"Gittu"

Part One: Fiction vs. Reality

What makes for a better story? Pure work of fiction or something right out of the hidden, forgotten lives of ordinary people? Judge for yourselves.

My boss, Mr. Vishwajit Pandey is your run off the mill middle-ager with a happy family and two young kids...I never yearned to explore his life beyond the professional but ironically came to know of this fact today when I am leaving my job for good. It was just a passing question which brought to fore an experience so dramatic and chilly that I cannot resist sharing it with anybody who cares to know.

A jolly man, Mr. Pandey, looks like he would never have the guts to walk out and have a chat with a pretty damsel, let alone being extraordinary in any sense of the word; he was an exceptional person for me. The fact that made him exceptional was that he was born and brought up in Srinagar, Kashmir. Heroes they say can be identified by their looks; I disagree. It was a chilly night in February of 1990, since when he has never been to his home town again. The following was the experience that led to it; I am taking the liberty of narrating it in the first person because I heard it from the horse’s mouth (literally if you consider his size) and want you to share the same experience as I did while listening to it.

Part Two: “Gittu”

“Vishwajit! Yaar (mate) lets meet up after you get back from work, we’d go to Lambert Lane, hunt for the new girl, Javed was so crazy about the other day”, called out Satish. Satish was one of your small town machos, well built and a real maverick. He maintained a general store in Karan Nagar, downtown Srinagar. A bull of a man, he would run headfirst into anyone who even suggested bullying him.

Going to Lambert lane was our regular evening exercise. Every evening with itself brought about the most difficult task of our pre-college and college; that of distributing the most beautiful girls as our prospective future targets, let me clarify before your imagination takes you to the other side of decency, for becoming our girlfriends that is. We had a simple funda about it as well. “Woh! You see that pink one their, yeah the one with the red Duppatta, yeah that. That’s, mine.” “Yeah serves you right that pinky with that wonderful nose of hers, Pakoda. Look at my choice, you see that blue on there, yeah, the one in that group of four, isn't she a chobri (isn't she a "bomb").” And so went our evenings hopping around and living the bird’s life that youth brings along with itself.

The late teens had brought that “take on the world’ attitude to us youngsters and we were the "men" of our colony. From beating red and yellow, the boy from the next neighbourhood for hanging around with a girl of our colony to doing all the ‘social work”, helping elders carry heavy packages and cross roads to maintaining the locality temple, we did it all which makes youth take first tiny steps of responsibility to prepare itself for the big one; Life.

I had a four storied house, in Karan nagar, an atypical area of old Srinagar and a typical mixture of the ever-been-together Hindus (essentially Kashmiri Brahmins) and Muslims. The house campus had a small temple and the behind the temple was the silver stream of Kashmir, Jhelum. My father was a contractor and mother was a regular housewife. I was doing (or trying my best at undoing) a B. Sc in pass course from the University of Kashmir and used to work part time as a Medical Representative to earn crucial sources for our Lambert Lane excursions.
I was popularly known as Gittu.


Part Three: The Unwanted Guests

Our pretty lives, as you all would have guessed by now, were obviously affected by the recent exploits of the perpetrators of Azad Kashmir. However, we all knew, and behaved in the manner as well, that the general public of Kashmir was noncommittal to the issue. Incidents of terror were for us the whims of some fanatics who had conceived the impossible notion of a Kashmir separable from India. We simply did not think about it, apart from the times when some individual sorry incident caught our attention and we went about condemning it, all the communities together.

The temple I mentioned earlier, the one that was situated in the campus or the veranda of the string of houses was a derelict old construction. Not very well kept, it was seldom visited by any of us youngsters apart from the odd festival. The only regulars were God-fearing oldies who would “rotate on their own axis”, with hand cross holding their own ears, everyday, asking for deliverance from God as the community kids would looked on, astonished as to why Dadi was behaving like a chimp!

The area from behind the temple right down to the stream of the Jhelum (the whole bank that is) was populated the by the spoil that every city has. Essentially slum-dwellers, these people would work as day laborers or other such wok of drudgery. Thoughts of blocking out the area from the colony crossed the minds of people several times but would be given up due to lack of initiative. We also wanted to do something for the renovation of temple but as school or college kids would never have ample funds to initiate it.

The result was that the slum people slowly but surely were growing up to the colony. With time their belongings started to appear around on and over the roof of the temple like an algae growing and engulfing the landscape. We too as we grew older were growing restless about it. Also some of us had started earning, however meager but still money in our own hands. So the pot was brimming, waiting to explode.

