Forgive my long silence ...
Life was trying to catch up with me.
I am still walking ahead.
Let me break my long silence with the notes of music -- three of my new songs from two soon-to-be-released films ...
This is "Tere Bin Kahan Hamse" ... from the about-to-be released "Jashnn" from the Bhatts. It is composed by the hugely talented Sandesh Shandilya, and sung by Shaan and Shreya Ghoshal, one of the most talented singers in Bollywood.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOlT2BrVH0k
The next two songs are really special to me. They are from "Sikandar", written and directed by Piyush Jha and produced by Sudhir Mishra and Big Films It is a gritty and eloquent film set in Kashmir.
I have covered Kashmir as a journalist for long long years and have enduring friendships there. It was pure joy to be able to write a song in a film set in Kashmir. You cannot imagine my excitement when my friends call me to say that these two songs are playing on the FM in Kashmir ...
There is an old tradition of Urdu poetry in which a writer pays a tribute to a master by taking the "mukhda" (opening two lines) of an iconic ghazal and writes a new song.
I love the ghazal so much that I wrote two!
This first version has music by Justin-Uday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSSW5SxuDX8&feature=related
And this is another version, with different lyrics, composed by Sandesh Shandilya.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvE716Am18I&feature=related
When I wrote these two songs, and when they were recorded, I waited with the trepidation of a student before his exam for the verdict from across the border, from Dr. Salima Hashmi, daughter of the great poet himself ... she heard both the songs and said she loved them! It was so humbling, so rewarding, and such a great relief, above all ...
These are links to some of the comments she made about the song:
Indian Express
India Today
Hindustan Times
Screen
Showing posts with label Kashmir. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kashmir. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Mission Kashmir Diary-3
The nomad has bought a mobile phone. He now wants a house.
Fazal Hussain, the Bakarwal tribe elder with the kohl-laced eyes and henna-dyed beard, clutched the handset like a walkie-talkie in front of him as he told his address to a relative coming by to visit.
“Come to a clearing on a hill between Chingus and Rajouri, keep looking to the left from the window,” Hussain said, as he stood at his annual winter address after returning an hour ago from wandering through Kashmir.
But there is no romance left in these endless nomadic journeys anymore. Hussain wants to stop. He wants a home and a normal life. He wants an address that is not a mountain clearing.
“We hate this life. We are tired of being vagabonds. We are living in darkness, we cannot even do signatures,” he said as his grandchildren looked on, sitting on a rock.
Fazal Hussain, the Bakarwal tribe elder with the kohl-laced eyes and henna-dyed beard, clutched the handset like a walkie-talkie in front of him as he told his address to a relative coming by to visit.
“Come to a clearing on a hill between Chingus and Rajouri, keep looking to the left from the window,” Hussain said, as he stood at his annual winter address after returning an hour ago from wandering through Kashmir.
But there is no romance left in these endless nomadic journeys anymore. Hussain wants to stop. He wants a home and a normal life. He wants an address that is not a mountain clearing.
“We hate this life. We are tired of being vagabonds. We are living in darkness, we cannot even do signatures,” he said as his grandchildren looked on, sitting on a rock.
“We are so desperate that we settle down and our children go to school. I wish they could study,” Hussain said. “We want the government’s help.”
The Bakarwals are nomads who still live the ancient lifestyle that their ancestors lived for centuries, surviving on and seeking little except what they can carry.
“We have no greed. We get our dinner, and then we know Allah will do something for us in the morning,” he said, women lit fires and stirred salted Kashmiri tea.
The Bakarwals are nomads who still live the ancient lifestyle that their ancestors lived for centuries, surviving on and seeking little except what they can carry.
“We have no greed. We get our dinner, and then we know Allah will do something for us in the morning,” he said, women lit fires and stirred salted Kashmiri tea.
In the summers, the Bakarwals support themselves by doing odd jobs at fruit orchards and farm fields in Kashmir. They have their “qasab” (territories), where they can wander, well divided among themselves.
Many Bakarwals have voter ID cards, and are being wooed by politicians ahead of the Jammu and Kashmir state elections.
“It’s election time, so they will come and promise us relief, land, pensions,”’ said Mohammed Shabir, 45, another Bakarwal villager. “For centuries, we have been cheated like this. Nobody did anything for us vagabonds.”
A little Bakarwal girl walked across the highway, all by herself, to pick firewood.
Wading with their huge herds of sheep into big cities, they come down from the pastures in the winters and walk long distances, as far south as the New Delhi suburb of Noida – before returning to Kashmir in the summer.
