Z.G.Muhammad
Now I no more chased swallows swirling and diving in the deserted streets. I no more craved for swallows making their mud nests on the ceiling of my small seven by five feet reading room known as “kouther” or on the eaves of our home. Now I no more ran after lone Tonga passing in the wee hours through our street attempted to catch at it, cling to it with one foot on its footrest and other dangling in the air inviting a whip and a rebuke from the tongawala. Now I no more hooted at the famous “all good tongawala”, and now I no more provoked the cow nicknamed ‘teen-i-khar” on the way to the shop of Boys Book Stall at Naid Kadal. Those days animal hides also were sensitive and would not tolerate a nickname.
Now I no more made vain bids to catch butterflies on the way to school. Slowly my childhood was bidding adieu to me—the carefree and care–freely-carless days had gone, worries about examinations and results had started bothering me.
Come March: winter vacations were over, the joys of cosy winter days ended, and examination worries would set in. As the winter days approached near and near the streets of my birth, burg swelled with boys and girls, not for going to tuitions. But on the way to a small hillock barely one kilometre away from my home. The mount Kohi-e-Maran- did not attract the attention of the boys and girls for its legendry past or it is having found mention in many epics, they did not climb up the hillock to shed extra fats from their bodies. The uphill journey was not for recreation or cleansing lungs with fresh air but for seeking blessing from the greatest Kashmiri saint Sultan-ul-Airfan
More devotion and their beliefs made them travel miles in the dawn to this hillock. No sooner the date sheets (schedules) of examinations, particularly the Middle and Matriculation examination, were announced the number of boys that made it to this hillock in the early morning swelled. On Mondays and Thursdays, the Muslim boys and girls thronged the streets- I still remember some boys and many girls would be seen walking barefoot on the roads leading to the shrine of Makdoom Sahib. Many boys would write down their name and roll numbers on a piece of paper and push the same through the latticed windows inside the sanctum; some scribed their names and roll numbers on the Astanas walls. I would often admonish boys spoiling the beautiful papier-mâché walls of the shrines by writing their names on the walls of Astana, some with pencils, some with charcoal and some with sharp blades. Perhaps they did it to remind the saint perpetually about them.
I do not remember a single boy in our locality who did not visit Makdoom Sahib’s shrine to seek blessings from the saint for passing the examination. They did it before, during and after the tests. The faith in the saint would double with boys who qualified with good marks.
On Tuesdays, the streets leading to the hillock would be thronged by Pandit girls and boys during the examination days. Some of these boys and girls carried marigold flowers with them would be on way to two temples, one atop the hillock on the Southern side and another at foothills on the Northern side. They often paid their obeisance at the Shrine of Makdoom Sahib. The Pandit boys and girls preferred to call the hillock Parabat.
The post-examination days were hilarious. It was the best pastime- perhaps the best of all. It used long holidays after the examinations, notably after appearing for the Board and university examinations. The holidays would be as long as two months, even more. I do not think we ever entered our reading rooms or opened our books during those long holidays. I do not remember having opened the wooden box housing my books after examination- I wished them to remain in the coffin until they were buried under books for the new class. Then there was no rat race for competitive examinations. Merit would get you admission both in the degree and professional colleges. Getting a second division was sufficient for getting admission in professional colleges- so there was no shuttling from one teacher to another or from one coaching centre to another—
Every holiday had lots of fun for us. Most of my peers had bicycles- on Sundays, we often planned long cycle journeys. On Saturdays, we got our bikes checked from the Ghulam Hassan bicycle mechanic of our Mohalla. He was of our age group- his shop was our best haunt during holidays. We washed the bicycle oiled its chains and hubs. The next day in the early hours, we started our journey towards a prefixed destination. Our favourite destinations used to be Manasbal Lake, Kangan and Dachigam. Those days the streets mostly wore a deserted look- if I remember correctly, only one or two busses plied between Srinagar and Kangan, and only one bus made a to and fro journey between Srinagar and Tulmula.
For Manasbal, we often started our journey at seven in the morning. Then the city limit was at Soura, and after this small semi-urban village, it was all paddy fields, winding our way through these paddy fields bisected by hardly twenty feet wide road we reached to Ganderbal between half an hour to forty-five minutes. Mostly we sat at some vantage point under the shade of willow or Chinar and watched farmers sowing their seedlings. Then it was not Bihari labourers who worked in the paddy fields but the natives who had not yet given themselves up to comforts of idleness. We enjoyed “nandibat”- seedling sowing songs and then started our journey uphill to Manasbal Lake. So used to be our journey to Kangan, sometimes we made it to Gotlabagh and sometimes we made it to Wangat.
Z.G.Muhammad is a noted writer and columnist