Part Four: Our Promotion To The Post Of Colony Heroes

“Vishwajit, pick that log there, yes, that one; throw it away, right into the river.”, “Satish, the tin shed there, yes that has been causing the most trouble, tear it into halves and it will be easier to carry to the river.”, “Don’t forget that large piece, yes the one they use to close their back door at night. Remove that also, they always keep it over the roof of the temple”.

One early morning in early 1989, the temple was rescued thus, with the entire “stray” stuff thrown into the Jhelum and the area around the temple cleared. A wall was constructed overnight to block the whole area and thus cutting off all the contact between the refuse of the society and us.

We did not do it as a conscious response to an encroachment by Muslims against Hindus. They did not perceive it as a conscious response of Hindus to an act by Muslims. It was a mere coincidence that they happened to be one and we the other. It was not done to prevent “a” Temple as a place of religious importance. It was done to prevent “the” temple to insist the ownership over one’s property, the temple becoming merely a rout to it. But each one of us knew that there was an undercurrent of this feeling. We simply rejected it or perhaps did not think of it as it was never shown to us.

We were happy after the incident; the mavericks of the colony; the torch-bearers. The young-guns, on whose shoulders rests the responsibility of preventing the colony of such impending disasters as lack of civic facilities, overflowing drainage or as I mentioned earlier the prevention of a colony girl from unruly pursuits of neighborhood boys. The collars went up in a flash and we were sure the young girls looked up to us as their heros. The colony uncles and aunties would remain happy and some of them even silently hated us for our “guts”. We relished it both ways.

Part Five: “Jisko Kasmir me Rehna Hoga, Alah-o-Akbar Kehna Hoga”

The winters of Kashmir, no matter however beautiful they look on TV, wreck havoc and affect the daily lives of Kashmiris severely. While almost everything visible to the eye in good old summers almost unrelentingly goes out of sight under a ton (sometimes literally) of pearly white snow, the peoples of Kashmir strive to live through it with their everlasting zest for life. The Dal is frozen. But that does not matter to the mavericks of Srinagar. The sons of Dal, who take it upon themselves to challenge the worst fears of the lake and the sizzling chilly waters (and I am talking about summers here) to cross the Dal for the annual Dal-cross swimming championship, challenge the strength of the frozen Dal as well; they ride across the lake, ON THEIR BIKES! To win the Dal-cross indeed, but in a different manner all together. Srinagar is heaven in not just the sense that people of the whole world have proclaimed it; the physical beauty. It is lot more of a heaven because of that one element which makes the Kashmiris toil through the unbearable winters. The desire to Live!

Though some timid people like me and the government of Kashmir would rather run away from the adventures of Srinagar to the comfort of Jammu, and so was the schedule for my family every year. We would, every winter, go to our winter house in Jammu. This year, though, was different. It was January of 1990. I had a new-found job, the mark of my growing into a responsible young man from a college-brat, the power that enabled me and my friends to carry out the temple rescue the year before. The job changed the situation for me. I had to stay back. Perhaps, it was my first independent holiday; at home. I would work my day through and eat in the evenings at a friend’s place. Life was good.

The insurgency in Kashmir hand increased a lot over the period of last one year. Common people from our surrounding areas were becoming aware of the antagonism prevalent in the air. We could not discuss it as freely as we used to with our Muslim friends. But still that one crucial link, the open public support, was missing, in the absence of which militants were making little impact.

I woke up to distant chants if slogans and sounds of drums. The kind of sounds that run a chill through your spine. The sounds of a mob moving and chanting like a single headed monster with no objective but destruction, with no logic but just the same crude kind of passion with which a passion-struck bull chases cows. The animus of a mob where individuality is diluted and the heard and the moment guides your energies. It was late night on January 20th, 1990.

“JISKO KASHMIR ME REHNA HOGA, ALAH-O-AKBAR KEHNA HOGA”, “ASIGASI KASHEER BATAV ROS TA BATNIV SAAN (we want Kashmir without the Pandits but with the Panditayans-females)”….rose the chants of the monster. The first public display of people’s support to the quest for Azad Kashmir. No one in the crowd would have been able to give one logical reason for the demand. How could they? What does a child, eight years of age, Not one in the whole would have accepted the same chants against their community. They demanded equality and chose the path of treating their fellowmen with inequality to achieve it. It was crude, dirty, un-Kashmiri.

