeling a sense of deep remorse, for those who fought for a cause they believed in (right, wrong, no one can make the judgment) the movement which today as the movie reflects knows what Ii does not want but does not know what it wants.
For the ordinary person on the street, the last 15 years have led to a permanent mark on their psyche. The casual reaction to sounds of gunfire or the violence on the streets or the woman who was asked whether she felt afraid…. For the director, ‘the Kashmiris have become a humble, silent people, dumb by fear. They appear to be people who are caught in a web of events, they cannot control, who are on a back of a tiger not knowing how to dismount, who want to rid themselves of the people with the gun but do not know what to do with them!’
And what of the Kashmiri Pundit? Raina continuously asks himself is ‘If I were a Kashmiris Muslim, how would have I seen things?’ and the answer is, that it would be different. The tension between the sense of being a Hindu and a Minority did exist earlier and the Pundits in the camp voice the feelings that ‘when we left in 1989, we did not think we were leaving for good. We thought we will come back’.
And in this entire chaos, as the Director tries to make his personal journey back to the House in Srinagar only to find it completely deserted, with all the cupboards empty or to have even visited the temple at Rainawari but found it in ruin or the sense of regret amongst Kashmiri Muslims for the exodus and the feeling that though the ‘average Kashmir is still secular but the collective identity is that of a Muslim’, one is forced to re-examine the reasons for the apparent independence movement in Kashmir.
For the director, it is imperative that we ‘confront the ghost of partition and its effect on our collective psyche’. Only then, he believes, can we seek a solution that satisfies us all and build a road of rapprochement between to estranged brother nations!”
And what of the trees planted in his house: Alas, they were uprooted, leaving behind only the memories of better, more human, days and the realization that we have indeed strayed far away from the path of humanity…

The Mumbai-based writer is currently working as a research associate with a voluntary organisation. She is also (in her own words): ‘trying to figure my way out in this confusing world by talking to as many people, to learn of the different interpretations to life and the world! New knowledge and new viewpoints are what excites me the most!’. She can be contacted at nehatrivedi@gmail.com

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Srinagar 1990

From the film,'Tell them, the tree they had planted has now grown'

Ahmedabad. September 23, 2002

Leya Mathew

9pm
My stomach is knotted up in fear. 26 people have been killed in a terrorist attack in Akshardham Temple complex in Gandhi Nagar. The road in front of our flat is one of the many borders near Shah Alam ‘Dargah’. Much violence had happened in this areajust a few months back. My dad calls me up every half an hour from Surat to tell me the latest TV news. We have no radio, no TV. If the mobile phone connections are cut off, we will be cut off from the entire world. Mobile connections were jammed all afternoon. The night sky shows a helicopter light circling the city. The knot in the bottom of my stomach grows tighter. My fourth floor flat in Dani-Limda is too high to jump down from in case someone comes to attack us for being neither a Hindu nor a Muslim, but just a human being.

We watch and wait...Tonight, Riyaz (one of our local friends) had sent us Tiffin from his home…we eat the delicious basmati rice and chicken curry…in apprehension, fear and in anxious thoughts about what will follow.
We call up Riyaz. He comes over, gives us the phone numbers of the local Police Station. “Whatever you do, don’t go out on the road if anything happens.” Is his parting advice. He shows us how to get to the nearby Police Station through the back alleys.

11pm

We have packed up our essentials into a small bag. A change of underclothes, all our money, camera, blank tapes... In case we have to leave in a hurry. We leave the ‘exposed’ tapes of our two months shooting and our dairy behind. What if someone from either side with a sword in hand would want to see what we have shot/written so far! – A painful decision. We leave behind all our accounts of the help we have rendered to the chali, all our financial records…. and the photographs of the carnage we had been given. The street in front of our flat is empty; Deserted... I have never seen it empty, even at 2 am in the morning.

