That which pervades the entire body you should know to be indestructible. No one is able to destroy that imperishable soul ~ Bhagavad-Gita 2.17
Bhagavad-Gita evolved on the Battlefield of Kurukshetra — conversations between Krishna and Arjuna; Sanjaya’s recitals to Dhritarashtra. Our recitals evolved in exile, in refugee camps, in Geeta Bhawan, in serpentine relief queues! And many avatars we donned — the warrior, the mystic, the charioteer, the messenger, the cremator. Once you learn more about Sushant Dhar, the correlation will unfold.
If you have read ‘A Long Dream of Home’ (By Siddhartha Gigoo & Varad Sharma) you would surely not have missed Part II, Chapter 9 ‘Summers of Exile’ by Sushant Dhar. I reproduce here, some excerpts:
Summers of Exile: “I was one-and-a-half years old when we were forced to leave Seer Hamdan, our native village in Anantnag in Kashmir. In the beginning, I found it difficult to recollect the torment my parents and relatives went through. My memory takes me back to 1992. I was four years old then.”
“Some shreds of events and memories are engraved in my mind, the memory of suffering during the early days of exile. After the exodus, my family stayed in Garhi, Udhampur, a small town on the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway. We survived there for three years. We lived there in a shabbily constructed room rented to us by a local resident. For three years we used a makeshift bathroom and a latrine. We lived in fear of the mosquitoes and other deadly insects like scorpions and centipedes. They had invaded the room and the toilet. The summer heat made our skin a pale yellow. My parents shrivelled. The toilet, which was around 200 metres away from the house, was made of sticks, pieces of wood, scrap and tin. The door was made of torn canvas. A dug-out was made to contain the faeces. It all remained there, the faeces, the dirty water and the urine in that little dug out area, faeces over faeces, water over water, all stacked, emanating a foul stench. Two bricks served as footrest; we used to keep our feet firm, steady and balanced on those bricks while relieving ourselves. We feared slipping and falling into the pot full of faeces.”
“At times, my mother would request the landlady to allow her to use their personal toilet, as she couldn’t bear the horrible stench in the makeshift toilet. The landlord’s toilet was at some distance from ours. It was terrible; we were bereft of the most basic things of life. Eight of us lived in a small room. A curtain and a sheet were used to create a partition in the room for privacy. It was a room not even fit for cattle. But this is where we lived. We had little choice.”
I start to visualize the ordeal of his parents, the modesty of the women of the household, the lack of privacy, the curtain! I am transposed to Yashpal's ‘Purdah’ - a story that left a deep impact on my psyche as a schoolgirl, the curtain being symbolic of many things beyond tapestry.
Summers of Exile : “In the mornings and evenings, all of us would carry buckets and small plastic containers to the tube wells to get water. The nearest tube well was half a kilometre away from our hovel. Rainwater was used to wash utensils; fresh water had an unusual earthy colour and odour to it. Rain bought misery and centipedes. Centipedes crawled into our room through the windows, and hid under the bed sheets, below the pillows, in the crevices along the walls. Grandmother called these creatures sunhari sarap (colourful snakes). During the monsoon, snakes and scorpions came out of the anthills and other crevices in the ground, and entered our room.”
“I lost my grandfather in the early years of exile. He suffered from depression; his inconsolable longing for his house in his village in Kashmir took a huge toll on his health. His health deteriorated and on the day of Mahashivratri, he left us. My father, the eldest among his brothers, had to bear the responsibility of the entire family.”
“In 1993, we shifted to Jammu. We sought refuge in the migrant quarters at Muthi. These quarters had domes. There were no windows in the damp and dingy room. Perpetual darkness reigned inside our room. No more than three people could sleep inside. Yet we had to make room for one another. In an adjacent room, a dozen members huddled together. Some people constructed small ventilators in the walls to let the light into the rooms. The ceilings were very low and one could barely stand erect. We had to crawl. We lived for fourteen years in the one-room tenement at the Muthi Migrant Camp. The conditions were inhumane. The dark camp alleys leading to the quarters were frightening. Mornings were gloomy.”
