MK Raina
is a well-known theatre director, actor and filmmaker, and a founder member of
SAHMAT. In this account he describes his rediscovery and re-engagement with his
home in the Kashmir Valley and his determination to forego the fear and the
anger so as to reclaim and preserve a precious multi-cultural heritage.
I have just returned to my home in Noida after watching a play
at the National School of Drama’s national festival. It was a Kashmiri entry; a
production of Waiting for Godot directed by one of my students and judged
one of the six best plays at the festival. The play’s director, Arshad Mushtaq
is from the Valley and the entire caste is from rural Kashmir. They come from a
place called Gandarbal outside Srinagar, and most of them are Kashmir peasants.
This account is a glimpse of the whole story – Of what is
happening there, bit by bit. It is also the story of my re-engagement with my
birthplace, my home. My parents lived there right up to the tumultuous 1990s
when events overtook the people and the place. I left Kashmir as a student to
study in Delhi, at the NSD. I stayed on as a theatre person and director, making
documentary films and working in theatre. My parents and some of my extended
family still lived in Srinagar at the time.
It was in the summer of 1990 that my return to Kashmir began,
painfully. My brother-in-law suddenly called to say that my mother had suffered
a serious haemorrhage. I flew to Srinagar immediately and went straight to the
hospital. Though I had been following the developments in Kashmir, it was during
my drive to the hospital that the reality of what the Valley had become hit me.
Things were bad, there was shooting and counter-shooting on the roads, even just
outside the hospital.
For days the three of us siblings were stuck in the government
hospital where my mother’s condition remained serious, she had sunk into a coma.
No proper medical attention was possible as doctors were deserting the hospital
due to the atmosphere of violence and intimidation. We were desperate to take
her to Delhi but the one local doctor attending to her said that she was in too
precarious a condition, she could not be moved for at least three weeks.
The next few days were an endless string of anxious hours of
waiting. My brother, my sister and I took turns in attending to our mother,
watching for the relaxation of curfews to rush home and return. We had no time
for more than a few hurried words to ensure that the basics were being looked
after, that my father at home was all right. There were no beds for us at the
hospital. We stayed by her side, lying on the cement slab by her bed just to
stretch our backs. Two weeks passed that way.
My father, poor man, was at home all through this period. And
then, as sudden as the haemorrhage itself, my mother passed away in the hospital
just as we, my brother, sister and I were making plans to take her to Delhi. I
returned to hospital one evening, aur dar bhi lagta tha, it was
frightening once the sun was down, expecting to sit with her when my brother
said to me, "It’s all over. She has gone."
The next few hours were traumatic. There was no ambulance
available. The few people around in the hospital and fellow patients were very
good to us, very sympathetic. But the skeletal staff at the hospital was
worried; the army had taken over. And we were told that we just could not take
our mother home. I only remember this outburst of feeling, "Arre hamare
shahar mein gaadi kaise nikalne nahin denge?!" (How can we not be
allowed to take out a vehicle in our own city?)
That night was desperate. It was Friday, January 25, 1990. The
army had taken over. All roads had been sealed. Shoot-at-sight orders were
issued the next day. Then the Peerbhoys got some cars and helped us; we could
never repay that debt. We didn’t even know which route the driver took, but he
managed to get us home. We had to sit in the pitch-dark in our house that night
with our mother’s body.
Come morning, we had to deal with the last rites. I do not know
what had gripped me that day but I was determined to get a dignified cremation
for my mother. This meant walking down deserted streets, lined with CRPF forces,
eerie in their silence. I simply had to approach the authorities to request a
cremation for my mother. As I walked down alone, scraps of memories from my
activist past struck me, helped me. A friend and comrade, Bobby had once
described how she’d survived in Poland… one of her graphic descriptions which
probably saved my life that day. She told me that often when she’d needed to go
out during curfew she always held her hands up above her head as she walked. I
remembered what she had said and did just that. Just kept on walking with my
hands up to appeal to someone to let us take my mother’s body for cremation.
My father was worried, he said, "It doesn’t matter. Let’s wait.
