Akh Dour – Once Upon A Time – is a remarkable piece of Kashmiri literature by Bansi Nirdosh, translated by Qaisar Bashir. Qaiser has made a crafty use of language while transcreating the piece of literature and has invested all his potential to make it lucid, unharmed and original. One of the beautiful aspects of this translation is that Qaisar has kept some of the Kashmiri words as such to maintain the ethnicity of the story. Qaiser has done a marvelous job as a debutant and the translation nowhere looks like the work of a beginner. The characterization is awe-inspiring as well as mysterious.
The pastoral life of Bandipora, the sincerity and brotherhood of antiquity, the pluralistic society of Kashmiri Muslims and Pandits and the sense of oneness among them connects us to our history in “Akh dour”.
The journey of Nageena from Bandipore to Srinagar via water transport takes the readers into the world of imagination. The description of Nageena’s beauty embellished by the writer creates the picture of The Helen of Troy in the reader’s mind.
The novel depicts the simplicity of rural life when Bandipora is introduced to the readers In the novel, the description of life in Bandipora shows the trueness, care, and sincere relations among the communities and concerns for each other without any religious bias. The book gives a feeling of nostalgia to its readers as they clearly sense the difference between the past and the present.
The novel presents a clear picture of Dogra regime when Muslims were poor, helpless, and they were mostly confined to the jobs of servants in rich households of Pandits in the valley. The character of Nageena’s father Deen Mohammad serves as a representative of the Muslim class of that era.
The shift in the novel takes place when the story moves from Bandipore to Srinagar as Deen Mohammad arrives in the aristocratic city for his treatment at a Mission Hospital. The hypocrisy of urban life stands exposed when Nageena reaches Srinagar to meet her ailing father. She is not able to see her father in spite of as many efforts as she could have made to do so. Nageena at the tender age of 15 has no one to go to in the city and in that desolation she spends the night in a nearby shrine. It would not have been the same if she were in the same situation in her beautiful Bandipora.
The dawn of the ill-fated day breaks on Nageena as she and her father experience the grimy and callous reality of human life. Nageena becomes the victim of her situation when Sideeq joo-the pimp disguising himself as a gentleman exploits her innocence. Sideeq Joo , in the garb of compassion, takes Nageena to a brothel at Fateh kadal. The character of the pimp is the real embodiment of all the evils of human shape; he is witty and cunning, an opportunist and hypocritical who knows how to take advantage of the cursed. Other than being a blot on the human face, the character of the pimp exposes the pseudo-behavioral patterns of city life.
The vanity and the double standards are further exposed when an Elite and Aristocratic cloth merchant of downtown namely Balbader gets to know about Nageen’s presence in the brothel. The brothel keepers in one of the most sorrowful events of the novel sell Nageena to Balbader.In the end, Balbader converts to Islam and is rechristened as Badru-u-Din when Nageena gives birth to a baby girl.
I congratulate Qaisar Bashir for this marvelous work and also am thankful to him for bringing alive our roots in front of our eyes. This is just a beginning for him and I am sure we will get to see more good work from the author.
Malik Nazir Ahmad teachers GHSS Plan Bandipora