Stealthily changes were making inroads in my life; shriveling my roots. Then I did not understand that I was in for cultural shocks-crude cultural shocks that were not only going to overwhelm me from ‘the grand perspective of history’ but also were going to root me out from my grandest cultural moorings. Graduating from my kindergarten class, to the first primary, then second and then third was not only bidding adieu to the company of affectionate kindergarten teacher Paul sahib and coming under the control of stick wielding, bespectacled spectral yellow turbaned teacher Mana Kak, someone brought from the ‘ghosts world’ into our school. Nonetheless, it was a period of change. That I and my friends hardly realized spoke of a political transition in the state a shift that was going to change the cultural landscape of our land.
Many times with schools closed due to disturbances, sitting indoors, I watched from latticed window of my home grim scenes of men raising slogans, women pounding their chests, scratching their faces to bleeding with their nails, pulling down their headgears (Kasaba), putting it on the moon of their hands upside down and raising it high towards sky and praying to Allah for his intervention. Those days prayers of the sobbing mothers went over my head, but they did wet my eyes.
I saw men falling to the bullets and bleeding bodies being carried on charpoys for burial in our neighbourhood but these scenes often proved ephemeral; but what continued to lurk in my mind were the changes in the school. Now, we were no more made to parrot full throat those Kashmiri lessons, poetic prose, “Sangarmal Gash Aawa Aawa Taka-batanan Josh Aawa, Bul Buloo Dil shahlaaw”, we were no more made to remember Geography and History in our mother tongue. The imprint of these lessons in mother tongue was so vivid; I and my buddies recited them in chorus on the way back to home.
In these years of paradoxical changes the most important development was the coinage going decimal, the double paisa being replaced by naya paisa. The one rupee silver coins with embossed images of Queen Victoria, King Edwards and King George that eloquently spoke of the British imperialism. So possessive were grandmothers about these coins that their trunks mostly remained padlocked. The newly brought out nickel coins with Kings’ image replaced by the Lion Capital of Asoka Pillar and corn sheaf now ruled the market. Surprisingly denomination in Urdu were also removed from these coins; all writings on the reverse side of these coins were in Hindi, a language that neither my friends nor I could read.
I remember the day when the announcement was made about India changing to decimal system at the morning assembly. It was day of excitement; we were told now one rupee will be of hundred naya paisa instead of sixty four paisa. The new one paisa that carried the legend of naya paisa was not made of copper but bronze. The new decimal denominations were one rupee, fifty naya paisa, twenty five naya palm, ten naya paisa, five naya paisa, two naya paisa and one naya paisa. Except one naya paisa coins of all other denomination were lustrous silvery made from cuproanickle. It was thrilling to see for the first time the shinning new coins. One of my friends, whose father had a kiosk in Maharaja Ganj was first boy to get some coins to the school, it was no less than a rare treasure with him that every boy wanted to look into and touch. It was he who first broke the news that we could get these new Coins in exchange of old coins from the coin exchangers in the market.
Z.G.Muhammad is a noted writer and columnist