We can have the funeral rites the day after…" But I was determined and very
emotional about the cremation. The second person from the security forces I
encountered hurled filthy abuse at me. I just kept on moving, with my hands up.
All I felt was, "My mother needs and deserves a funeral and I will do anything
to get that for her."
I remember one Jat, a Haryanvi officer who demanded to know
whether I had any orders to move, to come out. I appealed to him, "Ma ki
nidhi ke liye nikla hoon, agni lagaani hai Ma ko…" (We have to complete the
last rites of our mother)… It made no difference. By this time I had reached a
police station and a BSF commandant came out and asked me what the matter was.
I made the same appeal to him. As I was speaking to him I
realised that we did not even know where to get the kafan (shroud) from.
The commandant and another BSF officer helped us with the arrangements and got
us to the Ganesh temple between the first and second bridge in Srinagar city.
The temple doors were open, so we could go in and bathe my mother. My brother
and I, along with two cousins and one Muslim friend who had insisted on coming
with us. It was after this ritual was over that I actually looked around and saw
the city. It was a chilling sight. Srinagar had been completely sealed off. It
was a city I had never seen. "Yeh mera shahar nahin tha, jis galiyon mein
hamne masti bawal kiya tha" (It was not the city of my birth where we
had frolicked and made mischief).
It was through this eerie Srinagar that our procession wound its
way after leaving the temple, trying to reach the cremation ground. In a city
sealed off there are no ordinary people about, only uniformed army men at every
step and around every corner. Every 40 feet or so, we had to lift the shroud and
show our mother’s face to those who patrolled the streets. As we passed, there
were loud sounds, a bomb was thrown and we heard an explosion at a spot
somewhere behind us. What was happening to Kashmir?
Finally we made our way to the ground where my mother was then
cremated. It was a Muslim who cremated her, that is the beauty of Kashmir… By
the time we had arrived there I had no emotions left, I was numb.
Then, we did not know how to get back home. Normally, one never
takes the arthi (ashes) home but that day we had to. The earthen pot
containing our mother’s ashes was our passport to return home safely. I spotted
the police headquarters at Batmalu. I stopped the truck we were driving and
said, "Help us get home." After that it was one wireless message after another,
stopping at checkpoint after checkpoint before we got home. There, my 70
odd-year-old father, my sister and two nephews were waiting anxiously. We were
stuck at home for days after that. Even my mama and mausi
(maternal uncle, aunt) learnt of my mother’s death only seven-eight days later.
After this tragedy, we were faced with another dilemma. My
father did not want to leave in such tragic circumstances, but he could not stay
alone either. He talked to his neighbours at length, persons from the mohalla
(neighbourhood), because we had been living there from my great grandfather’s
time. There was a lot of pain in those conversations. Our dearest friends, our
closest ones were helpless in the face of what was happening. Safety or comfort
could not be assured. That is when my father left for Jammu. He never could go
back.
From Jammu he came to our home in Noida. He was a fiercely
independent man, as fit as a fiddle, he walked six kilometres every day. He used
to be a National Conference party worker. He had his home, his dentist’s
practice, his friends around the neighbourhood. My parents were very
self-sufficient.
But once my father left Kashmir, he started suffering from
hypertension. One day he told me, "I am too old." When he passed away some years
later, my son Anto (Anant) remarked, "Baba did not go now. Baba had already
gone." That is when I realised my son had grown up. He knew my father had never
been the same after he left the Valley. Ever since 1990 our clan has been
scattered. Some are in Jammu, some in East UP, others in Rajasthan, some in Pune.
Our property is all gone. We had to sell it for a pittance a couple of years
ago. Our children our grown now.
For me this period in 1990 worked as a catalyst. I could never
accept the fact that there was nothing for me in Kashmir. Even today I don’t
have a home there. So what? Srinagar city was home! I was a Srinagar city bum,
why couldn’t I go back to my city? Soon I had the opportunity. In 1992, when I
was working with Siddharth Kak on the North India section of the cultural
television serial, Surabhi, we needed to shoot in Kashmir. I was the
obvious choice for the unit since I knew every street in Srinagar. When our unit
landed at the airport we were received by state security forces, there for our
protection. The minute we arrived and security personnel joined us, I realised
that we had made a mistake. I knew then that this was not the way I should have
returned to my city. I went back to Delhi the very next day.