When insurgency erupted in Kashmir in the nineties, the Bakarwals found themselves under pressure from both militants and the army’s overzealous officers. They stopped going to the forests, where they earlier used to get lucrative produce, and began living by the roads.
Now they have many youth who are dreaming bag, and seeking aspirations.
“I once went to Srinagar. It is big and beautiful. I want to live there,” said Ghulam Qadir, 14.
But from their information-choked, reclusive world, there is still some distance to be travelled.
“I love cricket. My favourite cricketer is Salman Khan,” Qadir said.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Mission Kashmir Diary-2
The 65-year-old doctor did not have a pen. But he carried his own paper -- a blank letterhead with his name and qualifications -- as he stepped out of his clinic to kill himself.
Outside Balwant Khajuria's clinic in Jammu region's border town, a war was being prepared. Hundreds of people crunched together, shouting furious slogans in their clash against the Kashmir region. Their throats were hoarse.
Few had had food. Few cared.
The war has subsided, but the state known for the rebellious Kashmiri face has a new angry young man: Jammu. Decades of perceived discrimination has boiled over, stunning Kashmiris and the rest of India.
"The Kashmiris thought only they could do strikes and throw stones? We have showed them what we can do, and Jammu will never lie low again," said Pradyumna Sharma, a college student who threw stones at police and offered arrest during the violent two-month campaign. "Until there is justice for us, this anger will not stop."
Nine people died in the protests. Curfew lasted two months. Women and children – some as young as year-old – filled jails in protest and streets witnessed bloody battles with the police.
It was the morning of August 14 when Khajuria stepped out of his clinic, when Jammu and Kashmir was in the throes of its most violent civil unrest ever. A squabble over a piece of land on the way to the Amarnath shrine had boiled over into violent street protests by hundreds of thousands of people in the two regions that give the state its name.
Khajuria went and sat in a corner of the crowd, and wrote out a long suicide note. He folded it and kept it in his pocket. Then he walked quietly to the public tap nearby, took out a packet from his other pocket and gulped down some tables of Sulphos, a deadly insecticide.
He melted into the crowd, shouted slogans with them, and, within a few minutes, collapsed. Doctors could not save him – and they did not know it was a suicide until they found the note, asking people to oppose the government and "keep the faith."
On that day, hundreds of kilometres to the north in Kashmir's capital Srinagar, something unimaginable until even a few week ago was happening. Pakistan's flags were being waved by furious protesters, watched silently by security forces keen to avoid clashes.
Outside Balwant Khajuria's clinic in Jammu region's border town, a war was being prepared. Hundreds of people crunched together, shouting furious slogans in their clash against the Kashmir region. Their throats were hoarse.
Few had had food. Few cared.
The war has subsided, but the state known for the rebellious Kashmiri face has a new angry young man: Jammu. Decades of perceived discrimination has boiled over, stunning Kashmiris and the rest of India.
"The Kashmiris thought only they could do strikes and throw stones? We have showed them what we can do, and Jammu will never lie low again," said Pradyumna Sharma, a college student who threw stones at police and offered arrest during the violent two-month campaign. "Until there is justice for us, this anger will not stop."
Nine people died in the protests. Curfew lasted two months. Women and children – some as young as year-old – filled jails in protest and streets witnessed bloody battles with the police.
It was the morning of August 14 when Khajuria stepped out of his clinic, when Jammu and Kashmir was in the throes of its most violent civil unrest ever. A squabble over a piece of land on the way to the Amarnath shrine had boiled over into violent street protests by hundreds of thousands of people in the two regions that give the state its name.
Khajuria went and sat in a corner of the crowd, and wrote out a long suicide note. He folded it and kept it in his pocket. Then he walked quietly to the public tap nearby, took out a packet from his other pocket and gulped down some tables of Sulphos, a deadly insecticide.
He melted into the crowd, shouted slogans with them, and, within a few minutes, collapsed. Doctors could not save him – and they did not know it was a suicide until they found the note, asking people to oppose the government and "keep the faith."
On that day, hundreds of kilometres to the north in Kashmir's capital Srinagar, something unimaginable until even a few week ago was happening. Pakistan's flags were being waved by furious protesters, watched silently by security forces keen to avoid clashes.
Still, not enough reason for a 65-year-old silver-haired man to kill himself.
"He was emotional, but we never thought he could take this extreme step," said Vivek Khajuria, 36, the doctor's son. Above him, hung a picture of his late father, wearing a suit and tie.
Some days before his death, he came home furious. He had met some women at Amarnath Yatra soup kitchens who said they had been tortured with cigarette butts and ordered to shout "Pakistan Zindabad" (long live Pakistan) on their way back from the shrine.