With pain and humiliation comes perfection and that perfection cannot be attained or emulated till you have lived and experienced the same agony, each day. Can you stroll those trails with Sushant and sink your feet into those imprints, travel within his memory and live in that dome shaped room without ventilation, feel the suffocation and the stench amid the zest for subsistence!
Summers of Exile : “ In 2001 I visited my old house in Kashmir, the land of my forefathers. Mother and father took me through narrow lanes, showing me the shops and houses of their old neighbours. I was all stirred up and excited to see my house, the house my mother often boasted about; that it was big and had several rooms, one for everyone; there was a garden too. A brook ran adjacent to our house. We had everything; my mother never stopped talking about our house.”
“As we went nearer, my father pointed towards our house. ‘Look,’ he said. We were at a distance; the house was three-storeyed, standing firm and tall, the boundary hedged with firm but old wooden pillars. I looked at the house, and after a few minutes, I was standing at the wooden door of the house, the wood was still intact at the sides and so was the rusted doorknob; the windowpanes were missing though. I saw ‘Aum’ inscribed on the door and the front wall was visible.”
“Trembling out of excitement, I went inside. The floor was filled with faeces, the wood of the ceiling was coming apart, the stairs to the first floor of the house were missing and a part of the roof was about to cave in. I saw devastation inside. Mother wasn’t able to locate her room. The neighbours had converted a part of our house into a toilet, and the other part was used as a shed for their cattle and a garbage-dumping ground. Mother came out quickly, with tears rolling down her cheeks, and then she walked towards the backyard. The garden was a ghastly sight. It was flat and covered with nettles, garbage, filth and cow dung. People from the village came to meet us and hugged us; they started talking to my parents. A few minutes later, father’s friend asked us to leave, telling us that it wasn’t safe for us to stay longer. We left the place hurriedly.”
Whilst this Arjuna has fought many a battle, he has enkindled his inner Krishna, not allowing the travesties of existence fail his strength, even momentarily. The experiences and self-realization have taught him to value everything — the equanimity of parents, the silver lining when darkness spelt doom, the hunger for survival, the sheer persistence and sanguinity.
How many seasons would have whirled sluggishly on the windmill of time for this soreness to get some reprieve; albeit superficial but ah! some respite. How many summers in exile would the Pandavas have to endure before they could return to claim what was rightfully theirs. How many blind Dhritarashtras would it take to hear out this Sanjaya! Have him walk us through exile, providing no succor, rather giving us a flavour of the corpse of reality that lies beneath the debris, yet exists! Therefore, we exist!
“I have no memory of Kashmir; I only know what I have heard from family and neighbours in the camp. My mother only dreams of Kashmir, of Seer. She sees her father paving a path on snow, with his boots. He was in the Police and would use his heavy shoes to clear the snow for the whole neighbourhood. ”
“I have witnessed so many deaths, people dying of heat strokes, electrocution, snake bites. These people are not fictitious, they are real people, with real endings, horrible deaths.”
In his piece titled ‘Exile and Death’ you become privy to the morbidity of false hope, the futility of life, the eternal yearning, the obituary of banality, the incessant reverberations of ‘Kshyantavue maiaprada shiv shiv shiv bho shree mahadev shambu..’
Who is groaning?
It’s him. He is trembling, another paroxysm of yearning. He is breathing heavily. Yes, he is alive. He lives.
Where is the photo frame with the picture of his house?
He flings it out.
Give it to him. Tell him, ‘The bus will come in an hour’.
I heard, ‘They are shifting us to another camp. People are already on the move. The place is around cement factories. Slum. Desert. Brick kilns. I am tired of moving from one camp to another camp. Where is home?’
You cannot synopsise Sushant in a few words, you cannot paint just one portrait of him, you cannot fit him into a solo sonnet. You hear him speak in Kashmiri, the authentic Southern Kashmir accent camouflaging his soft voice; his stories cry out loud, you even comprehend what he does not articulate, the photographs squeal, a saga captured by the camera, the projector is obscure, you merely replay those scenes with deliberate numbness.