Then, about six years ago, I began the real journey back.
Chances opened up through a PTI television series on Kashmir planned from
a cultural perspective and without any propaganda. We depicted Kashmiris any and
everywhere, inside and out of Kashmir.
When I first went back, I didn’t know where I would stay. There
was Arshad (whose play is just being staged at NSD) whom I had met earlier. I
had asked him to pick me up at the airport, not knowing whether he would come.
He did. I still remember his smile when he greeted me! For 15 minutes, I
couldn’t move… For 15 minutes my bag went round and round the conveyor belt. In
those 15 minutes I made up my mind. I told myself, no security this time. I also
remembered a little hotel with a kebab joint, Ruby Hotel on Lambert Lane.
As I came out and Arshad greeted me I said we would stay at Ruby Hotel. "That’s
it!" he said.
I also went to the Dastagir Sab shrine near downtown Srinagar.
In days past, my mother used to give me Rs. 11 whenever I passed that shrine and
she would say, "Ya Peer Dastagir, Allah theek karenge" (All will
be well by the grace of Saint Dastagir and the Almighty Allah). I went there,
offered Rs. 11, received sheere, you know, the round hard bits of sugar?
I got five-six of those and then told Arshad that now we should start meeting
people. We met writers, poets, hoteliers, businessmen and many others. I was
lucky we were moving around fearlessly.
Then some years later I began a project filming heritage sights
in Kashmir. The day my father died I had a nightmare that frightened me… All the
beautiful shrines of the Valley, all my childhood images would one day just
disappear. I didn’t want the Shah Hanadan shrine, its beautiful architecture, to
just disappear. My mausi lived opposite Shah Hanadan. Whenever we visited
her we would bow our heads low in respect to the shrine. As children we were
told a story. That Shah Hanadan and our other beautiful structures were all made
from one forest of wood each. Imagine if they all disappeared! I had this fear
that they might go. Charar-e-Sharief had been gutted in 1995. In 1996, on one
visit, I remember calling my wife Anju and telling her that I wanted to record
these heritage sites so at least our children, the younger ones who had never
seen Kashmir, could soak in this heritage. She was very supportive. As I began
shooting, temples, mosques, dargahs, my own fear dissolved. The only
condition my family insisted on was that I should phone them every evening.
While I was shooting, the evenings would depress me because then
the shroud fell on Srinagar. Everything stopped moving. Curfew was on. The
Residency on Lambert Lane used to be the hub of activity. There was a
coffee-house there. It served a lousy cup of coffee but it was the cultural hub
of Srinagar, the spot where all the great intellectuals of Kashmir, from the
world of literature, song, theatre and poetry, met. Now not a soul could be seen
as evening fell. One evening, some time in 1997-1998, I found myself in tears
for there were no faces at the coffee-house to remember.
In Delhi, NSD and theatre was my life. Around this time, someone
suggested that I do a play on Chhattisgarh. Why Chhattisgarh, I remember
demanding. I said I wanted to do a play on Kashmir. This began another journey
back to the Valley.
During my earlier stays in the Valley, shooting for films and
documentaries, I had re-established contact with many old colleagues. One of
them, Shafi saab had through INTACH already conceived of CHECK (Centre
for Kashmiri heritage and environment). We decided on an official collaboration
through an NSD workshop in Srinagar. We, Shafi Pandit and I met senior
bureaucrats to solicit space for 30 people to live and have a residential
theatre workshop. Finally, we were given space at the agricultural university,
Sher-e-Kashmir. The registrar was wonderful; he had seen me on television and
showed me a beautiful bungalow, with a forest as backdrop. An empty hostel would
provide the rooms. It was just the place I wanted.
I advertised for participants in the local papers. I received no
responses on the first day. One evening, two days later, a student from
Baramullah came. Within seven days, I had students from Sopore, and Gandarbal as
well. This was what they needed. Young people needed this space for expression.
A residential workshop of this kind gave them a welcome release from the lives
they led, or had been forced to lead.