"He believed that Hindus and minorities in Kashmir, and they are ignored," said Vivek Khajuria. "The maximum employment opportunities go to Kashmiris."
That anger is sweeping across the Jammu region, centred on jobs, economic opportunities and the alleged financial pampering of Kashmir.
"If you are against India, you are pampered. If you say `India Zindabad', you are taken for granted," said Khajuria.
The town, barely seven kilometres from the international border, has heard that echo before.
Two men died in Hiranagar in 1953 in police firing in the widespread agitation led by Hindu natinalist leader Shyama Prasad Mukherjee against the special permit required to enter the state. Mukherjee defied the ban and entered Jammu and Kashmir. He was put in jail, where he died in intriguing circumstances.
This time round, the rage is set to play out in the elections, and Hindu nationalist groups like the Bharatiya Janata Party are hoping to gain from it.
"He was emotional, but we never thought he could take this extreme step," said Vivek Khajuria, 36, the doctor's son. Above him, hung a picture of his late father, wearing a suit and tie.
Some days before his death, he came home furious. He had met some women at Amarnath Yatra soup kitchens who said they had been tortured with cigarette butts and ordered to shout "Pakistan Zindabad" (long live Pakistan) on their way back from the shrine.
"He believed that Hindus and minorities in Kashmir, and they are ignored," said Vivek Khajuria. "The maximum employment opportunities go to Kashmiris."
That anger is sweeping across the Jammu region, centred on jobs, economic opportunities and the alleged financial pampering of Kashmir.
"If you are against India, you are pampered. If you say `India Zindabad', you are taken for granted," said Khajuria.
The town, barely seven kilometres from the international border, has heard that echo before.
Two men died in Hiranagar in 1953 in police firing in the widespread agitation led by Hindu natinalist leader Shyama Prasad Mukherjee against the special permit required to enter the state. Mukherjee defied the ban and entered Jammu and Kashmir. He was put in jail, where he died in intriguing circumstances.
This time round, the rage is set to play out in the elections, and Hindu nationalist groups like the Bharatiya Janata Party are hoping to gain from it.
But at the heart of it, there is a battle for resources, not religion.
The dead doctor's son graduated in then-fancied agriculture from Ghaziabad, the New Delhi suburb, 11 years ago but blames the government and its alleged pampering of Kashmir for not being able to find a job yet.
"I am sure they are giving jobs through the backdoor to Kashmiris," he said nonchalantly, punching his fingers on a calculator.
Mission Kashmir Diary-1
I am an outsider in Kashmir.
I have been travelling there for much of my career as a journalist, I am married into a Kashmiri Pandit family, and some of my closest friends are Kashmiris. I love the voices of Kashmir’s celebrated singers Rashid Hafiz and Kailash Mehra. I have written a few of my popular Bollywood songs with inspiration from the turbulent solitude of Kashmir’s roads. My next book extensively features Kashmir. I can even understand a few sentences in Kashmiri, and after an animated discussion in Kashmiri between friends, I can shock them with one of the few Kashmiri sentences I know: “Mecchu Souri Taraan Phikree (I understood everything).
And yet, I am an outsider in Kashmir.
I have been travelling there for much of my career as a journalist, I am married into a Kashmiri Pandit family, and some of my closest friends are Kashmiris. I love the voices of Kashmir’s celebrated singers Rashid Hafiz and Kailash Mehra. I have written a few of my popular Bollywood songs with inspiration from the turbulent solitude of Kashmir’s roads. My next book extensively features Kashmir. I can even understand a few sentences in Kashmiri, and after an animated discussion in Kashmiri between friends, I can shock them with one of the few Kashmiri sentences I know: “Mecchu Souri Taraan Phikree (I understood everything).
And yet, I am an outsider in Kashmir.
I am someone who has no idea how Kashmir operates at its various mysterious, intriguing levels. I can never feel the pain that has seeped into the blood of hundreds of thousands of people living surrounded by death for years, for whom the first sight of the morning, when they open their windows looking for the warmth of the cosy sun, is a military bunker with an armed man.
I can never hear the growl of the army or paramilitary man when he brusquely asks me to pull over at a barricade and humiliates me in front of my family; I can never squint at the sight of the harsh torchlight that he flashes in my face in the night, I can never feel his rough hands on my body as he searches me for bombs, I can never hear the hostility in his voice as he lets me go. The militants have given Kashmir immense pain – but the crushing response of the Indian government has made that pain fade in comparison.
And I can never feel the tragedy of being treated like an outsider in my own land.
I am an outsider.
