The blowing of these different conchshells became uproarious, and thus, vibrating both in the sky and on the earth, it shattered the hearts of the sons of Dhritarashtra ~Bhagavad Gita 1.19
When announcing the war of Kurukshetra, Bhishma and the others on the side of Duryodhana blew their respective conchshells, there was no heart-breaking on the part of the Pandavas. But the hearts of the sons of Dhritarashtra were shattered by the sounds vibrated by the Pandavas’ party. Are the tumultuous conchshells of our youngsters telling a story!
Aman Indra Kaul’s simple conversations too are lyrical, each dialogue wrapped in sentiment and nostalgia. Nostalgia — even of ‘that’ he never saw or experienced but felt deep in his heart just by viewing through the eyes of his parents. Through them he lived the estrangements, with intense feelings of loss, at times experiencing low levels of emotional well-being. His outpourings of poetic emotion reveal his deep attachment to home, to roots, to the existence of the extinctions!
“I believe I’m an all-time cipher who has done nothing but built an imagined home in the sublime corners of bent memories. Born and worn in Dilli (Delhi), I’ve been laughed at for calling myself a Kashmiri. Why? Don’t have Kashmiri features including a sexy nose, my larynx fails me every time I try to bring home that Kashmiri accent, and for never living at home in Srinagar.”
“I come from a family who lived a greeting away from Ganpatyaar in Shalla Kadal. They were a little innocent, but I’d have been a downtown ‘khorr’ (ruffian)ready with a ‘naar kanger’ (fire pot)to blast the people approaching girls I liked. My grandfather was a successful entrepreneur who exported exquisite carpets from a showroom dating Dal.”
“My parents took a taxi and landed in Jammu in Jan 1990. Stayed in Jammu for a few months before coming to Delhi. After we came to Delhi, my grandmother mustered courage and went to Kashmir alone just to bring her worshipping idols back. Just that. Nothing else of importance.”
Aman’s grandfather Sh. Anand Swaroop Kaul, studied at Lahore University. He opened a showroom just opposite Dal called Persian Bazaar. His father too was an entrepreneur in Srinagar but lost that business to exodus. His grandmother lived with them in Delhi till she passed away in 2003. Aman laments she lived on rent most of her life in Delhi, she did not have a comfortable life after migration, he feels she saw nothing.
“I’m told my grandfather used to read crazily, was extremely intelligent and wise, and also a stalwart. So much so that Sheikh Abdullah used to visit often and seek advice over politics and family matters.”
Pandavas had confidence in Lord Krishna, and had nothing to fear, even in the midst of the greatest calamity. Spoken by Lord Krishna, to His intimate disciple Arjuna, the Gita provides a definitive guide to the science of self realization. Many of our youngsters reveal their own philosophies in a profound way. Their journeys in their own words, seeking strength from those outbursts about Kashmir, about how they perceive home or the lack of it.
“Kashmir is icy fire. It’s one-sided love who’s never responded to love pangs. It is the Midas touch that heals you and further sores you in the same breath. Whatever I know about Kashmir is through my parents’ tears, longing, imagination and memories. Outside of home, their and my quality of life is reduced to zero. There’s everything — house, family, education, money — but there’s no sense of satisfaction and happiness — there’s always a void to slip into.”
“I visited Kashmir many a times. I’m not kidding, I always gasp for breath when I land there. Right from the boulevard to hairpins on Pahalgam, I try to not get swallowed by the memory-longing swamp. On one of the occasions I almost killed my sister for crying out loud ‘let me see who can drive me out’ when she had a break down in the middle of Nowhatta. I think when I replied ‘do you want us to go back in one piece’, it pretty much zeroed her mental health and Kashmir for me.”
“My mother’s uncle Bansi Lal Saproo was shot dead on his fields in Gulab Bagh. Her fear is etched so much so that it reflects in her daily conversations and attitude. When I visited the dilapidated home with her — I witnessed her poker face — probably because she couldn’t process what was happening with her — maybe a memory cytokine storm of a sort. I immediately asked her questions for catharsis and she vividly took me through most of her physically non-existent home.”