Riyaz calls up again to tell us that people have started shifting to Shah Alam Roza (a relief camp) from Naroda Patia and from Behrampura also. We decide to go to Kasai ki Chali, the Chali we have adopted in Behrampura. The rest of Ahmedabad is a stranger to us anyway. There are no auto rickshaws available tonight. We walk fast. Ajay keeps looking over his shoulder. I look into the shadows. Everything looks suspicious. There are some young men collecting stones. We hurry on. Men sit outside, huddled in silence. They watch us warily. There is anxiety and there is fear. We finally manage to get an auto.
“Behrampura chaloge?”
“Haan.”
We reach Kasai ki Chali by 11:30. The men of the Chali are all huddled together outside, on the stone benches. The children are mostly asleep. A few loiter around, too scared to sleep. The women sit outside their houses on the charpoys. Every one is happy to see us.
We go to Chand Bibi’s house. Rihana and Amna keep Chand Bibi company. Amna usually has a big smile for me, but she is cold now, her eyes look frightened. She is muttering something under her breath. Rihana laughs uncontrollably. Chand Bibi sits silently rocking herself. She is a childless widow. She lives alone. Last time, she had no one to help her shift her luggage. She had lost everything. Her one room home had been burnt down. In the last few months, she has somehow managed to rebuild her house. Most of it on charity from relatives, from us…
Her old wrinkled face is wrought with worry. Ajay takes out his camera and asks her to pray. “Ya Allah, Reham kar…Shaitanon ko akal baksh…Unhen sachchi rah dikhah…” (She prays for peace and for some sense to the devil’s children…)
There is a TV in the house next to the school we started here two months back. Aaj Tak TV says, “Terrorist attack on Akshardham temple on the day of Kashmir Elections. 24 people have died. The NSG is fighting it out with the terrorists holed up inside the temple." People walk in and out, for a glimpse of the latest news.
We wait outside the chali. Asiappa sits with her son Amir Ali. The young men form a group near one of the stone benches. A State Transport bus stops near the chali. All of us watch the bus suspiciously. It has a tyre puncture. The driver calls out to us to help him out. The young men help him out willingly. At least there is something to do instead of sitting and waiting for God knows what… Police vans go by every once in a while. That it is Gujarat Police vans and not the State Reserve Police (SRP) or Central Reserve Police (CRP) vans only increases the scare. A firecracker goes off nearby. At this time of the night? Is that a bomb? Our nerves are frayed. The wait is maddening…
By one in the morning Ajay and I go out for a walk, to kill the sleep that is slowly creeping in. We walk down to Jamalpur Char Rasta for a cup of tea. The place is usually packed in the night with the lorry traffic that comes to the APMC Sabzi Market. Tonight, there are only a few odd ghosts like us. At least it is not deserted. We sit at Khalid Ibrahim’s ‘ande ka larri’. Khalid is from Kasai ki Chali. We know he won’t kill us. He gets us kala pani - A strange concoction pretending to be black tea - and he won’t take any money.
The Police Vans pass more frequently here. Jamalpur Char Rasta was the one of the most sensitive areas during the prolonged communal violence here. Stabbings were everyday incidents. Crude bombs went off as women calmly shopped for the day’s provisions.
Every one looks at us suspiciously. We are not part of the lorry traffic. We are dressed differently. We are with a camera. “What are these people doing here?” They wonder. We walk back to the Kasai ki Chali. On the way we pass the Behrampura Police Station. It is buzzing with activity. I wonder who among them had fired at Sharif, of Kasai Ki Chali. I wonder who among them had taken money from Bolu as protection money to turn a blind eye when the mob burned up Kasai ki chali and Gasiram ki Chali…

1.30pm

We go to sleep in Chand Bibi’s one room house. She has already decided to shift out tomorrow itself. She has a niece living nearby in Bombay Hotel Area. The lights are switched off, but she keeps mumbling about wanting to shift all her meager possessions to a safe place. Ajay assures her that by tomorrow he will have her possessions shifted to her nephew’s house in Jamalpur.
The door is only latched. The night is full of strange sounds. I keep my eyes open for as long as I can manage. Somebody is talking urgently outside. I get up to check that everything is okay. Ajay is also awake. I lose count of the number of times I get up to check.
There is some loud noise outside. Both Ajay and I wake up simultaneously. Ajay goes out to check… The night doesn’t seem to get over. We sleep in the early morning hours and get up by 7 am.

24 September, 9am

The night has passed by eventless. In TV news, though the terrorists are still holed up inside the temple, equations have already been drawn between the terrorist attack and the ongoing elections in Kashmir, as though nothing ever had happened in Gujarat. The State Congress has already called for a bandh today. VHP has called for a bandh tomorrow. Only some shops are closed. The city seems normal. But there is tension and apprehension that things would go bad. “It looks the same as that day when Godhra happened.” Someone says. Memories are not normal. The pattern is similar. Godhra. 2days of bandh… What after that?

2pm

The chali people have started shifting their goods to safer places. They are getting used to this. But how long will you keep shifting back and forth? More shops have been shutting up for the day. The traffic is thinning out…
3pm

Today morning, according to earlier plans, we shifted from our flat in Dani Limda to an empty flat in the ‘infamous’ Delight flats in Paldi. Aslambhai, the guy who had the key has shifted to the Muslim dominated Juhapura. The memory of the daylong siege here on February 28,of the mobs with swords, of the flats guarded by a handful of people and one firearm… The memories are too recent. Aslambhai will not be coming to this area for atleast two days.

