Z.G.MUHAMMAD
Those were cock-a-hoop days for children in my generation. Everything around seemed in ecstasy. The snowflakes dancing in the sky looked to us no less than whirling dervishes- with Rumi’s cadence. Daily showers of early spring and late autumn had all sweetness for us. The long chain of rain bubbles bursting and re-emerging with rhythm on the tarred roads outside our home brought the rarest warmth to the rubicund faces of all children. I admire my childhood days; every small thing made us sing a song of joy. A newly stitched pheran, a recently purchased pair of gumboots, ankle boots (ticha-button boot), and even a pair of small wooden clogs brought us great joy. Those were blessed days of innocence.
My impressions about the joy of a friend of mine on wearing first tweed pheran are as refreshing as a spring breeze. He felt at the top of the world when his father, a needleworker who weaved dreams on Pashmina shawls, got a tweed pheran stitched for him. This tweed, different from the indigenous pouth and manufactured in a mill, was called ‘Mili-Pouth’. It was far cheaper than Scottish tweed that only royals, the elite, and their hangers-on who, over a hundred and fifty years, had fattened on the backbreaking tax system and fleecing ordinary people could afford. Mili-Pout perhaps was manufactured in a local mill in the private sector, but its name has evaporated from my mind. This Poouth was coarser than the indigenous pouth manufactured by continuously pounding old handmade blankets’ Chadars’ with feet in a mortar made from chiselled limestone or out of a log of Deodar wood, locally called Mandangar-Wan. The wan consisted of four to five chiselled stone mortars or sinks in a row and wooden railing for support.
The workers, mostly Dards continuously pounded these blankets- made them soft and thick. Singing melodious songs in the Shina language they attracted children and elders to watch them working tirelessly even in sub-zero temperatures. During our childhood, this hardy race contributed a lot to the socio-cultural fabric of our part of the city- the Downtown. Most of my siblings and pals wore chocolate-brown or dark-brown flannel pherans with a coarse white cloth as it’s ‘under’ (pouch) – I do not remember boys wearing any other colour; red and yellow were the choicest colours of girls. Children were discouraged from wearing puttoo pherans for their weight, but having a tweed pheran was a dream. During the early days of my childhood, even cloth was rationed and sold from the government depots. This cloth was nicknamed “controlled cloth. A mere mention of this cloth for the politics tagged to it upset many elders. And it often made them nostalgic about the days when “Road was open”, buses and cartloads of best cloth, Kamhab, At’las, Zarbaf, Makhmal, Cashmere, Gabardine and tweeds from Europe flooded Maharaja Gunj and Zaina Kadal markets. Even after the road’s closure for many years, these markets bustled with activities. In fact, during our childhood, these markets were the state’s financial hub. The Scottish and other tweeds were a status symbol and an expression of affluence.
Nevertheless, as we grew up, the flannel pherans started disappearing, and tweeds replaced them, but it was no more Scottish tweeds but those manufactured outside our land. I have no idea what year tweed pherans were stitched for every child in our family for the first time, but it was a day of rejoicing for us. I do remember when I wore my tweed pheran; I asked my grandmother how I was looking in the new tunic- then my sibling, one by one, asked the same question from her. Our question answer brought some solemn supplication- ‘Lasiv- Khuda Soz-i-now Kamhab ta At’las. To boast about my new tweed pheran to my friends, I swaggered across the street with a magisterial gate.
Z.G.Muhammad is a noted writer and columnist
