I visited , the Bagh-e-Waris Khan, garden laid by an Afghan governor the foodthills of Koh-i-Maran after it had been renovated. With its changed ambiance, I could not connect to my cherished memories of childhood. Nonetheless, it was the distinctly visible steeple of a temple on the periphery of this once almond archard that made me remember an excursion to the garden led by our class teacher Kashi Nath rains.
On this day, I had for the first time entered into the premises of a temple. Earlier , from the stairs leading to the Astana of Makhdoom sahib, I had seen Battas performing puja and loudly reciting hymns in a temple at base of the hillock. Every Monday and Thursday, I often enjoyed the flickering flames of brass lamps on the brass plates dexterously moved right to left by the devotees while chanting the hymns inside the temple built in the lap of big boulders.
On entering the temple premises, with our teacher it was the first time I and my classmates saw images of Hindu gods and goddesses. There were ony two Pandit boys in our school and they were sons of two teachers shamboo Nath and Kashi Nath Koul. Dilip Kumar one of the meekest boys , son of our science teacher was a good friend of mine. My classmates and I hardly knew anything about the life style and food habits of our Pandit teachers. Some teachers from this community like immaculately dressed Kashi Nath Koul, wooden faced history teacher Dina Nath and lean and tall Arjan nath had played an important role in shaping personality of thousands of boys. The school up to sixties had the distinction of producing most of the doctors, engineers and administrators in Kashmir.
Our staple food and that of our Pandit teachers was same, this I learnt after I started visiting the residence of my teacher Kashi Nath Raina- for his stockiness he was nicknamed as gope a bulky comedian of Indian cinema. Like Muslims , theyr were also mutton eaters. Since there were no Hindu mutton sellers, they also purchased mutton from the Muslim butchers. Like Muslim families they relished dishes like mutton and collard greens ; mutton and turnip; mutton and knoll khol ; mutton and spinach ; cheese and tomatoes and mutton dishes like Roganjosh etc. Nonetheless, they did not use garlic , onions and shallots in the preparation of food. Garlic cloves were essentially used by the Muslims in cooking almost all kinds of vegetable and mutton dishes. For making mutton dishes. Fried shallot finely pulverized and made into paste was seen important for making mutton dishes tasty. For thirty cuisine Kashmiri Wazawan traditional Kashmiri cooks- Wazas used shallots for almost the dishes. Kashmir Hindus instead used Asafoetida which they called as Yanga.
Kashmir Hindus and Muslims the communities cooked and served food in metal utensils – Muslims cooked and served food in copper utensils and the Hindus used brass for the same breweries – they use different nomenclatures for them. Muslims called the slice of mutton as nati-phoul and the Pandits called it as nan’ne-phoul. Pandits called salt tea as sheer –chai and while as Muslim called it noon-chai, green leave tea, and kahwa they called as Mughal Chai. Notwithstanding Kashmiri language was mother tongue of both the communities but elite among the two communities tried to use words from their favourite languages in their routine conversation thus adding religious bias to thousands years old language that had survived many a tides of history. No Pandit boy or girl called book as kitab instead preferred Sanskrit pustak for it. No Pandit called water as aab but peen. During our childhood Kashmiri Pandit family never had tea in chinaware cups but in bright small brass cups called khous – and would hold them with long sleeves of their pherans or with handkerchief.
I have seen my teachers both Kashi Nath Rani and Shyam Lal Labroo having food in the room adjacent to choka (kitchen). The eating would start with a ritual. The moment a deep brass plate known in local language as thal, with mounds of rice on it was kept before them with folded hands they used to say namaskar (salutations) to it. Then they would make few balls of rice and kept them on a side of the plate, for feeding the street dogs.
Considering Muslims as impure, some teachers not only preferred to eat food away from the gaze of Muslims but kept a distance from them, their belief was a touch with Muslim makes them impure. Nonetheless, there some were progressive teachers who were committed to the cause of spreading education across the religious divide.
Z.G.Muhammad is a noted writer and columnist