We have moved our luggage from our earlier flat but are unable to shift in to a new one. So for tonight we have no place of our own to stay. Ajay has decided that we must go back to Mumbai tonight itself. We were supposed to leave the day after…

8 pm

The luxury bus passes Kasai ki chali on it’s way to Mumbai. The men are still waiting outside the chali on the stone benches. I wonder what we will come back to…How long will it take us for all of us to understand - that just a couple of mad people on two sides of the extremist fence can put an entire country’s peace at stake…

(Ajay Raina and I make films. We have been working with the riot affected people of ‘Kasai ki Chali’ and have recently started a non-formal school/sewing centre/handmade paper workshop for the children and women of the chali.)

Wapsi review

REVIEW by Veeresh Malik
(www.chowk.com)

For all I know, taking a video camera into Pakistan is not banned, nor does shooting tourist home movies get you into any sort of trouble or fame there. But then, the end product from those amateur efforts can hardly qualify towards holding any form of serious interest.

WAPSI, on the other hand, grips you throughout its very precisely edited one-hour duration. The actual handheld shots in Pakistan, about 70% of the movie, delivers live footage of aspects of Pakistani life not seen too often. More than that, some of the critical parts have been shot without the subjects being aware. The absence of women on the streets, the fear in the shifting eyes of the minorities caught on candid camera in Pakistan and the existence of a vibrant sufi movement, these, and more, are as evocative as the obvious pride in their flag, the brilliant countryside and the honky-town night streets of Lahore.

But the revealing points have to be the rather evolved history lessons prefered by the guides and authorities at the Museums and tourist spots. And the clips from typical popular Pakistani movies where the stereo-typed blatant Hindu villian is blamed for everything is a revelation to me. Cut right away to the status of Hindus in Kashmir and you wonder - what sort of people are these Islamist fundamentals who emerge from Pakistan? Were these the ones that Jinnah, and now Musharaf, wished on the world?


The big message that WAPSI brought out for me as a dispassionate observer who watched this movie repeatedly with friends and relatives including many who are from the communities known as minorities where they live (Indian Muslims, Indian Parsees, Indian Christians, Pakistani Christians, Kashmiri Hindus and Pakistani Hindus) was this:- What comes out very calmly in Ajay Raina’s movie is the various ways minorities have been treated by their Governments in India and Pakistan since 1947. And the progress or lack thereof that both countries have made therein, related to this important aspect. Chilling shots of Hindus in the Kashmir Valley are very relevant, for example,to the way the Indian Government has failed with its minorities..

In other words, if you as a country, as a Government, use fundamentalism as a tool to subjugate minorities then it is your own majority people who will remain backward while the minorities get ahead or leave the country or the weakest ones get left behind. If you do not recognise and assimilate fairly the minorities then it is your majority community that settles down into tunnel vision and regressive syndromes. This rather telling synopsis of statements made during a free-and-frank, sizzling, discussion (captured in this film) made on the streets of Lahore by Pakistanis and Indians is so very apt in summing up the issue.

The simple fact that temples, gurudwaras and churches are regularly knocked down or left to rot in Pakistan without much demur because the system and the majority is Muslim while a single nationally and internationally reviled Babri Masjid incident in India required and provoked a national movement in India to precipitate matters is brought out up front by comparing the status of mosques in Indian Punjab with that of temples in Pakistani Punjab. In bright living colour.

At the same time, the simple and open love that the man on the street Pakistani has for his Indian visitors and guests is captured intact, with the warmth coming through genuinely. My favourite part of the movie has to do with one Indian in Lahore telling the camera things to the effect that if you ask any Pakistani for vegetarian food then they will take you home and cook it for you and make you stay at their place too. This is something I experienced in Pakistan, too, the basic open and unqualified love from the man on the street.

However, their own truths about riots against minorities are discussed openly and frankly without fear of being documented by Pakistani and Indian Muslims while the Pakistani Hindus and Sikhs look around shiftily and pretend there is nothing of the sort. The confidence with which Indian Muslims discuss their problems in India versus the hesitation in the voice and face of the Pakistani Hindus and Sikhs has to be seen to be understood.

Juxtapose this with the brightly lit Food Street, Gawalmandi, CooCoos, and Motorway shots. And nothing beats the surge in a Punjabi heartbeat as the golden fields of The Punjab come into focus on a brilliant shot while crossing the Ravi.

Yes, it pre-supposes an interest in the subject. No, it does not pontificate. And maybe it puts forth, tentatively, some directions for a solution. But most of all it leaves a sadness as the poetry brushes gently past the remnants of non-Muslim Lahore.