The workshop was completely self-sufficient and Gandhian in
principle. It was cook, clean and work. It was a very tiny place but set in
lovely surroundings. A garden in an apple orchard scattered with chinar
trees. The workshop lasted four full weeks. We performed theatre, saw several
films on video and invited Kashmiri intellectuals for discussions at specific
workshops.
That experience remains the foundation of what I am still trying
to do in Kashmir. It was a small beginning. You know, to climb on to a horse and
ride you first need the four-legged structure to get onto the horse in the first
place? For that you have to build that structure. We are trying to do that so
that we can begin climbing on to the horse.
I was 18 when I left Kashmir. When I returned in 1990 when my
mother died, I was married with two children. There was much to learn about the
years in between. I can only say that now, with this first workshop, the bottle
has been uncorked.
I am not a hero. We do not need heroes. We need ordinary people
who act as catalysts to re-start the normal everyday processes of living,
healing and forgiving. My deepest regret about Kashmir and the state of affairs
there is the utter failure of Indian civil society when there was a crisis at
hand. I am active in the anti-communal movement and often felt frustrated and
alienated when there was little or no attempt by radical activists to relate to
the ongoing crisis in Kashmir.
A cultural awakening is a must for a genuine resurgence of
health and vigour in Kashmir. You know the education of the Kashmiris has been
ruined? They have forgone their rich heritage by dumping the Kashmiri language
and have adopted a very inferior kind of Urdu. It was and is my endeavour to
bring the Kashmiri component of culture to these children of the Valley. Along
with the cream of Kashmiri intellectuals, we spoke of the richness of Kashmiri
culture to the young. Rehman Rahi, the renowned Kashmiri poet, spoke to them on
what Kashmir was before Islam; he spoke of the Buddhist influence on Kashmir,
the influence of Shaivite Hinduism on the Valley. The Kashmiri Pandit scholar,
Ganjoo saab, who knows the old Kashmiri script, spoke of the evolution of
the language. We had Abhinav Gupta, a scholar of Sanskrit, giving his commentary
on Natya Shastra. The whole impetus was to communicate to the young
what you are, what have Kashmiris made of this land? They were told Kashmiri
short stories, wonderful stories. If I can ever raise the resources I will make
a film on one of these stories… they beat even Kafka in their craft and depth.
We developed performances and also put up an exhibition of our
paperwork. At the end, we performed to an audience. Five years ago, after God
alone knows how many years, there was a public performance at the Tagore
Theatre. This whole cultural experiment with residential theatre workshops set
the pace and with every workshop we found more people. Soon we were running
short of space at the first location.
In the second year, we performed a play with new people. By the
third workshop the university had run out of space, so we moved our workshop to
an indoor stadium near the Passport Office (which incidentally was attacked in
early 2005) and held our rehearsals there. This time, instead of directing the
plays myself, I told Arshad and Hakim Javed to do so. We had a two-day festival
at the end of the workshop. Today they are making their directorial debut at the
NSD in Delhi!
There is much insularity within Jammu and Kashmir, be it in
Ladakh, Jammu or the Valley. I believe this insularity needs to be addressed.
One way to do this is through cultural resurgence. The work is like aachar
lagaana (making pickles). You have to work at it for a long time before the
end product results. Slowly you can earn trust. I know they are my own people. I
have to win them back.
My daughter Aditi accompanied me on one of my trips back. She
was studying the impact of violence on children. She insisted on moving around
on her own, visiting schools, orphanages and interacting with local activists.
On a visit to the Chashmeshahi Lake she witnessed the humiliation that Arshad
and Javed had to suffer when they were stopped and searched by security forces.
I used to insist that things were normal in my Kashmir. She turned and said to
me, "How can you say things are normal? There is fear and terror." My own child
opened my eyes to another dimension of the tragedy. Children.
The Rajiv Gandhi Foundation gave me a small grant to work with
children whose lives had become a living hell. There was no education worth the
name, either. As a result, we had a residential camp in Jammu in February last
year. Srinagar kids were brought to Jammu camps. There were 40 kids from
Srinagar and 15 from Jammu. Both groups had seen violence. They were like tense
little birds; these were children who had seen trauma. They wanted to avoid
contact. Many mothers volunteered at the residential camp. We spent 12 days at
the camp together.