“In one of the recent visits, I sat under the “Boonyi Kul” (Chinar Tree) in Tulmul for a long time. There was almost no one in the premises and I had a peaceful conversation with surroundings. I think those moments defined my understanding of myself and my love-hate relationship with Kashmir.”
How different does Aman sound from someone who has lived all his life in Kashmir!
On inspirational Kashmiris and music. “Just from the top of my head Kashmiris who inspired me; Agha Shahid Ali, Agha Ashraf Ali, Lal Ded, Shashi Shekhar Toshkhani, Saadat Hasan Manto, Rajab Hamid, Samad Mir, RN Kao.
Aman speaks Kashmiri and loves Kashmiri songs: Afsoos Duniya,Moate Churo, He Sada Shiv Bozakh Na Che Aaz, Hosh Dim Lagyo,Wandhaye zuv ta jaan. He particularly likes to listen to: Rashid Hafiz, Raj Begum, Amm Sofi — Gulam Ahmad Sofi, Ghulam Hasan Sofi,Vijay Malla, Shameem Dev.
Ask him what he misses about not living in Kashmir “Peace, happiness and contentment. Also, autumn, winters and mountains.”
On identity crisis of being a Kashmiri Pandit he admits. “I’ve trained myself to think and be involved with Kashmir but not sink into it. I’ve got nothing to do with Kashmir but everything to do with it. Strangely, everything leads me there. The whirlwind doesn’t stop. It sucks you in. Language gone. Festivals gone. Food habits gone. Beliefs gone. Aesthetics gone. Home gone. Location gone. People gone. What has anyway remained of identity?”
A few lines on identity crisis:
“The absence of you has become a habit in me.
What defines me is absent you.
What will define you is present me.
It is a strange co relation.
Nothing brings me respite.
Neither peace nor war.
Am I talking of a f***ing chasm?
Only in my dreams, you are defined.
In everything else, it is your dream to find me.
But alas! You exiled me never to return.
Stay desperate.
To find a little relief, ask my longing what desperation is.
Hello, you undefined identity-less limbo-laden
non-life heavenly hell.”
“What sticks me to my roots? Happy memories of my family — of Fiat, tower, picnics, houseboats, love, windows, food, close-knit relationships, slow life — music, literature, politics, friends, conversations.”
Keep probing and prodding and watch the answers flow, unearth to see the saplings converse, raise a toast to the monologues! The privilege of raising our children in Kashmir may have been denied but raising Kashmir in their hearts requires no sanction.
On his journey so far :
“I butcher butterflies everyday
sift them through insipid life
to make colours brighter
so I could sprinkle just the lambent
on my way to a place
called home.
And they say, hunting the brightest
turns one blind. Ask me!
What’s there in heavenly hell?”
On interest in writing: “Because I didn’t have anything sturdy and own in life to rely onto, it automatically led me to writing. Also, it didn’t cost much monetarily. It is the only constant I’ve had in life. Also when I read Firaq Gorakhpuri, I was so impressed by the combination of letters.
Eliot. Yeats. Coleridge. Plath. Darwish. Heaney. Marquez. Faiz, Amrita, Rasul Mir. Said. Fanon. Rao. Chekhov. Parsai. Pash. Ghosh. Adiche. Mahasweta Devi. Kamleshwar. Dinkar. Kamala Das. Khusro. Pushkin. Dostoevsky. Maxim.”
On the hurdles he faced:
“The hope which Eliot
gifted me in The Wasteland,
I’ve kept that too to half-fry
at the common terrace of
my flat in Delhi at fifty-one
degree Celsius”
On home: “Is our home an oxymoron? Will its roaring beauty ever shadow the soaring boil? What’s its charge? I collected these oxymorons in years while reading and will they ever cease to coexist — awful beauty, alone together, civil war, extinct life, found missing, festive tranquility, good grief, living sacrifices, militant pacifist, old news, unbiased opinion, and true fiction — or not?
Not home, but my thought of it oscillates between oxymorons.”
What keeps him going: “Music, Literature, Mountains, Love, Motorcycling, Memories.”