Shot on location in India and Pakistan with a variety of hand-held cameras and camerapersons, WAPSI holds your attention whether you agree with it or not. However, there is seldom denying the truths that come on the canvas of the screen, and the slick editing as well as fast transitions back and forth in time and location make this documentary into a fast-paced revelation.

An excerpt from - Husband of a Fanatic

BY AMITAVA KUMAR

Naipaul, travelling in Srinagar in the 1960's had felt that he was in a medieval city, a world that 'had not developed a sense of history, which is a sense of loss.' But each Kashmiri is a keeper of another kind of history, one not of loss but of a distinctive acheivement. Under the fourteenth century mystic poet Lal Ded, who was born in a Brahmin family but was very much influenced by Islam, and also under saints like Hazrat Nuruddin who followed Lal Ded and was revered as Nund Rishi,there had flourished in the Valley a religious movement that had brought Hindus and Muslims together in a unique way. The sense of loss that Naipaul had found missing in the 1960s, and which now pervades every street and every home in Srinagar, is also in part about what a recent documentary film abpout the horrors in Kashmir calls 'the momories of those days when we were so proudly human'.
The documentary i have just quoted from is Ajay Raina's Tell them, 'the tree they had planted has now grown'. The film's title comes from a statement that the wife of an old family servant makes when the film-maker returns to the home in which he had lived with his parents, the home where they had planted pine trees and from where they had fled after the violence began. Raina is a Hindu and in the film he returns to Kashmir after more than a decade and talks to people about the region's recent past. The film is beautifully made, it's poetic texture mirroring in many ways, the film maker's sensitivity and anguish. There are moments, however, when Raina cannot escape the prison of his own subjectivity. He sees the struggle in Kashmir, like many other displaced Kashmiri Pandits, as a fight between democracy and fundamentalism. At one point in the film Raina makes the simple minded and innacurate claim that 'the soldier representing secular India is locked in a mortal combat with the jihadi from across the border'. But other voices in the film nudge into view alternate claims and understanding of the situation in Kashmir. In fact, rather early in the film, the Kashmiri writer Akhter Mohiuddin tells Raina about the way in which the dominant Pandit community was seen as oppressive and in complicity with the distant rulers of the Indian nation - sate. Mohiuddin, who had returned the Padma Shri awarded to him by the Indian government to protest it's actions in Kashmir, tells Raina on camera, 'India betrayed us and the Pandits supported them during every betrayal.' The Kashmiri Muslims, 96 per cent of the poulation in the Valley, had a literacy rate of only 0.8 per cent. Hindus formed about 4% of the entire population of the Valley but it was they who occupied many of the administrative and political positions of power. If 63.4 per cent of the population in the Valley is today unemployed, than these new resentments feed into and distort a very old rage.

Raina's film is more successful in showing in a series of images from Charar-e-Sharif shrine, the agony and the faith of the Kashmiri people. The Chrar is the shrine of Sheikh Nuruddin and was gutted in 1995; the security forces as well as the separatist guerrillas blamed each other for the fire. In Raina's film, we see ordinary men and women weeping at the shrine, their hands held open in ardent prayers, tears flowing down their faces. I'll give you my life, dear beloved, of all universe. at In this gesture of prayer, at a shrine which had traditionally been shared by both faiths, what is expressed in the chant is contrition and love. It is easy and tempting to find only innocence there.
There is innocence, but it takes a more surprising form. In the film, we watch as Akhtar Mohiuddin tells Raina of a 'mini short story' he has written. This is a story that I heard repeated many times when I was in Kashmir. Its popularity might be explianed by the fact that it outlines a situation where the loss of innocence is represented not through assault but by the seduction of violence. The story is titled "Terrorist". A woman named Farz Ded is walking down a narrow street. From the opposite end of the street, a police patrol approaches her. Farz Ded's young son starts crying. The commander thinks that the kid is scared and he reassures him. Farz Ded says to the man,'This rogue is not afraid of you. He sees the soldier and cries, 'I want a gun...I want a gun."

Jhelum

Yemberzal

By Leya Mathew

The pigeons have found the ideal Suicide Point – an old disused net that hangs out of the 3rd floor window balcony of the house that was abandoned 17 years ago. The new spot is ideal and fool proof. Everyday they come, sometimes as many as four in a single day, to hang themselves by the neck until dead. Sometimes they try to escape, when they feel the breath of life being strangled, but their strenuous efforts only tighten the noose faster.

The winter is long and hard in the mountains. Many of the younger pigeons have known nothing other than bitter adversity. They were born into the wrong generations, one without hope; or even a memory of hope. The torment of life saps the strength of Youth and many are looking to Death for deliverance.

