Coming soon!

I know, I know, I promised to be more regular on these pages. But certain events in my life have taken me for a spin and I am still trying to find my feet. Such is life. So all those of you, who visit my blog, please hang on. There is lots I have to say that I think you are going to enjoy. SOON!

Festive rearrangement

I have rearranged the content, removed some posts and cleaned up the mess. Here is hoping 2009 will have me writing more regularly on these pages. Have shifted poetry section to a new blog.  You’ll find its link on the right hand side. Bottom-most. It’s now called LIFE OF ME. The blog AGAINST THE TIDE has also acquired a new feature, a separate page called FRONT PAGE.  A collection of quotes from the Indian press – whenever, wherever I manage to key it in. This feature is located above the title of the blog, top-left. Enjoy!

In Spite of God

The screening of the first Pakistan film on Indian screens since Partition, is proving to be a momentous experience for a generation of Indians both young and old, that have been silently flocking cinema halls and multiplexes. The film released in the first week of April may not be drawing people in large crowds, but it has been a continuous trickle that has kept the film in the running for nearly two months now. Through this period, I have sat next to a middle-aged Punjabi family muttering and taking deep sighs, “this should not happen…its wrong,” and I have sat next to an Indian Muslim that sobbed on my shoulder, imploring, “why?” and I have sat with two “Tashan” loving teenagers who claimed that it was the most “meaningful” film they saw in 2008.

“Khuda Ke Liye” (In the Name of God) essayed by a first time Pakistan film director, Shoaib Mansoor (the writer of the Pakistan’s first rock band Vital Signs’ highly popular songs whose founding members include Salman Ahmad, the lead guitarist of the now nearly defunct rock group, Junoon), has received gracious applause in the Indian cinema houses, guarded criticism from the Indian film critics and graceless comments from the political commentators.

The film is by no means a cinematic tour de force. Cinematographically it’s tacky and the acting apart from the wonderful performance by Rasheed Naz as Maulana Tahiri and Naseeruddin Shah as Maulana Wali, is largely devoid of depth. In fact, as the well-known Pakistani commentator, Tariq Ali, acerbically points out, it comes across as even crude, “I went to a matinee performance in Lahore and the cinema was packed with young people,” he wrote in October 4, 2007 issue of the London Times Book Review. “The film is well intentioned, also long-winded and crude. It has, however, had an impact. At least it tries out a few ideas, which is unheard of in a country where the film industry produces nothing but Bollywood-style dross, even if the ideas are limited to the good Muslim, bad Muslim stereotype. Jihadi violence is bad. Music is good and not anti-Islamic. Violence and rape in the badlands of the Pakistan-Afghan frontier are intercut with scenes in a post-9/11 United States, where an innocent Pakistani musician is lifted by intelligence operatives and tortured…The implication is that each side feeds on the other.”

You don’t need to be a history buff to understand the reasons behind Shoaib Mansoor’s right to reclaim cultural space, hijacked by political exigencies that by force, suppression and devious intent created the divide and two nation states: India and Pakistan and the nature of the subsequent political structures that took root in the two countries.

The film is, as Ali points out a “crude” exploration of Islam in Pakistan’s conscience. Or to expand the territory a bit, the exploration of Islam in subcontinent’s conscience. But, it is also something more than that. It’s about cultural conflict between the West and the East. Imagine the film maker, for whom Lahore is just 507 km from Delhi and another mere 203km from Agra where the Taj Mahal, the symbol of love is situated. Further, think about the man who asserts that Arabic is alien to him (as it is to an Indian, we understand Urdu not Persian) or the fact that he never thought of slicing his tabeez, an amulet, to discover its content. And when he does see it, he’s as surprised as his interrogator. Listen too to the film’s music track that while acknowledging tribute to the late Punjabi quawwal, Nusarat Fateh Ali Khan, sings the rustic Punjabi Sufi saint, Bulleh Shah’s searing stanzas of devotion to absolute truth in “Bandiya Ho”. These are admissions of a soul that is connected to the idea of India before the British colonized it and as such it is a tremendous act of bravery.

Sadly, venerable columnist of the Indian Express, the self appointed provocateur of the Newspaper of Courage, Tavleen Singh, takes on the narrow “us versus them” view and takes a rabid bite by suggesting India reclaim Harrapa and Mohenjodaro. On April 13, 2008 edition of the newspaper she writes, “In Khuda Ke Liye, the prejudices against India come through as well. The hero, when he lands in Chicago, finds that his future wife does not know that Pakistan is a country. When he tries to explain where it is geographically, he mentions Iran, Afghanistan and China before coming to India. It happens that India is the only country she knows and Taj Mahal the only Indian monument she has heard of. ‘We built it,’ says our hero, ‘we ruled India for a thousand years and Spain for 800.’ As an Indian, my question is: who is we? Those who left for Pakistan or the 180 million Muslims who still live in India? If we pursue this ‘we’ nonsense, we must urge the Indian Government to bring back Harappa and Mohenjo-daro and Taxila. And that is only the short list.”

