BY Z.G.MUHAMMAD
Should I call them slipshod days? No, they were carefree, happy go lucky days. I had just passed my matriculation examination and joined Islamia College of Science and Commerce- a college founded by the last Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Bakshi Ghulam Muhammad. It was an excellent job he had done for our birth burg. It was the first Commerce College in Kashmir. Those days most of the boys aspired to be doctors and engineers. And Islamia College was making an outstanding contribution by sending more than sixty per cent boys for engineering and medicine. I remember most of the boys who took admission in commerce had not heard of the subject before and had very little knowledge of this discipline. Except for children from a few small-time business families, most of the boys who took admission in this college were from lower-middle-class families. Many of the boys were first-generation educated. It was not out of fluke that Bakshi established a college at a site earmarked for a slaughterhouse- he had the vision to provide future business leaders to the state from the families of artisans, craftsmen and other working class. During the past few decades were many a captain of our business were from this college.
I did not go for commerce but chose science as my subject. Joining college was a dream realized. During our schools days, my peers and I dreamt of entering college because we would be redeemed of schoolbags bulging out like the belly of a potbellied theology teacher- Mama Sahib. We would not face any cane charge from the drillmaster, Nara Batta, for not coming in uniform to school- there will be no uniform, and there will be no taboos on our movement.
On joining college, “Let Us” was the first new word that we learnt. We had heard comments like let up, let down, let on, let out and even parroted phrases like ‘let the cat out of the bag’, ‘let sleeping dogs lie, ‘let the genie out of the bottle’ but this word we had never heard. This word that meant truancy for us had been coined by some students but had also become very popular with boys in other colleges. The word had wings. The moment some boy whispered it in the class- it travelled like an electric current from one corner to another. For different boys, it meant different things. For a group of boys, the word ‘let us’ meant playing cards during practical class under the canopy of a Chinar tree in the college’s backyard. For us ‘Let Us” meant skipping practical classes and going for a matinee show in the Shiraz Cinema and sometimes in the Neelam Cinema. Mostly we missed practical classes of Physics. Prof. Ubaid Ahmed, our physics teacher from UP. He was a perfect gentleman. In our college days, Srinagar had five cinemas, the Regal, the Palladium, the Neelam, the Broadway and the Shiraz. Three more cinemas were under construction, the Khyam, the Firdous the Naaz. Matinee shows started chiefly at 11 A.M and ended up at 1. Oclock. During matinee shows, the cinemas would mainly exhibit English films, and some cinemas would show old Hindi films.
I remember seeing some best English movies on Roman and Greek history and Second World War during matinee shows. The matinee show was most ‘suited’ to us. After watching the morning show, we would return to college and attend classes. Those days’ parents would hardly allow their children to watch a movie- watching a movie was seen as good as promoting obscenity and immorality. It was unimaginable during our college days to watch an evening or night show in a cinema. Still, many boys from our Mohalla who had dropped out a school level and had taken to carpet weaving and other crafts had the liberty to watch the evening shows and even late-night shows in cinemas. It was always interesting to listen to them after they had watched a new film. Many of them had mastered the craft of storytelling, and it was as good as listening to a soundtrack.
I remember a boy nicknamed “susral”- after a film by the same title that had Rajinder Kumar in the lead role. The film was a tremendous musical hit. And every boy in the Mohalla wanted to see this movie on its first day. The boy nicknamed ‘susral’ was working as a coppersmith. He saw the film on the first day of its showing. To boast of watching this movie on the first days- he told his friends, ‘ I am the person who saw ‘Susral’ on the first day, I got the first ticket, I was first to enter the cinema, and I occupied the first row in the hall.’ For his boasting, he was nicknamed as ‘susral’- most of the boys in the locality knew him by this name only, and I never even tried to know his real name- and remembered him by the same name.
I remember a carpenter in our locality. He was a total illiterate but was a great lover of Hollywood movies. He never watched any Hindi films and called them trash, but he hardly missed a Hollywood movie. He was the only person in our locality who did not admire Dilip Kumar but was a great fan of actors like Gregory Peck, Omar Sharief and Anthony Quinn. I often thought he was watching English films just for the sake of seeing them and understood nothing. I many times spotted him inside the Shiraz Cinema, watching a matinee show. One day after leaving the cinema, I made a point to know what he understood from the film- no moment I touched the subject, he narrated the whole story. He perhaps had understood the story better than me; it seemed that he had got mastery over the language of expressions and gestures.
Z.G. Muhammad is a noted writer and columnist