You may call me a coward, but I admit I was afraid that night. The Muslims of our colony did not participate in the procession. They also appeased us calling it only a procession. But I knew that night standing there, witnessing, the worst trauma of my whole life. It was not the fear for my life. It was the end of Kashmir-heaven on earth, that I was seeing that night standing there cowering in a forlorn corner beyond the sight of the monster. The zest to kill had won.

Part Six: The Act of Bravery?

“Where is Satish? Tell him to come outside and meet us. We have to settle some account.” It was a young chap of eighteen who was shouting from outside Satish’s house. He used to live in the slums behind our temple until recently. But over the last few weeks he had not been seen often. “Satish Bhayia has gone out of town”, explained Satish’s sister as Satish, in spite of his utmost attempts, heard the conversation from in side his room which he was confined to for the last two days, since the day of the procession that is. “Tell him to come and meet us if he is a man. Tell him his days of heroics have ended, the coward, and we are the people who rule now”…… “What did you say you Kafir, you bloody coward”, before anybody realized and thus restrain, Satish stormed out of the house and the Bull, ran headfirst into the “Kafir”.

They say Satish fought till the end. Even as he was falling he tried to grab hold of a brick and throw it at the head of the Kafir. But it is difficult to do, particularly when you have been shot twelve times, at point blank range, off an AK 47.

It was the third week since the incident. Unlike the winter schedule when we shift down to the ground floor due to cold and discomfort, I had moved right to the top. Fear was greater inspiration that winter. My parents, being in Jammu had not known of the incident with Satish, perhaps not.

The evening of February 21st, 1990, I had left for my evening meals to the friend’s house and was beginning to forget the series of unfortunate events. I don’t know how it feels to come back to your home and find a corpse in your bedroom. It must be terrifying. But I wonder if people know the experience of something a lot more grotesque, walking home to your own corpse. When I walked back to my house that night I came home to a sign at our house’s door, as if it were waiting there for me welcoming me from a long journey to a sudden realization. It read: “May we please request you to forgo your actions, which are becoming a discomfort to us or maybe you would meet the same fate as Satish.” I locked myself into the second floor of my house, out of reach of my unknown nemesis that was waiting to hunt me down, perhaps on the top floor or was on his way to it, entering my house that very moment. I was an animal ready to flee or bite at the sight of slightest movement.

I fled.

The definition of fear is so supple that you can only surmise various degrees of it when you come across one. The actions which you yourselves might have considered utterly foolish before then become an act of safety. I was alone at the house. This was my introduction to the highest of physical fears, that of danger to one’s life. One of the basest feelings common to both the animals and humans is the survival instinct. The difference is, for animals it is an act of no deliberation. It comes naturally to them. For Satish it was a matter of choice, like every other human being.
The definition of bravery too is supple. I realized this fact then. For Satish, bravery was to walk out and face the challenger who dared to challenge his manliness. I respect him for that. But that day I realized also, the amount of bravery it takes to run away. The bravery it takes for a man to forgo “his” manliness, when he thinks of his family-The parents who have brought him up with desires and expectations, the mother for whom, the son is the extract of every ounce of effort she put into making of a young man, the father who sees in his son, an image of his own self. Satish’s bravery was because he sacrificed his life. I had to sacrifice my self-respect. Which one’s a greater sacrifice is for you to decide.

Part Seven: The Reality That Fiction Cannot Conceive

As Mr. Pandey works away on his laptop, I realize the various roles he has been playing; forty year old father, a responsible son and most importantly a book. A book of memories that he has preserved over his quest to remain attached to his homeland.
I wonder only one thing. Can fiction think of such a reality?

After-word

The night Mr. Pandey fled, he was almost shot down by an armed guard. The whole of Srinagar witnessed a curfew for months at a stretch. He could not carry even a pair of clothes to his parents in Jammu. If it were not for an educated army Major he might not even have been able to reach the taxi-stand, some eleven kilometers from his house. All that can be said is that he was destined to survive. He drove overnight to reach Jammu in the morning. His instructions to the driver were simple: “Take me beyond the Tunnel (Jawahar tunnel) please, as soon as possible.” His parents were under the impression that he had come since he felt bored and they did not realize until one day accidentally in the market, his mother was informed by some of his Muslim friends about the whole incident. She fainted.
Today at forty, he is forbidden to go to Kashmir. The insurgency might be dying out, the fears survive.
Ashish Thakur