Aman feels deeply about the sacrifices his parents have made. His mother’s selfless commitment towards her family, raising kids, building a home, he would want her to be selfish and enjoy life. “Indra meri maa hai (Indra is my mother). I’ve been using Aman Indra Kaul ever since I started understanding womanhood.” He keeps asking his father to relax and enjoy life. Go out often. Do what he likes. “I tell them I’m there. No need to worry. But that fear of collapse like before never goes away from their psyche. So much of trauma you guys have gone through. I think my parents’ generation have mostly seen their life in working hard for their next generation. That’s why all of them are my idols. It’s an achievement.”
I cannot help but wonder about his Kashmiri poem that I read by accident. Aman says he had written it as a conversation between snow and ‘Dal’ (Dal lake) some years back when someone asked him if he was a mountain or sea person.
“tulum sheen, mothum paanas
wotum sheen, sunum jigras
Rov kyet ha, khabar nokhyov sa jinan, khabar no
sheen’as manz na lobum ho
sheen’as nebar na rotum ho
Rov kyet ha, khabar nokhyov sa jinan, khabar no
Wanan sheen, lotyi lotyi
Dal’as prusiv, gouv su keyt
Rov kyet ha, khabar nokhyov sa jinan, khabar no
Wuchum dal’as, kan’as prusmatsch
Che ma khabar, kyet su hov
Rov kyet ha, khabar nokhyov sa jinan, khabar no
Wadan dal, wanan dal
krakh saas buzum, trath ha peyam
Rov kyet ha, khabar nokhyov sa jinan, khabar no
syendiv kyet, su gov rood
Oshh trakh wanan, su ha mood”*The Kashmiri poem was used by Rahul Bhat ( a Kashmiri vlogger ) for one of his videos on Kashmir.
Aman confesses “In absence of answers and people not aware of what happened to Kashmiri Pandits in their own country, I chose to perform poetry and let them know about a community long forgotten.
So, I started to tell my story through poetry — starting lines at almost all events being, I don’t have a home. What happened at Nadimarg under everyone’s nose and how it was glossed over by everyone is a blot of country’s history and historiography. So I wrote a tribute to people who lost their lives without a voice.”
Nadimarg
(2003 Nadimarg massacre was killing of 24 Hindus in the village of Nadimarg in Pulwama District of Jammu and Kashmir by terrorists on 23 March: Wikipedia)
I
The moon and the stars
and the whole sky spilled
blood.I was looking at a blank
canvas holding a red brush.II
The rivers were stagnant,
they refused to flow,
all of them together.The linear time as well
as the alternate one,
paused being dumbstruck.III
They had forcefully snatched
the ornaments from the dead
bodies and still breathing spirits.Reports said:
“Saturn has lost its ring suddenly.”IV
What could have the automatic
guns done?
Take out the bits out of the life
which wasn’t life.I had learned somewhere, Dylan Thomas
‘Soul is indestructible.’V
The Chinar under which all of them
were called, still sheds its leaves
from which you steal the warmth.Ask him all your questions,
neither Kashmiri Pandits nor
Jagmohan. You might understand
what the truth is.VI
I was wondering about Chuni Lal,
what he must be imagining in cesspool
of blood, with his silent breath and
feigned death.Did he want to die to end this all,
or the images on his head raised
his adrenaline level to survive?VII
“This is a Hamlet. This is a Hamlet daddy,”
cried the son of Shakespeare.I was witness to it.
I was sitting inside his brain.
I was in absolute sweat, amidst 11 to 1.VIII
In between, Jaish and Lashkar
there is a place called Justice.
I coaxed it so many times to not cry.Can we all go and sing it lullabies,
so that we save him from a deluge
of its own tears?IX
Zain-ul-Abdin, whom we named
the ‘Bata Shah’ haunts me in my dreams
regularly. What do I tell him?He tells me to make people understand
by invoking Frantz Fanon. I argue with
him, you need enter everyone’s psyche
as Eugene Ionesco.X
I sent that old man sitting in the
verandah while bodies were piled up
to you, Kashmir. Restore his faith today.He said:
“I have not lost just my family.
I feel my roots have ditched me.