The filmmaker’s statement that “we ruled India for a thousand years….” is not about seeking the placement of Islam in power. It’s about placing the context of history in fact. Both Spain and pre-Partition India are examples of cultural synthesis that occurred on account of rulers adopting and adapting to the countries they conquered. It was not about looting, but building, and sustaining and creating new language of discourse whether it was through Jallaludin Akbar’s Din-e-illahi, the Indo-Saracenic architecture or Sufiana tradition that defines our inherited intellectual and physical landscape.

For Masroor it is making a statement about one of the most powerful nations, in the heart of Asia, having lost its crown and the right to contribute to the world as an equal, free of the Western imperialism and the accompanying mambo-jambo paraded as legitimate West-East discourse. “Not all Muslims are terrorists, but how come all terrorists are Muslim?” asks the interrogator of the hero in the film. Now where did we hear this argument first?

It came from people like Ann Coulter, a George Bush supporter and a syndicated columnist with a number of conservative websites in the United States. Coulter barely a few days after 9/11, on 28 September 2001 in a column syndicated to Human Events Online, WorldNetDaily, Townhall.com, FrontPageMag and Jewish World Review, asserted that only Muslims could have been behind the attacks:

“As the entire country has been repeatedly lectured, most Muslims are amazingly peaceful, deeply religious, wouldn’t hurt a fly. Indeed, endless invocations of the pacific nature of most Muslims is the only free speech it is safe to engage in these days.

This is a preposterous irrelevancy. Fine, we get it. The New York Times can rest assured that every last American has now heard the news that not all Muslims are terrorists. That’s not the point. Not all Muslims may be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims — at least all terrorists capable of assembling a murderous plot against America that leaves 7,000 people dead in under two hours.”

Years before Partition, in a book titled, “Nationalism” (written in 1917) Rabindranath Tagore advanced that India’s resistance to imperialism must rest on ability to provide not competing nationalisms, but a creative solution to the divisiveness produced by racial consciousness. What stops us from agreeing then with Shoaib Mansoor that violence is bad, music is good and racial profiling and conflict is about who-holds-the-gun-to-your temple? And what stops us from accepting Mansoor as one of us?

Ski to hell

“How can you talk of tourism in Kashmir?” asked my Kashmiri friend, incredulity writ large into the question.

I am aboard the Kingfisher flight. Outside the cabin window sheathed in snow, the Pir Panjal range rumbles past. It’s a 45 minute hop across these mountains from New Delhi to Srinagar. A hop from the land of the free, to the land of not so free. I am on one of the most challenging assignments of my career. Could this be the beginning of War Tourism?

“We are looking to explore the spaces of the mind and its relation to travel,” said my editor. I suggested skiing in war torn Kashmir. It’s an “extreme” sport in “extreme” environment, I offered. Two weeks later I am aboard the King of Good Times, keeping my finger crossed that the few clumsy ski rides I had as a teenager are going to keep me in good stead. That my knees don’t buckle and I don’t get snow blind or shot in some sudden crossfire.

This is my second time in Srinagar. I have been here in 2000, when the Indian Government announced its grand plans of launching the Kashir channel to counter the Pakistan propaganda from across the border. The city looks war worn, tired. I find the army bunkers almost at the same place I saw them last, only it seems there are more of them. There is an armed man standing at every 50m distance. Each one armed and dressed in bulky jackets and huge white snow boots.

My friend in Srinagar, a journalist with a Delhi paper treats me to a cup of Mocha in down-town Srinagar’s Broadway Café Bar. Outside the café, men in uniform take turns to peak into the cafe’s wood paneled interiors.

Soon I am in Gulmarg, among the tall ones and a posse of army men guarding the venue of forthcoming 5^th Winter Games. Gulmarg is barely an hour’s drive from Srinagar. The National Highway cutting through the countryside, reveals a sad picture.

Abandoned houses, burnt homesteads, dilapidated shops, army jeep junkyards and logged forests. The army is everywhere. On the doorstep. On the streets. On the field. On top of houses. People under siege. In last ten years 8,000 people from villages have disappeared, every Kashmiri is psychologically scarred by blood and gore. The poets are wailing. A unique civilization is being driven into graves…graves with no names. Just numbers.