Yemberzel was fat, even for a pregnant pigeon. She had never been pink cheeked and pretty, she was the sturdy hardy domestic type. She felt the eggs inside her and continued her search for a nesting site. Times had changed. It was going to be difficult bringing up children as a single parent in these difficult times. There were many things to consider, but the eggs were not going to wait till she sorted her life out. In fact, she was cramping already. Was it happening? So soon?

At the window below Suicide Point Yemberzel found two half empty clay flowerpots. The contractions had begun in earnest and Yemberzel plopped down heaving wearily. The mud was hard and caked from the cold, but the soft down feathers warmed them up in no time. What with global warming and everything, the climate had also lost its sense of time. It should have been spring already, but it was as dark and howling cold as the middle of winter. Shuddering from the exertions and the cold, Yemberzel neatly arranged her feathers around her and snuggled deep into them for warmth.

Everything had gone wrong from the beginning. She had fallen in love with the wrong man and had been too proud to admit it. It was pride that kept her from going back to her parents even in such a state where she clearly needed some womanly advice. Now, here she was, in a half empty flowerpot for a nest, having her first babies, in the middle of the freezing winter. Two tiny eggs eased out and nestled inside the soft gray forest. Yemberzel looked down in surprise and a stupid grin plastered her face. She felt a warm wave of satisfaction creep over her and something like happiness envelop her. Tired, she snoozed.

On the bare winter branches, Yasin clucked angrily. What was this fat pigeon doing beneath Suicide Point? They don’t even let you die in peace. He swooped down to cackle Yemberzel away. Only when he was directly above her did he see the tiny eggs. Swerving in his flight, he shifted gears and landed gracefully back on the dead branch. There was nothing to do except wait. He couldn’t go hanging himself above babies, could he? He hung around and noticed the other Suiciders hovering around undecided like him.

It became a habit for the suiciders to check in on Yemberzel every now and then as they went about their daily business. Yemberzel was fidgety and quite crazy by nature. But now, she sat as still as the winter, gazing out into the snow with a glazed smile on her face. One still afternoon, Yasin was pleasantly surprised to see an ugly yellow bundle peeping out from under Yemberzel’s fat ass. Yasin puckered his tired forehead and on a sudden bent of curiosity flew over Yemberzel to investigate. As he flew around trying to get a better look at what he hoped would be a beautiful baby, Yemberzel stared back fixedly, rotating her neck in all directions like a broken wheel. Yasin found this most disgusting and went back to perch on his dead branch.

From his top angle view Yasin could see one perfect half of the discarded eggshell. Yemberzel shifted her fat bum around and Yasin saw the baby. An ugly mangy bundle with large scales covering the eyes. What a monster. Nothing like what he had expected. He had hoped for a nice wooly soft bundle of clucking joy, not this repulsive creature.

Sajjad and Umar joined Yasin on the branch. The Suiciders knew each other by name now. They still kept to themselves, after all they were intensely private brooding individuals forced together by an unforeseen quirky twist of fate. They hardly talked to each other but contended with watching Yemberzel and the yellow patch under her. Yemberzel was busy gurgling up food into her throat. The baby stuffed her beak deep into her mother’s gullet to receive her food. Mother and child writhed in grotesque orgasmic convulsions and the Suiciders looked away. The baby flapped a wing and lay down to rest. Yemberzel continued to stare at the Suiciders with that unflinching stare of hers, still and plastic.

The second baby soon arrived and within a day, they were clucking their beaks at each other, eyes still sealed shut under the dirty gray membrane.

It was strange to see the Suiciders together. They were acutely aware of how gross it must look. That fateful day, as always, it was Yasin who arrived first. He liked his hours of solitude on the branch. He sat himself down, resting his old tortured legs. He had grown old while still young. There had been a time of anger and hope. Now there was only bitterness and he had wanted to end it all. He couldn’t deal with Life anymore. He wanted to die. Yasin heaved a deep sigh. It had seemed simple. The Suicide Point had become a beacon of escape for many like him. He had thought long and hard before deciding on this course of action. He would never have given the others credit for such a brave effort. He thought them opportunists who had used every heartbreak to enrich their coffers. But, here they were. Did they also see the deep darkness, feel the numb pain of despair Life had become. Death would be such a welcome relief. But Yemberzel had changed all that. Fat, ungainly Yemberzel.

