By Z.G.Muhammad
It was living through an agony, more agonizing than Mahiwal watching Sohni’s unbaked pitcher dissolving in the waters of the Chenab and drowning Sohni screaming and crying for help.–Sometimes back, my friends and I visited my childhood haunt – the Pukhribal and saw it gasping for breaths, sinking and dying.
In my heart of hearts, I turned an elegist in the tradition of Thomas Gray. I wished to write a powerful elegy on my childhood haunts around the beautiful lagoon that once scintillated like the blue diamond in the sunlight and shimmered like a golden necklace set with jewels on Mogul Queen’s heaving chest in the moonlit Shalimar garden. I wished to write an elegy to move the stone-hearted to save the legendry lagoon from dying.
Looking at the vanishing Pukhribal in a speeding motorboat was like writing an epitaph on my childhood. As the motorboat pierced its way through the swampy and soggy waterways, the childhood memoirs flashed before my eyes like a slide show of just clicked pictures on my computer. It was not once upon a time. It was just yesterday. Yes, just yesterday, I, along with my friends, almost on all Fridays- then our school remained closed on Friday instead of Sunday and all other holidays in the wee hours gathered at the Khawaja Bazar roundabout and chalked out our itinerary for the day. We had many favourite pastimes-cycling, boating and fishing were best of all.
We often cycled to the Chasmashahi garden and Pari Mahal through the bund that started at the Naidyar and ended at the Nishat garden. It used to be a great joy ride- with vast Dal Lake on both sides of this pedestrian mall; it was like crossing an ocean on a bicycle. The dipping coots on tranquil waters, the lone boatman singing Rasul Mir’s love song at a high pitch, and the fisherman spreading a net for the catch of the day was full of thrill for us. There were many bridges in the mall, but I don’t know why we felt excited about crossing over the hump of the Camel bridge near the Nishat garden much more than other bridges. Was our excitement out of our admiration for the architectural beauty of this bridge, or it was our imagination of the great desert animal whose picture we had first seen in our English primer while learning the Alphabets. The bridge has now crumbled- and its ruins are a sad commentary on our insensitivity towards our dying heritage.
Those days there were no restrictions on the movement of the natives. No one stopped us from trekking in the alpine lands or hiking on the Zabarwan, none stopped us from cycling to the lost point on the Dara Road. Those days none asked us for proof of being a Kashmiri in deep woods or busy streets- our complexion and language was our identity. The idea of carrying a photo-identity card in the pocket was alien. The only card that we learned much later was the library identity card in college… those days, we were as free and fearless as the fish in all our springs Varnag, Achabal or Sheerbagh. We were as free as migratory birds that visited all lakes and lagoons around my birth burg in significant numbers in our childhood.
In summers boating under the canopy of drooping willows through cool and calm waterways was our best pastime. Starting our journey through lanes and by-lanes amidst vast tracts of green vegetable gardens, we reached Naidyar Ghat to hire a small boat- popularly known as Dumbi Nav- from a young boatwoman- we did not know her name. Still, we called her Margret, perhaps after some character in a story prescribed in our syllabus. We paid two rupees as charges for two to three hours for the boat and two heart-shaped oars. The heart-shaped-oars are used by Kashmir boatmen only. I have not seen boatmen in any other part of the world using heart-shaped oars. It could be some carpenter with great poetic imagination who has invented this oar that slices through translucent waters like mizrab playing on the santoor. Armed with homemade fishing tackles and bait for the fish, we descended into the boat. The sparkling waterway passed through many a mohalla, and of these most important was the Khaoja Yarbal for its great historical relevance to our locality Khoja Bazaar.
The waters around the Ghat were the cleanest. We were told that many springs in this waterway extended healing touch to the waters near the Ghat.
Most of my friends and I were non-swimmers; it was love for the sport of fishing that made us take the risk of rowing through these waterways to the scintillating waters of Nigeen Lake. For fear of speeding motorboats turning our boat turtle, we often preferred to propel our boat along the shores of the lake. Those days the lake was so crystal clear that one could see through its waters, the golden and silver-hued fish feasting at weeds at its bottom- I remember we could see their vibrating gills from the surface of the water. Instead of moving into the main lake, we always choose to anchor our boat under the shade of Chinars near the beautiful blue lagoon of Pukhribal that abounded in fish. Sometimes we moved further towards Amda Kadal for a bigger catch- and we were never disappointed; we often returned home with a bagful of fish. My friends and I had never imagined this lagoon panting for breaths in our lifetime. Seeing my Pukhribal dying was as good as a lover sitting by the side of the deathbed of his beloved, offering nothing but tears.
I was shell shocked when I was told that the waterway from Khoja Yarbal to Naidyar had breathed last- I could do nothing but sob for the Margret – and a friend who once lived in Naidyar- sorry cannot write even an elegy for my childhood haunts.
Z.G.Muhammad is a noted writer and columnist
