Z.G.MUHAMMAD
“Words could never tell the joy an uncle brings; an uncle is a bond of faith that even time can’t sever, a gift to last all of our lives.” I don’t know who has said it. Whosoever has said it, whether a big name in literature or an anonymous fellow, but he has said it pretty well? Sometimes, writings by anonymous writers are as rich in content as Shakespearean or Dickensian quotes. At the cost of monotony, let many say he was what we in Urdu call Kaus-e-Qaza- rungoon ki dhanak- a blend of pleasing colours- with multiple shades. He followed a golden principle about life, ‘live your life to the fullest,’ yet was mystic- yes, a mystic to the kernel. Perhaps, I knew more about my uncle than my father- as I wrote in the chapter on my father, in the most tender phase and formative stage, my father was posted outside Srinagar, and for us children, he was Santa Claus who, on weekends brought us toys. Like a shadow, I followed him almost everywhere; he would go and, on many an occasion, accompanied him on weekend boat trips to the Dal Lake- usually a two-night sojourn- of all the places as a young child, I loved to cling him to his in-law’s house.
I don’t know the day, date and time of my uncle’s birth. By all stretch of the imagination, we were natives. We had bid adieu to our forefather’s faith, paganism, Buddhism and Hinduism, along with teeming thousands and came under the canopy of Islam somewhere in the fourteenth century. And having said farewell to our ancestors’ totems, taboos and customs, the practice of getting a Zatuk prepared by a Gour (Brahman) had also been dropped, so there was no record of the uncle’s date of birth. The only testimony about his date of birth was his matriculation certificate from Punjab University and the State Subject. He died on December 15, 1979, corresponding to Muharram, 25, 1400 Hijri at 56, one year after his superannuation- then Government employees retired at the age of fifty-five. That suggests he was born somewhere in 1923, in the house where my father, my all-elder brother and I were born. The three-story garden-roof house of five by six inch, slim as a butter slice red burnt-clay bricks, known as Badshah bricks, with lattices window had been constructed by our grandfather at the start of the twentieth century. In the early 1950s, our house had lost its classic look and had been given pseudo-modern grandeur. The garden roof was replaced with corrugated-galvanized iron sheets, the mosaic of Badshahi bricks was sacrificed at the altar of cement concrete and plaster, and the lattice windows having their romance, were killed to be replaced by glass-window panes. I was the last child born under the garden roof that would be rash with Gulal in the spring- and a great feast to eyes till Chinar leaves turned rusty. Unlike my father, my elder brother Muhammad Yusuf and me, my uncle was not an alumnus of Islamia High School. He received schooling at Government High School, Bagh-Dilawar Khan, then known as the State School.
It was on the family grapevine, and my grandmother often mentioned that he was born the same year my elder brother came to the world- my brother was born on September 21, 1946. My uncle was married in a Mohalla at the foothills of Koh-i-Miran, which Kashmiri Hindus call Hari Parbat. The Mohalla, en route to the Astana of the second most revered native saint of Kashmir, Hazarat Sultan Sheikh Hamza Makhdoomi and the highly respected Hindu temple dedicated to Jagdamba Sharika Bhagwati, was fifteen minutes walk from our home. For centuries, in the wee morning hours, before the sun rays glistened, the golden spires of the mausoleums of a score of saints dominating the city skyline; the devotees would tread- some barefoot, some wearing wooden sandals the small road leading to the hillock. Scores of multiple-story houses, of course, more than three-story houses on both the sides of the street and interiors of the Mohalla distinctly suggest that the locality has been one of the prosperous localities of the city. Many families in the locality were engaged in Numdha Making- the thick woollen felt embroidered with floral designs in multi-coloured woollen threads. Many families from the time of Akbar’s invasion have been in the trade. Many other families were also attracted to manufacturing these beautiful woollen rugs after it attracted the western clientele, and its exports shot up, which reached all-time him during World War II. Shipments after shipment of Numadahs from Kashmir started sailing from Karachi port, then the nearest sea port to Srinagar to Europe. The positive spillover effects of the earnings from the exports were seen all over the market. The construction work in the locality picked up, and many elegant four- to five-story-high mansions with grand balconies and intricate panjarakari started dominating the skyline. Having lost the luster, many of these castles and elegant houses still survive in a few Mohalla at the foothill of Koh-i-Maran.
…to be continued
Z.G.Muhammad is a noted writer and columnist