I had each child’s case history with me. There was anxiety and
concern about the experiment. What would 12 days out of their homes mean? There
would be Hindus and Muslims staying together? Would this cause more pain than
healing?
We proved the sceptics wrong. Nothing untoward happened. If any
child was upset, he or she went to one of the ‘aunties’ who were organisers as
well. These aunties were also mothers. The children stayed awake late into the
night, sharing experiences, whispering fears. Kids moved into one another’s
rooms. They held hands, slowly. The division crumbled… As the camp came to an
end they all howled for an hour because they had to leave.
Suddenly they had all become part of a larger family. Last year
the same children attended the camp again and some new children also joined.
These included migrant children. Camp mothers of migrant Pandit children came to
Srinagar. We had to keep a daroga, a watchman, since we were near the
lake, but it was a tremendous experience.
There are just so many stories. One woman, Usha took us to her
home or what had once been her home. Initially, she didn’t want to go to her
home near Pahalgam, she couldn’t handle it. When we visited the temple complex
at Pahalgam, however, she began to get restless. As we approached her home, "Mera
ghar peeche rah jayega," that’s my home, she said. Then, when she finally
did go, she found her home intact, her mohalla intact. She met persons
from the neighbourhood. Though she was torn when we left, I saw a different face
now. Usha’s face held less fear. More confidence.
The year before last, I took Sanjay, a Pandit from a village,
back with me. He works in film and television as a freelancer in Delhi. When we
reached Srinagar, he was frightened, paranoid. Red in the face, he sensed a
policewoman staring at him. She turned out to be an old classmate who came up to
him, "Tu Sanjay hai na?" (You are Sanjay, right?) They were
meeting after 12 or 14 years. She insisted that Sanjay go to her house and meet
her husband and children.
He was very tense on the streets of Srinagar. Arshad and I, and
the others took Sanjay to Lal Chowk and other familiar haunts. We felt that we
all had something precious that we needed to fight to reclaim and preserve. As
we took him around Srinagar, we reached the Cheel Bhawani temple, 20 km away,
which we were also filming. As we neared the temple, he became more and more
tense. The symbol of his faith in his homeland was bringing back all kinds of
memories. I told Arshad to take special care of him. Inside the temple premises
it was as if a chain inside him had snapped. He started sobbing like a baby.
Arshad hugged him and took him to the bench. They sat there talking and talking
and talking… I just thought, "Yeh Bharat milan ho raha hai" (This is
meeting, Indian-style).
And then do you know what we did? We asked him if he wanted to
do a puja and he said yes. We then went outside to the man selling
earthen lamps. In Kashmir, he too is a Muslim. Despite years of violence, this
Muslim was there and he had kept the tradition alive. His name was Ghulam
Mohammed, a poor peasant. We asked him how many diyas he had; he had 80
or 81. We bought every single one of them, lit them all. Then we performed the
aarti for Sanjay as bhajans were sung in the Cheel Bhawani temple,
Sanjay, Arshad, Javed and I. Then we ate the prashad (offering), tears
flowing down our cheeks. This was Sanjay’s therapy. Sanjay continues to go back
to Kashmir today. He is now going back to shoot a story of an ex terrorist who
used to be his classmate…
Who can understand this reality? Ek Kashmiri Pandit ki puja
hi nahin ho sakti jab tak mitti ke bartan – joh Mussalman banata hai —woh na ho.
(A Kashmiri Pandit’s prayer ceremony is impossible if the earthen vessels –
made by a Muslim – aren’t there.) My father used to say Janm se marne
tak Mussalman ka saath hai, from birth to death, Muslims are with us.
We have to re-build a future on this rich tradition of multi-culturalism.
I now have 150 friends in Kashmir from the world of theatre.
Twenty are in Delhi performing right now. For me, I know that my Kashmir
is there.
Initially, when I started going back I was, for them, a strange
nut. But after my experience in 1990, I was sure of two things. Fear feeds more
fear and anger fuels more anger. But if you hold out your hand then the fear and
anger dissolve and the healing begins. By God’s grace that has happened with me.
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