Next day dawns bright and sunny inviting me to take wings. After negotiating a few wired fields, I hop over to Yaseen’s to equip myself in ski gear. Then we hit the slopes.

I slide, hang loose and let myself glide effortlessly through mountain walls dressed in fine powder snow. “Ski to hell,” say the ski-bums. I push myself harder catch speed, zipping through the trees…fear comes as I slide to a close, a few feet away from a barbed wire cutting through the clump of trees.

Kosovo has declared independence. “After Kosowo, Kashmir” someone whispers hopefully. I flip through the local English daily from Srinagar, Greater Kashmir. The AP picture printed on the first fold of the newspaper shows Kosovars celebrating independence as they wave Kosovian and American flags. I am surprised at the presence of the stripes and joy with which they are being unfurled. Kosovo is important to America for its recently established military base in the eastern Mediterranean, should Muslim Greece or Turkey prove unreliable allies in the future. But who is thinking of tomorrow, if today is getting unfurled on short-term happiness?

Since 1947 Kashmir has been asking for people’s referendum to decide its choice of rule It has looked to Pakistan and through it at the United Nations and America, to help its journey to self determination.

“After Kosovo, Kashmir?” Who knows? In the vastness of nature and the richness of its bounty, the cities have no borders and nations have no name. There is nothing to stop your roaming heart from dropping 10 feet to arch a snow line. Here war minds appear small and horizon, endless.

Minicoy

I never thought I would see a real sundial in use. It seemed to me somehow that this simple technique of measuring time had gone out fashion with the obelisks. But India, forever the land of surprises, threw up one for me in the watery region of the Indian Ocean – on the southernmost island of the Lakshwadeep, Minicoy.

Sundial in Minicoy

This beautiful 4.8 sq km island, geographically part of the Maldives archipelago of islands, is inhabited by people who speak the Mahal language and write in Thana script (religious sonnets). The British named the island Minicoy, apparently because they found it inhabited by short and shy people. Mini+coy, however, would like to be called Maliku, the Good Harbour.

The whole island, apart from the administrative offices of the Indian government, is divided into 10 fishing villages. While most of the Maliku men spend long periods away from home working as sailors on various mercantile ships, the rest make their living by fishing in the Indian Ocean. And for them knowing the seasons and time is crucial for survival.

Indian Standard Time (IST) set on the relationship between Greenwich and the local time in the city of Mirzapur near Allahabad, in north Uttar Pradesh, is ridiculously irrelevant here. Here humanity wakes and sleeps to a different time. Time, that’s tuned to nature, to the power of the sun and moon. The sundial time.

On the road to Ajmer

In my recent visit to Rajasthan, I came across this commemorative altar on the National Highway 8. The altar depicts two men astride a motorbike. Before it is placed a clay lamp with a green chili to ward off evil spirits. The men, said the villagers, had died in a road accident two years ago.

In many parts of North India one can come across “chattris” or commemorative altars to the departed. These are usually erected by the families in the memory of their ancestors and are often located on the field or land owned by the family. Standing sentinels, guardian spirits. In some regions, such as Shekhawati, they can also be found painted on the walls of the houses.

There is so much that connects us to these men. Indian statistics show that currently 270 people die everyday on Indian roads. Much of it is caused by faulty traffic plan and fast modes of transport. Most National Highways cut through towns and villages without requisite by-pass or provision for slow moving traffic and pedestrians. And most lack first aid facilities for traffic victims.

The traditionally dressed men on the motorbike – an Enfield or Bullet – died one such death. The family of the deceased has placed the altar on the road. Like a milestone. Marking, it seemed to me, the pain of loss.

Baralacha-la

This beautiful pass is home to one of India’s largest glaciers, the Bara Shigri Glacier. Standing here, at 4,830 meters, all one can see are hill ranges and valleys covered in a blanket of ice and snow. Himalayas here are larger and mightier. The rugged mountain terrain awesome in its nakedness. And most charmingly, utterly oblivious of man.

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I am not the first to cross it, nor the last. The path leading through the mountainous terrain has been used since the ancient times, connecting India with the inner Himalayan kingdoms, and beyond – China, Mongolia and the far away region of the Hindukush. This is the road through which people travelled, met, exchanged goods and ideas. It’s a road where almost nothing has changed since the earth convulsed and created the Himalayas.

Nothing…except climate change that has shrunk the glacier by a few inches, increased the volume of water in the already swelling Chenab and turned its lower valleys into apple growing orchards.