Yemberzel. That name sounded faintly familiar. An old memory of a small white flower flooded Yasin’s mind. A memory of flowers and gardens and valleys and meadows flashed past his despair. Was he dying? Was this paradise? The wind howled and Yasin shivered. No such luck. But he did remember what Yemberzel was. She was the first flower that bloomed at the death of winter, announcing in the white wintery cold that Spring was coming. She was the flower of Faith and Hope while the snow still fell thick and fast around and froze the blood. Yemberzel. Why did she do that? Why didn’t she let them sleep the peace of Death? And what would he do when Yembrezel and her babies flew away? Would he still continue his path of suicide? Yasin grew tired of the incessant questions wandering around his small brain and of staring at the dirty yellow balls sticking out from under Yemberzel’s still fat ass and he flew away to attend to his daily business.
It was a long day. The daily grind was tough. When he returned to the dead branch in the evening, he was not prepared for what had happened. The flowerpot nest was empty. Even the eggshells had disappeared. Except for the earth spotted with grey green shit, it was hard to imagine Yemberzel had ever been here. What had happened? The Suiciders looked at each other. Yasin volunteered “I had checked in on them in the morning, they were fine.” “Then you’re the last person to have seen them” Umar replied. They listed their questions like a TV journalist listing the options in a popular murder scandal. Did a kite eat them? No kite would eat both chicks together and the discarded eggs as well. And where was Yemberzel? It was her disappearance that puzzled them most of all. If she could be found moping around then the story would fall in place, but she had vanished into thin air. “When do pigeon babies start flying?” Umar wanted to know. Old Geelani shook his head, “No, its too early for them to have flown away.”

Over the next few days, the Suiciders searched high and low for any news of Yemberzel. Nobody had heard anything of her in a long time. They said she had migrated long ago, that she could no longer be found in these parts. The Suiciders were left wondering whether they had had a communal hallucination. Had there really been a Yemberzel? In some corner of the dark winter of their hearts, they wanted to believe.

The River was rushing furiously. The current was churning whirlpools. Yasin shifted from leg to leg as he sat on the banks scanning the onrush. It would be suicidal to jump in. The chances were very low. But what if the babies had fallen in? What if they came flowing down with the current. He knew he would jump. Would he die? Suddenly he was terrified. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want the pigeons to die. He scanned the horizon anxiously. Yasin turned and tossed in his sleep as many agonizing hours passed by. Only debris whirled past. Yasin woke up with a heavy heart. The snow had ceased to fall. The sun was making a hesitant appearance. The dark heavy secrets of Yemberzel weighed him down, but he knew Spring would come to gladden his heart. He had returned to life, Suicide was not for him anymore.

Unfinished story

By Leya Mathew

I am the Writer. I would have been called Wanderer, Explorer, Revealer but by a colossal case of misfortune and misrepresentation, I am called Weary. Between what I would have been and what I should be, lies ‘I’ the Character. Since the Writer has been misnamed, I the Character remain unnamed. Therefore, instead of some meaningful, dark, brooding name, or a witty, satirical, half auto-biographical one or even a non-referential pretty poetic name you shall know me as ‘I’. How unimaginative, you might say; how ill-fated, I say and plead my case. The Writer is stubborn. To squash all further rebellion I am further made genderless. The Writer insists that I am that which is common to Man and Woman and that Gender is totally irrelevant to the Story. But, no Sex? How will the Reader identify himself or herself? Dissociate himself or herself from me? I hang my face in shame. The Writer claps in anticipation and proceeds eagerly.

I have been wandering the realms of reality and illusion in search of my destiny that has so far successfully eluded me. In tandem with my spiritual confusions, I have wandered the villages and the cities without paying much attention to the Ancient Glorious Past constantly being reinvented or the Global Super Power Status that is imminent. I passed by the unapologetic pre-occupation with Money and Power. It was on one such nomadic excursion, that I found myself in the neighborhood of my parents’ house. On a sudden whim, I decided to pay them a visit.

My mother was pleasantly surprised. This was the first time I was visiting the re-constructed house and she was anxious to show off. The house I had grown up in was unrecognizable. The walls I had eagerly marked in pencil to keep record of my growing elevation had made way for a larger drawing room. The pale yellow room whose paint I had irreversibly damaged by pasting over with Van Gogh and Monet prints cut from calendars and Readers Digest back covers had become a modern bathroom complete with gilded taps I couldn’t work. I settled myself in the farthest room in the back corner of the house on the first floor. The windows on one side opened out onto a mango tree in full bloom and on the other side to a wasteland that will soon be crowded with apartment flats and multiplexes. I kept myself away from the business of the house and was allowed to let myself be. I had earned my solitude.

I am the black sheep of the family, brilliant as a child; I had excelled in everything there was to do. It was commonly expected that I would join the Administrative Services or at the least become an eminent surgeon. Instead, I had studied the Arts, found formal education bankrupt and drifted through various jobs depending on fleeting inclinations and the lightness of my wallet. My siblings had worked harder at their destiny and had landed well paying foreign jobs. I was a calculation gone wrong that my parents had many a time attempted to set right, but could never find the precise detail that had floundered. I had become an embarrassment in family discussions that hovered around unintelligent investment patterns and had slowly distanced myself from family and school reunions. I was caught up in some unexplainable quest that sought a greater meaning and purpose than mere success. I wanted to learn the secrets of the incessant world within and the endless world without, its harmonies, its energies and its languages. I had been over ambitious. I set myself tasks I did not know how to solve. In the middle of this continual struggle with the soul, I attempted occasionally to write – to find some sense to my concentric journeys.