I will never ever belong to Kashmir again.”XI
For, when the hope is crowned
everywhere — my dreams betray my heart.They stealthily come inside
and slit the throat of my hopes.Will you, Kashmir be fast enough
to save my hopes from getting murdered
so soon?XI
March 23, 2003.
10:30 PM
March 24, 2003
01:00 AMTwenty-four people dead.
One injured. All stars trampled.
Aman has translated to English a Kashmiri poem ‘Mool Ros Kul’ written in 1993 by Smt.Santosh Shah Nadan https://searchkashmir.org/2020/05/a-root-less-tree-by-santosh-shah-nadan.html
In his notes on this translation he wrote: “Translated from Kashmiri. In its original form and language, this poem is very lyrical at most junctures. While translating, with whatever little I could, I tried to keep the flow as much as possible however pressing harder on rhyme would have lead to loss of meaning.
I had Rushdie in mind while translating. I wanted the Koshur in it to remain. Maybe, for posterity, like ‘atham’ to be remembered not as ‘ashtami’. So I left some of it unturned.
Because I was born in Delhi post exile, I don’t have the total grasp on the language and its dynamics. It is very much possible for me to misunderstand a word, a line or a stanza. Hence and otherwise too, I’m all in for constructive criticism.”
Last year a story by Aman ‘On Kheer Bhawani: From Chinar to Amaltas’ was published in Greater Kashmir. It was Zyeth Atham and he generally likes to write through memories of places. He put an excerpt of short anecdotes on his Facebook about Kheer Bhawani. It was Amit Wanchoo who then suggested he would want to publish it and it got featured on GK https://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/opinion/on-kheer-bhawani-from-chinar-to-amaltas/ .
Here is a youngster who has discovered a transformative therapy, the healing power of reciting, his poems reflecting the voice of his soul. Chiseling his emotions and pouring them into a verse, allowing him the freedom of self-expression — in Kashmiri, in Hindi, in English.
Aman has performed at various places and was awarded many times for poetry recitation at university festivals and events, invariably winning the First Prize.
hold like
First:
Hold how the exiled Darwish
held his home in the poem:
‘I Belong There.’
Second:
Hold how a Jew held
her promised land in
a mirage of mirages.
Third:
Hold how a Kashmiri Pandit
holds her snow hallucinations and in the Delhi heat.
Fourth:
Hold how a widow holds
her daughter for refuge
in the refugee camps.
Fifth:
Hold how the rustle of Chinar
holds my breath like the
dervish holding her ground.
Sixth:
Hold how the worm of past
holds on to the heart
of present.
Seventh:
Hold how I held her letters
when the fire stoked the
storm of my home’s heart.
Epilogue:
Hold how my death
holds a life to spark
spring at my home.
Hold how imagination
holds the imagination
of an imagined home.
Hold! Hold! Hold!
And thou? Just behold!
Memory IX
my memory of you
is like the autumn of Kashmirfaded, golden yellow, nearing death
and yet expecting the homecomingthe rustling of marooned Chinar leaves
rendering heart its last hollow beatsreminding it to light the memory
of you exiling me from your lifethe smouldering remains of the fire
sharing light with the lovelorn half moonto reflect light on the Zabarvan to mourn the
blooded Vyeth flooding a lane away from youmy memory of you
is like the autumn of Kashmirof you collecting heaps of autumn
Chinar leaves from the mum Boulevardand lighting the exiled me and my heart
in front of the speechless Dalunder the eye of all-eyeing Shankar.
I was born in the darkest ignorance, and my spiritual master opened my eyes with the torch of knowledge. I offer my respectful obeisances unto him ~ Bhagavad Gita Introduction
Aman has been enabling communications for Fortune 500 clients for the past 5 years. The future awaits a compilation of his own works, he reveals with a philosophical caveat “Working on a poetry draft which will god-willingly be out when I’ve read and understood myself enough.”
~References:
*Bhagavad-Gītā As It Is — A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1986). Bhaktivedanta Book Trust.
*SearchKashmir — https://searchkashmir.org/
~ Pictures Credit: Aman Indra Kaul
© Jheelaf Parimu
