We need a psychological home as much as we need a physical
one. A sort of a refuge where we go back, refuted by the world of
allegiance. Home is a place very special
to Humans. Nothing in the world can replace it. It atones to our
vulnerabilities.
Recently a good number of netizens took to social media, displaying
their affiliation towards Kashmiri identity. Apparently, phiran forms a large
part of it. This was a reaction to some government advisory that phiran must
not be allowed in offices. While everyone is free and entitled to their
opinion, however, I found the reactions very hallow and reeking of hypocrisy.
In Kashmir, everybody knows each other. It’s a small place and the society is
closely knit. We rarely marry outside our mores. The inter mixing with rest of
the cultures of sub-continent was almost neglible till very recent. However, a
lot of those things are changing. In the age of internet and technology one can
choose a partner by just a click. Yes, tinder does that! A lot Kashmiris are
travelling outside, exposing themselves to a whole lot of cultures. While all
of this is fine, it becomes very necessary that in the process we don’t lose
our essential character. So what is that character? What is it that netizens
were displaying their anguish against? A piece of cloak that you wear and click
selfies in? And this by those people who abhor when their children speak in
Koshur –regarding the language downright lowly. This tribe of poor self-esteem
walking strivers is dime a dozen in Kashmir and they give two hoots to your
culture and identity.
Hypocrisy is being double faced. While all the hoopla goes
on for my identity and my Kashmir- whatever that means, the situation on the
ground is glaringly something else. Our indifference to our civic sensibilities
is pathetic to say the least. There is zero accountability. Illegal
construction by real estate mafia is rampant. Most of the hotels in ‘world
famous’ Gulmarg and Pahalgam have flouted rules, illegally occupying forest
land. Footpaths are used for everything
else but walking. Anyone in power seems unapproachable. Bullying of the
marginalized is order of the day. The honest is mocked. The system is so effing against the common
man. Yet all of it is accepted. Corruption is so rooted that it has become a
system. As long as you don’t come in my way, I don’t give a fig! That’s the
attitude.
I’m a downtowner. Though we shifted to city suburbs in mid
90s, yet the downtown boy in me never left me. I usually walk over through its
tiny labyrinth alleys, when I visit home in summers, finding a long gone memory
in some alcove of my mind. It’s the only place where I feel I have arrived. All
of this may be gone though. The vandalism of our architecture is everywhere.
The art deco old is giving way to the brash glassy new and nothing is being
done to protect it.
If you visit any European city, the care and effort to
maintain the architecture of a city is so visible. The new is given a way, but
not at the expense of the old. There is a concerned effort made to stick to
their identities. You can destroy a city and its people easily by obliterating
its architecture. Take the old city out of Srinagar, what remains is a ghost
city. Ugly and morose. That’s because the sophistication and richness lays
inside the realms of our old houses.
Their features being so distinct if one walks along the Nallamar. A wooden porch on the first or second floor;
red oxidized floors; baroque carving on windows; thin brown bricks. The air smelling of its people who lived for
hundreds of years. Along the walls that I walk in my ancestral home, that I
touch and feel, I find the souls of my ancestors. Their sounds echo in the
oxidized floors. It is said everyone must leave something behind when they
die: A child, a book, a house, a planted
garden. Something that your hand touched so that the soul has somewhere to go
when you die, when people look at that tree or house or garden.
I wonder what I would leave behind for my son, to know his
identity. Certainly must be more than a phiran!
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