Now that I found myself in my new house, I let my agonizing narcissism rest and concentrated on eating well and sleeping long. My mother is an excellent cook as most mothers are and she enjoyed feeding her children. She conveniently forgot that we were no longer lanky teenagers growing at an alarming rate and the food we appreciated and partook of in such astounding quantities would only settle into fat and cholesterol.

It was at night after a particularly satisfying dinner that I noticed a small colorless bubble on my left wrist. It was pristine and perfectly round – almost like a dew drop. I was fascinated. I am obviously a very sensitive person and my skin takes after me. I am used to unexplained bouts of rashes in varying colors. But in the morning I woke up with a raging fever and multiplying dew-drops. They were everywhere, even on my scalp, hiding in all corners and appearing at the most inconvenient places. I called in reinforcement. My mother took one look at me and declared ‘Chicken Pox’. I looked at her with mounting distaste. She had the uncanny habit of being right in such unpleasant situations. I was immediately shepherded to the neighborhood clinic where the doctor confirmed my mothers diagnosis and hurriedly sent my off into forced isolation. I racked my brains trying to figure out where I could have picked up the infection from, but no lightning streak of inspiration struck. And the furthermost corner room became my universe.

Don’t get me wrong. I love solitude, nay I thrive on it. It is not unknown for creatures of my disposition to shut ourselves up in dingy rooms to introspect and absorb ourselves in vanity. But forced isolation? No, no… I considered it my duty to rebel. My rebellions had always been stupidly ill timed and this one was no exception. I morosely sat in my large single bed and stared through the mosquito mesh on the steady earth that was supposedly rotating and revolving continuously. The sun came up. It grew warmer. The horizon of dusty thorn bushes fluttered through the day. The sun went down. Night fell. The thorns continued their intermittent flutter. I was fed on weak gruel as the unchanging world stared back at me throwing in my face the proposition that the only constant is Change.

The universe didn’t have to expend much energies of Fate to cover me in boils. Crown to sole (and soul) was soon covered in tiny multiple dew-drops. If I were a flower in a misty valley I would have looked mesmerizing. Instead I was wrought with an intense desire to scratch and tear out every one of those bastards. They smiled back innocently. I tried counting them. I started from the top, but before I could finish with the head, I could feel a new one germinating in some forgotten corner and that fuddled my numbers. I washed myself in cold water, in hot water, creamed myself, covered myself in oil, flitted neem leaves on my naked skin; nothing worked. Finally I restricted my mad energies to my customary evening bath in lukewarm water. Dettol soap and Vaseline Creame became trusted accomplices. And I waited. I waited and watched the thorny bushes from morning to night. If I could, I would have shrunk into myself, lowered my heart-beat and metabolism and slept like the polar bear through my winter of discontent. We humans are not that lucky.

There were books all around – an interesting variety. Readers Digest, Mad Comics, Shakespeare, Paulo Cohelo, Dostyovesky, Dickens, The Guiness Book of World Records. They peered down on my from their high shelves, some condescending, others peering intelligently into far space. I cold shouldered them and continued my obsession with the barbed shrubbery. I started familiarsing myself with my boils and indulgently watched them grow and bloom. The pioneer on the left wrist had shriveled up in old age and I mourned the demise of close associations.

That is when the Tree appeared. Bang in the middle of the thorn fields. I had not seen it grow. Did somebody plant a full grown tree in the middle of the night? I had watched over my thorn fields night after day, over the course of the lifetime of many boils and had never seen this Tree. Was it a hallucination? Or had my eyes skipped over it and never seen it? Whatever be the story of the genesis of the Tree, it was there. It was tall; or maybe that was just a relative term, because all around it were stout bushes that did nothing to question its monopoly of height; and bare. It was still early February, so I could not blame old age for its nakedness. It was an ordinary, non-descript tree- neither old and knotted with stories of generations or young and eager and thirsting for life. Its ordinariness captivated me. It did not question its purpose in the grand scale of events prescribed of the Universe; or the lack of it. It stood tall, at once proud and humble in the middle of an unremarkable field of thorns, content in its nakedness. How was there such harmony in Nature? Why were we; though so much a part of Nature, yet so divorced from its fundamental essence of balance and concord?

