Curfew failed. Yes! It failed! It failed to stop the dawn from cracking. It failed to cloud the first rays kissing the tree tops and stealing their way into my bed room. It failed to muzzle the black beauty – called Ashy Drongo, laugh thrush, tickell’s thrush   that   often greet me in the morning with their melodious songs much before muezzin  calling for bowing down before the creator. The olive green massive trucks fitted with red flags with men in olive green uniforms with their fingers on triggers of the machine guns sitting atop of them moving through the desolate streets outside- they call it ‘flag march.’- many say these marches benumb the hands and freeze the minds.

Oh! No they are of little consequences- they failed to scare away the morning visitors to our home- Hoopoe, Collared dove, Spot-Winged Tit, Tree Pipit, Rosy Pipit, Golden Bush Robin, Bul Bul and many others. The Bul Buls feasted on the ripe purple plums and rosy red peaches unmindful of the flag march.

 It was ticker on the 7 O’clock News of the News X television channel-   of late has become my favorite channel to remind me that I was not as free as my morning visitors and companions.  The ticker that read strict curfew imposed- curfew passes of all and sundry including people media men cancelled.

The ticker reminded me CURFEW- the six syllabi word that outstretches its dictionary meaning in Kashmir and becomes a ‘deadly phenomenon’ – it was perhaps   second word that was aired into my ear after Azan on my birth.

The ticker depressed me- Oh! No again home and I thought of taking  refuge in poetry-   it is often Iqbal that animates and invigorates me in moments of depression – I looked for a book of poetry and picked a collection of Words Worth- my childhood favorite poet. I looked for the poems that I had crammed and parroted and fallen in love with- ‘Resolution and Independence’, ‘French Revolution’ , ‘Character of a Happy Worrier’ and ‘Intimation of Immortality From Recollection of Early Childhood’..  I read and read these poems – Somehow every stanza of these poems looked to me as synonym for the life I have lived and passed through. Many lines stirred my mind –stirred continuously – ‘How is it that you live- ‘Who is the happy warrior? -   

‘To me the meanest flowers that blow can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.’

I do not know why these lines  reminded me that I have lived  a ‘curfewed life’….I was born chained- as a toddler, I  learnt walking with fetters on- as a boy I  learnt running and playing hide and seek shackled in   lanes and by lanes of my birth place. Looking back, my life and life of my whole generation and generation after has been life of curfews. I don’t know if any of our contemporary historians have computed the number of days Jammu and Kashmir, more particularly the Srinagar city has remained under curfews during past six decades.
 
 My grandmother often told   that I would not have been in this world at all but for the ‘Zona Warn’-   the midwife making it to our house through back lanes after escaping the prying eyes of what she called as “Militaryeee”. And more than often she reminded me that I was born on a curfew morning.

There were many others – later my best pals in our Mohalla who were born on a curfew morning, a curfew noon, a curfew evening and curfew night- perhaps that had been a year of curfews. I don’t  have the foggiest idea about the curfews at the time of my birth. The history books that I have read and reread about the situation as obtained at the time of my birth give no accounts of the social life- they only tell us about hard politics about the birth of the dispute. And most of the events are weaved around the then Emergency Administrator in the state and his workers who wearing red uniforms and red caps aping the Leninists  had in those day paraded through the streets of Srinagar – spreading fright in their own people.

I have a faint idea about remaining indoors because of curfew during my days in Kindergarten class- it was much later that I learnt why on that day my mother had latched the door that opened into the lane leading to main road and prevented me from looking through the windows that opened towards the road.

I do have impressions but not that lucid about another curfew in my child- I think I was in class four  - Sheikh Abdullah who then roared like the ‘wind at night’ in dense forests after brief freedom had been  again arrested. It has evaporated from my mind- how long we had then remained indoors. But I have very vivid impression about the curfews when I was in class eleven- It was summer of 1965- a period of students and youth movement in Kashmir that many a historian have compared to the student movement lead by Cohen Bandit in France during the same period.

This was longest period of curfews during my childhood. I have vivid impressions how we passed those days indoors. The tall soldiers of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) wielding long bamboo stick fitted with iron knobs and a soldier or two soldiers armed with three not three rifles paraded   on the roads outside our house. The soldiers produce awful sounds by hitting their bamboo sticks on the road and sometimes forcefully hit the latticed window. Those days there were no Satellite Television Channels- there was no television- the only source of information was a radio set. It was most prized possession in the home thus remained most of the time under lock and key. It would be switched on only at the time of news- first news from Srinagar Radio- that was always taken with a pinch salt, then   from Radio Pakistan and then from Radio BBC Radio- the evenings of young and old would pass listening to news.

The communication facilities were scant- there were hardly one or two telephones in our Mohalla- it was word of the mouth that created wonder- the news would travel from one corner of the city to another at satellite pace. In our home we had a door that opened in back lane- it was used curfews only and was named as curfew door.

Children had nothing to do- other than huddling together in ground floors and often asked to remain silent lest the ‘miliatryeee’ would not enter into the house. But for elders    the best past time   during curfews would be playing cards. In our Mohalla crossing over walls from house to house  many   elders would gather in a house and play cards for whole day…return home in the evening only…there are many a curfew tales.

However with all its agonies I remember people in my childhood had learnt braving the worst and longest curfews.  

(Feedback at zahidgm@greaterkashmir.com) 

Lastupdate on : Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:30:00 Mecca time
Lastupdate on : Sat, 17 Jul 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sun, 18 Jul 2010 00:00:00 IST