“ Living in those dome shaped quarters was not easy, the scorching heat in summer would give us sleepless nights so I started creating a dream of a child in gum boots walking on snow, entering a vast forest, leaving footprints with his shoes, this would help me fall asleep. That was the start of my writing journey, scribblings of school days. Later in 2015 Siddhartha Gigoo suggested I write a memoir, so I gave shape to what I had penned down earlier , which then was included in his book. My paternal grandfather Pt. Prithvi Nath Dhar used to write and sing ‘leelas’ (devotional hymns) perhaps I inherited the penchant for writing from him.”
“ I am a great fan of Siddhartha Gigoo, he is the master of fiction. His father Prof. Arvind Gigoo introduced me to cinema and literature. I am unable to picture him watching ‘Ben-Hur’ in theatre in Kashmir and that it was actually such a modern and progressive place.”
“ I discovered Qaiser Nizami on Facebook recently and loved the ‘leelas’ he sang. I also liked the song ‘Dilbaro’ from the movie ‘Shikara’. That movie made my mother cry.”
“ I doubt I feel the same way for Kashmir as my parents do or my grandparents did but I have found solace in writing. I think documenting is my contribution to our collective tragedy. My short story ‘Avenged’ has been translated into Bengali and appeared in an anthology released in Kolkata. It was also published by Vitasta Publications in anthology of KP writings.”
In a memoir about leaving home titled ‘Protect my House’ Sushant writes about his grandfather:
“Lights went off from the truck. The old man was shrieking in pain. He was dragged a bit; resisted, holding and clasping his hands into the iron bearings of the truck. He used legs, hands, all his force but failed. Prithvi Nath Dhar; well built man (Tall, Smart and Muscular) from the village Seer, Anantnag. Everybody looked upto him. He was the head of the village; as people likened to call him so, always turning up for every problem of the village people. Prithvi Nath Dhar was compassionate, generous and all the good things.”
“That very evening; old man turned into a child, he cried and suffered. He hid his face in his hands and resisted. Wiping his tears, wife and kids comforted him. Everyone broke down and wailed loudly. They all were watching each other helplessly. All of them knew; they were not going for vacation….that they were leaving their homes, home I mean…….Homes….All the rooms were closed, the house was bolted and locked. One could see a little speck of shiver going through everyone’s body. They were helpless; they had all gone weak and frail. The old man had lost all his strength, he was not strong now; he grew weak; veiled by despair. Lightening had struck them all. Nobody heard them. Friends and neighbours chose to remain inside. The old man with his face covered started crying loudly.”
“Holding a stick in his hands; he never allowed his family to take things from the house. The childhood pictures, photo frames of Gods and a picture of Lord Krishna; all of them were put back into their places. Everything was left inside. Keeping things in the house meant hope; hope of coming back.”
I am the original fragrance of the earth, and I am the heat in fire. I am the life of all that lives, and I am the penances of all ascetics ~ Bhagavad-Gita 7.9
The one and a half year old from Seer, with no memory of home, grew up in exile, watching exile grow alongside. He recorded everything we saw and everything we chose not to see.
Sushant is a short story writer; a microbiologist by qualification, he delves into the existential questions in his writings which are driven by his exile and longing for home. His works have been anthologized in “A Long Dream of Home: The Persecution, Exodus, and Exile of Kashmiri Pandits” (Bloomsbury India, 2015) and “Once We Had Everything: Literature in Exile” (Vitasta Publications, 2019). His short stories and essays have been published in various literary journals including The Punch Magazine, New Asian Writing, Kitaab, The Bombay Review, Coldnoon and Muse India.
Find Sushant’s writings here:
https://coldnoon.com/journal/rhododendron-july-2018/the-last-sermon/
~References:
*Bhagavad-Gītā As It Is — A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1986). Bhaktivedanta Book Trust.
*A Long Dream of Home: The Persecution, Exodus, and Exile of Kashmiri Pandits. — Siddhartha Gigoo & Varad Sharma (Bloomsbury India, 2015)
*Once We Had Everything: Literature in Exile — Siddhartha Gigoo, Arvind Gigoo, Adarsh Ajit (Vitasta Publications, 2019).
*Archives of Kashmirgroup :Shehjar, Kashmir Portal : Protect My House -
Sushant Dhar
*Exile and Death — Sushant Dhar (Searchkashmir.org, 2020)
~Pictures and Screenshots Credit: Sushant Dhar
© Jheelaf Parimu