As I watched, the Tree transformed itself into an unfinished apartment building. The main beams had been finished and the blocks of empty holes, the same concrete ash colour as the Tree, were placed row after row, column after column like some fantastic card trick. A pigeon flying around mistook the construction for my poor old tree and flew about looking for a suitable nesting corner. It found one easily enough, on the left flank, a sturdy corner well protected from the winds. The pigeon went about building its nest while the workers filled up some holes with bricks and the others with large glass window panes. The twigs were in place and the straw was going in when the painting was finished. The workers liked the pigeon, so they were careful with her. She grew to trust them. They dabbed a little yellow paint on the corner of her nest as a souvenir to remember them by, when they packed up and moved on to build taller and larger houses.

The apartments were all ready and the landscaping was in full earnest. The golf course was in place lined by gulmohars. The large ‘Tropical Paradise’ was filled in with desert palms, delicate foreigners and exotic natives. The pigeon looked on approvingly. The view had definitely improved. The thorny bushes were lost to view and like an oasis in the desert, Tropical Paradise bloomed. Prospective buyers started dropping by. The animal rights activist was the first one. The broker showed him around. He wrinkled his nose at the pigeon, sent the broker away for some details from the Building office on the ground floor and hurriedly relieved his bladder that had been troubling him awhile. Many more bikes and cars parked at the basement parking lot in the days and weeks to come but nobody came to disturb the pigeon. Then suddenly work started. The tiles went in, soft and creamy white, the doors and handles and other fittings were installed. The house was ready. The pigeon gurgled satisfactorily and promptly laid her eggs. The couple came in the evening. They were young, and terribly excited. The boy could hardly contain his pride. The girl was wide eyed in wonder. She loved every bit of it, but most of all the large French windows with the cozy window seat that opened out into the tiniest of balconies grilled in for safety. Spring had creeped in unnoticed and the world was in bloom. Lilies and magnolias mingled with button roses and gardenias. The jasmine bushes bowed under their white burden and even the pigeon was overcome with the terrible beauty of the moment. She sighed. The girl started in surprise. They stared at each other, the owner and the tenant. The girl’s face broke out into a grin, “Darling, look, there’s a pigeon here, and she’s even laid her eggs. Isn’t that wonderful?” the boy was more practical. “Oh, what a nuisance.” The girl wrinkled her nose at his total lack of romanticism. The soft evening light fell gracefully on her face and the boy forgot all about the pigeon. They held each other close in their eyes and drew nearer as if hypnotized. “Here?” she asked. “Is there any better way to make this home?” asked the boy as he quickly bolted the door. The girl giggled like a nervous teenager. They disappeared into the cool whiteness of the creamy tiles. Our camera moved tactfully away to two large velvety daisies nestling at each other’s cheeks.

There my Elysian vision vanished. I was left with a sea of thorny scrub, a dreary tree and an abundance of boils. I stared hard into the void willing the vision to continue. What happened next? What snake came to tempt my Eve in the Tropical Paradise? Did passion slowly trudge into domesticity? Or did the model-turned-actor neighbor prove too distracting? And what of the pigeon’s babies? Did they hatch and grow up to play with the rose buds and the jasmines or did they hang treacherously from a discarded nylon net? I variously questioned my boils, from the wise old wrinkled ones to the baby still flushed at birth. They were too busy multiplying and dying to answer me.

Night fell. A new day dawned. The sun rose. I pecked at my festering memory. I hated my prickle bush and the darling Tree. I drew the patterned curtains over them and searched the landscapes within. Finally, exhausted and empty handed, I let it slip into a long collection of unfinished sketches. I fondly go over them one by one. There is the ‘City of Dreams’. The richness of detail still overwhelms me. It is a large canvas, almost finished. I had created the city to destroy it, but as I filled out the tiny back alleys and the crowded market places with hope and love and pain and despair, I could no longer agree with its destiny of destruction. True, the city was seeped in sin, but there was also so much honesty and dignity among those bewildered strugglers. The final act of heavenly retribution will not be written. I move on. Large and small, sketches, outlines, watercolors, charcoals, oils, they have come back to haunt me with their incompleteness. There in a corner is the ‘Salvation of the Devil’. This one I had been loathe to abandon but eventually I left my little devil stranded at the gates of Salvation. Because my God couldn’t answer his one question – ‘if God is Love, then why is Love not enough? Why should there be pain and death?’ My heart wrings when I see the expectant hopeful little D, so ready and joyous, eternally waiting.

I go back to my boils and find company with Job. We sit together among the ashes scratching and agonizing. My skin has begun to clear. I will soon go away into the world to continue my meanderings. I have been oft pregnant but I pray that Life will grant me the kindness of giving birth.