Nund Resh! Where art thou?

Sangram Dar owned a beautiful orchard that bore black berries, just when a prolonged summer had ripened them. A few yards away stood an apple orchard too, under the shade of whose trees Nund Resh would occasionally lean back and take rest. Here the air was the color of gardenias, and Resh had his fill of dales and cherry pickings.


A sharp cliff below could tire young and stout; a path Nund Resh would take almost every day in his last years while coming from Ropawan [the saint spent seven years of his life at Ropawan]. A cool mountain breeze, sauntering steps of a time gone by, could still greet you if you care to stand there, in these times. If I was different I would try to describe the pastures. But I was snatched away beyond cosmic pastures, till I  break. I’m neither me, nor anyone else; we both are guests. In some corner of my subconscious Mozart was playing. If I was a sleep, I would carry on sleeping in the blissful gardenias here.


There is no convincing reason to give why Nund Resh was buried at the place where he was, after all, while he left this world. May be you will know. May be you won't. There is more to Nund Resh than just tying a prayer knot. If you care to know, that is.


In another period, a stage in Nund Resh’s life when he was traveling extensively across the Valley; while he moved from Pattan to Hoonchipur — a small, quaint, beautiful village in Beerwah, surrounded by Fir trees. The mountains on the North lead up to Poonch and Reasi if further traversed along. Rising from the plain, shaded with trees and leaves, you’ll see why a person would want to live there forever, if you visit Hooshipur. Dawn, morning, mid-day, night all change with the changes in air. The air has a color of things there, while life whirs by as quiet as a murmur. During my recent visit to Kashmir, while I spent some evenings under the beautiful dim lights of Peer Zoo restaurant, over the banks of Jhelum; it stuck me to follow the Nund Resh’s path. To travel to all those villages and boondocks where the saint spread his message of a socio-religious upheaval that was to define Kashmir in the coming centuries. It could well be encouraged as travels of Nund Resh if people at the helm are interested. However, that is another story, and I really would not want to go into any state acting. Next we know some grotesque structure of cheap blue polythene built in these important places that Nund Resh visited, which by the dint of some divine intervention as Samuel Jackson spurned in Pulp Fiction: are more or less untouched till now, by the mad consumerism race that has engulfed our whole city- the eye soring glass wares, that could give styes in the proportions of 1892 Cholera.


While Nund Resh was at the fringes of the village Hooshipur, he saw a group of girls lined up in a girdle cutting grass. As is with most of Nund Resh’s sayings, he drove  a metaphoric parallel to this daily mundane chore. Thus the saint spoke;

Why thou cut the grass, O ladies?
Why thou strike sickle to the grass?
Why not thou think of the next world?
You have to repay there!

One of girls replied:

Not scattering salt are we, O father,
For which we may the effects to bear,
With staff in hand, thou art killing at
So strange thy words sound.


So powerful was the reply of the peasant girl, that Nund Resh immediately took her in his Reshi order. The woman later turned into a famous Saint-es famous by the name Sham Ded. She lies buried and the shrine is revered by the local villages in and around the whole area.


Perhaps, the most intriguing part of Nund Resh’s life is his association with Lal Ded. While common folk has left no stone unturned to give a direction that could mould this relationship of divinity, yet it still owes most of its grip through folklore. This is largely because Nund Resh’s hagiography was written only 200 years after his death. We relied on oral vernacular for a long period of time, unfortunately. If we spread our observation across the world, we find a similar relationship between two mighty Sufis: Mevlana Rumi and Shams Tabrazi, in the plains of Anatolia, around 150 years before Nund Resh and Lal Ded met. In truth the strong shivaite order was passed onto the Sufi order, while both scoffed at the external exhibition of religious practices. The emphasis's relied on internal cleansing, giving rise to a unique religio-cultural composition, that saw equal respect given by both Muslims and Hindus to Nund Resh and Lal Ded. Lal Ded is bestowed with respected titles like Arifa, Maryam-i-Makhani by the Muslim Sufis. This is vindicated by Shaikh Ul Alam himself:

That Lalla of Padampur,
Who had drunk the nectar.
She was an avatar of ours,
O God, give me the same spiritual power.


It isn’t like 14th century Kashmir was a place inhibited by all virtuous. In fact the malevolence and bitterness was so spiteful, that Nund Resh was forced to come out of his confinement in Gophabal (Kaimoh), and travel to nook and corner of Kashmir, spreading his love and try to put an end to the greed and hostility that was hollowing people inside.

While, I heard a first account story of one friend, walking through the maze of people at Regal chowk, so many of them- faces: sad and sombre, I looked for our Nund. Where art thou?