| |
BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS | |
Homeland after Eighteen Years (A 48-hour Travelogue in Kashmir) | |
| |
Author: K. L. Chowdhury Publisher: UBS Publishers & Distributors Pvt. Ltd. Ansari Road Darya Gung New Delhi Year of Publication: 2011 Pages 132 Price Rs. 170 | |
| |
Book Review by O N Kaul : | |
| |
The world’s wealth, O Ghani, can not wipe out one’s fault; For all the gold’s scratching, the touch stone is still black (Ghani Kashmiri.) Dr. K L Chowdhury’s latest publication “Homeland after 18 years - A 48 - hour Travelogue in Kashmir” was released by His Excellency Shri N N Vohra, Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, on 25th April 2011. This travelogue in free verse is a compelling volume - a travelogue, a historical document, and a work of art, all in one. It is perhaps the most seminal work on Kashmir during the past two decades, and the author can be compared to Jonaraja, the last author of Rajatarangni, that monumental historical tome on Kashmir which provides graphic details about the persecution of Kashmiri Pandits and the destruction of their grand temples by successive Muslim rulers that started with the invasion by Zulqadar Khan in 1322 A.D.. History has been repeated after nearly six hundred years under the so called ‘secular, democratic’ dispensation in Kashmir after her accession to India, when nearly the whole of Pandit population was forced into an exodus of unparalleled magnitude in modern times by Islamic terrorists, leaving behind a transformed Kashmir that Dr. Chowdhury describes in four crisp lines in his travelogue as under: The valley has taken on A distinctly Islamic flavor, And the many-hued garden that was Kashmir Is no longer there …. because the fundamentalists have created an ambience of religious bigotry and hatred, which, in the eyes of the physician-poet, is like an unremitting malady: It is a chronic sickness that afflicts Kashmir, A virulent virus of blind obedience to unreason That proliferates in the tissue and organs Of civil society. In 2008, Dr Chowdhury was invited to Srinagar by the J&K Academy of Arts, Culture and Languages to receive a lifetime award for his best book in English, ‘Enchanting World of Infants’. He went to Kashmir after having braved eighteen years in exile, and stayed there just for two days (48 hours). He was so moved by what he saw and felt that, on his return to Jammu, he was impelled to write the book under review. In his familiarly unique style, he has written short pieces in delectable free verse, each pertaining to the place or person he visited, each complete in itself, each a comparison of the present with the past. In the process, a forty eight-hour travelogue turns out to be a journey of a life time spanning nearly five decades from the time of the author’s childhood to the day of writing. In his spiritual rediscovery, the first place the author visits is the Shankaracharya temple, looking down at the city of Srinagar from towering one thousand feet, which was Dr. Chowdhury’s everyday climb before exodus. Then, he follows it up with a hurricane drive to different places where he grew up, educated, treated patients and taught medical students, socialized, wrote poems and sang songs, picnicked and roamed free. On visiting the sacred shrine of Makdoom Sahib, the author is touched by the faith of Muslim devotees flocking there, but he is pained by the pathetic state of the Ganesha temple nearby; the gods inside ‘abandoned and forlorn’. Here in simple verse he reflects the irony of the situation: I find many believers here / men, women and children Praying, shedding tears, tying knots / their faces lit up in faith. But I fail to understand / how one faith can thrive on the damnation of another, How can love for one / nourish on the haltered for the other? ….. (Makdoom Sahib) His visit to Vicharnag, once the spiritual and religious fountainhead of Kashmiri Pandits, evokes bitter memories of the murderous attack on the high priest of the temple that heralded militancy in the valley and drove the Pandits into exile, leaving their homes and hearths, temples and institutions at the mercy of the terrorists. The author cries on finding the place in utter ruin: Now there is not a soul around / when it should have been a buzz with pilgrims For it was here/ that the terrorists struck first And murdered the high pries / way back in nineteen eighty eight. Then, there was no looking back. Alas this fount of knowledge / this ancient seat of learning, This epicenter of discourse /is now like a blot in the landscape, The temple that housed our gods / has now become their tomb. (Vcharnag) When Dr. Chowdhury walks along the lanes and by lanes of his downtown ancestral neighborhood of Rajveri Kadal, he finds the school where he began studies burnt down because: Education could wait when freedom was at stake and the boys were enjoined to take the gun in hand instead of the pen. (My Primary school) He finds all the old landmarks blotted out, no sign whatever of his acquaintances, relatives and friends or their homes. He feels that the Kashmiri Pandits have become history: The Kashmiri Pandits are spoken of Iin past tense here They were, they have been, they had been. Who were they, anyway They might ask one day? The poet gives an eyewitness account how religious zealots and Muslim fundamentalists, after scaring away Kashmiri Pandits, wiped out their houses and their institutions. Here is a poignant account of the remains of his ancestral home: All I see of my ancestral house That had braved the tides of time For nearly a century and had birthed me and five generations of my dynasty, Is a small mound of earth! Can loot be ever so complete? (Rajveri Kadal) Not content with having wiped out the Pandits, there is a relentless drive to wipe their history out as well. Dr Chowdhury rues the fact that even the historic places have been given new, ‘unnatural’ names: Even the Hari parbat hill / has been renamed Kohi Maran By the powers that be / that are on a name changing spree That is how Shankaracharya hill / has been named Sulaiman Teng And Anantnag of innumerable springs /as Islamabad. How artificial and unnatural / the new names sound to the ears Like naming London as Jeddah / and Paris as Madiana! Not only were the Kashmiri Pandits uprooted, their dwellings and institutions looted, destroyed, or encroached upon, and illegally occupied during these tumultuous years of militancy, even the landscape of Kashmir, which has been described as a paradise on earth, is slowly and inexorably under a severe attack. Here is how he describes it: New constructions come into view Where paddy fields once held sway Private residences built in style Shopping malls flowing over the pavements, New mosques in green with crescents, Their minarets spiking the sky. (Welcome) And, at another place: All else has transformed | |
| |
About the Author | |
---|---|
| |
Dr. K L Chowdhury retired as a Professor of Medicine, Medical College, Srinagar. Presently he is the Director of a charitable institution, Shriya Bhatt Mission Hospital and Research Center, Durga Nagar, Jammu. He is a physician and neurologist, a medical researcher, poet, social activist. He writes on diverse subjects medical, literary, social and political and has numerous research papers to his credit, his pioneering work being “The Health Trauma in a Displaced Population” which was presented at national and international conferences. He was declared Shehjar's 'Kashmiri Person of the year' for 2007. | |
| |
Copyrights ? 2007 Shehjar online and KashmirGroup.com . Any content, including but not limited to text, software, music, sound, photographs, video, graphics or other material contained may not be modified, copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, or distributed in any form or context without written permission. Terms & Conditions. | |