I can never imagine how it looks, watching from inside that barb wire, sand bag-protected bunker with the little light bulb. I can never be that man from a faraway Andhra Pradesh or Tamil Nadu or Jharkhand, wearing a heavy bulletproof vest and holding a machinegun, fighting a war someone else created, and for which he must now give his life. The man watching out for his invisible enemy who comes holding a grenade under the pheran; the lonely, often terrified man who kills not so much to kill the militant or the innocent Kashmiri, but to save his own life in a strange land that was thrust upon him by the same people who thrust military occupation on the picturesque land.
I can never hear the growl of the army or paramilitary man when he brusquely asks me to pull over at a barricade and humiliates me in front of my family; I can never squint at the sight of the harsh torchlight that he flashes in my face in the night, I can never feel his rough hands on my body as he searches me for bombs, I can never hear the hostility in his voice as he lets me go. The militants have given Kashmir immense pain – but the crushing response of the Indian government has made that pain fade in comparison.
And I can never feel the tragedy of being treated like an outsider in my own land.
I am an outsider.
I can never imagine how it looks, watching from inside that barb wire, sand bag-protected bunker with the little light bulb. I can never be that man from a faraway Andhra Pradesh or Tamil Nadu or Jharkhand, wearing a heavy bulletproof vest and holding a machinegun, fighting a war someone else created, and for which he must now give his life. The man watching out for his invisible enemy who comes holding a grenade under the pheran; the lonely, often terrified man who kills not so much to kill the militant or the innocent Kashmiri, but to save his own life in a strange land that was thrust upon him by the same people who thrust military occupation on the picturesque land.
I can never understand the pain of the unknown soldier and the letters he writes home. I am an outsider in Kashmir.
And I can never know what is like to be driven out like an outsider from Kashmir. I can never know what it is like to be a Kashmiri Pandit. The minority whose fault was that they were bright, prosperous, did well in life, and were nationalists at heart. The people who were threatened, killed, hounded and ridiculed and forced to leave their homeland – with their pain never understood by either India or Kashmiris.
I can never feel for their tragedy. I am an outsider.
And perhaps some day I will acquire the brains to understand why the Indian taxpayer’s money – which includes my money – goes into the Black Hole of governance where New Delhi issues blank cheques once in a while to buy peace and loyalty in Kashmir and it vanishes without trace in the rarefied air of the valley.
Perhaps someday I will acquire the brains to understand why Indian taxpayer money is used to pump favours to the same men who abuse India and the idea of India.
I am an outsider in Kashmir.
(This piece first appeared in the Hindustan Times)
Mission Kashmir continued
Friends,
I am getting back to my blog after several weeks, and I apologise. I am firstly publishing here some of what I wrote, and some pictures I took, on the road trip through Kashmir.
Neelesh
I am getting back to my blog after several weeks, and I apologise. I am firstly publishing here some of what I wrote, and some pictures I took, on the road trip through Kashmir.
Neelesh
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Postcard from Kashmir
Ten minutes after he landed at Srinagar airport, Chris Terry felt he was in a Will Smith action flick. The Canada-born musician who lives in New York was dazzled by the sight of the guns, the armoured cars, the camouflage, the nervous organiser shouting to the driver, “Go! Go! Go!”
The next day was better. Terry, bassist of the Pakistani band Junoon, was on the stage and he had a familiar sight before him: thousands of youngsters screaming and cheering, singing along and swaying to popular Urdu numbers. What was unusual was the setting.
In the heart of a ‘war zone’, the rat-tat-tat of the AK-47 was replaced by the thump of percussions on Sunday evening as something unimaginable until now played out: a Pakistani band playing in Kashmir by the Dal Lake in the presence of a frenzied audience. In the crowd there were also people from outside Kashmir who have experienced conflict — and worse: former Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Afghan Minister H.B. Ghazanfar.
There were schoolgirls in headscarves; young women in jeans and designer glasses. There were students in school uniforms. Behind them, the Dal Lake looked dreamy in a film of mist, flanked by the lofty Zabarwan range. It was as picture postcard as it could get in the Kashmir Valley.
One young man laughed and said, “Why didn’t these guys come 20 years ago? We wouldn’t have had had to take up guns!”
It was a joke many in the front row would take very seriously, of course.
Was this part of the peace process? Nope.
It was just an enjoyable concert for youngsters craving for popular culture in Kashmir. Did people on ‘both sides’ — and Junoon itself — try to wrap the event up in the complex politics of the region? Oh, of course. Everything is not politics in Kashmir, but everything becomes politics here.
Read the rest of the piece, which appeared first in the Hindustan Times.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)