Dr. Vinay Thusoo
Verbal chicanery has been used for the last thirty years to soft-peddle the hard realities that the Kashmiri Pandit community has been facing. During the period of turmoil, lumpens behaved like hedgehogs and ideologues to hound Kashmiri Pandits out of the valley, and in the process also cleverly spread false narratives which reduced the native Kashmiri Pandit to the status of ‘hated dispensable others’. This not only shattered ‘Kashmiriyat’: the age-old unique characterization of the Kashmiri composite culture of the place and social consciousness of the people but also led to the serious loss of support networks, social structures, language, dialect, attitudes, values, and disintegration. The issues of ‘displacement, loss of homeland, refugees in their own country’ is a matter of concern in a discourse of the Kashmiri Pandit community. The community has lost its past, although Kashmiri Pandits are coherent in their approach but the questions: Who we are? Where do we belong? Will we ever return to our homeland? What does Kashmir connote to generations born after 1989? And this has a serious psychosomatic bearing and calls for deeper introspection within the Kashmiri Pandit community. Without culture, lost heritage, I sometimes feel like a piece of human flotsam as rightly pointed out by Marcus Garvey, “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.”I relate Kashmiri Pandits to Hummingbirds who are tireless in their pursuit of sweetness but are omens of joy and luck, whichever city/country they have inhabited post exodus.
Overcoming pangs of nostalgia, today I am celebrating my Koshur (Lunar) birthday as per the Hindu almanac which every Kashmir Pandit considers auspicious and spiritually beneficial in my second home, Jammu, the land of brave Dogras, who gave us shelter and opened their doors to the thrown-out threatened traumatic Kashmiri Pandits. Although at home, my family celebrates Koshur Birthdays with the same fervor, but it fails to arouse the same emotions and the sentiment which it used to raise pre-1990’s in our hearth.
Pre-exodus, on this day, the family priest would come with a ‘potli’ (bag) filled with all the requisite material for performing Pooja. For me, it was a day of the family getting together for fun and celebrations. Thahr (cooked rice); dyed yellow with the pinch of turmeric powder while cooking, the traditional offering for deity which is afterward shared by the family members, is even cooked today but it does not have the flavour and fragrance of happiness and optimism. As a teenager, I was entrusted with the responsibility to distribute ‘Prashadham’ (yellow rice) to our Kashmiri Pandits neighbours living in the vicinity. Every household used to receive yellow rice with gratitude and in return fill the plate with a handful of salt, considered auspicious by Kashmiri Pandits as salt is linked to Goddess Lakshmi. But now scattered the impression of this practice exists only in our hearts. It was one of the eagerly awaited ‘Pooja’ by me. My family on my Koshur birthday bought me new clothes of my choice, and my grandparents, whom I deeply miss, used to shower tons of blessings on me and their overwhelming concern for the meticulous organization of everything on this significant day. That was also a time, when slowly one could see birthday parties being organised as per the English calendar with music, dance, and cutting of the cake, etc. Nonetheless, it also gave me an opportunity like the rest of the Kashmiri Pandit teenagers to celebrate two birthdays in a year and enough reason for the friends to envy. English birthday was the icing on the cake, which again gave me the freedom to celebrate with my friends across the cross-section of society.
Though today I am celebrating my birthday as per our own calendar but this doesn’t evoke the same sentiment because of change in place, people, and the situation. All said and done even today, wherever the Kashmiri Pandits are they have kept their culture and customs alive and celebrate their Koshur birthdays with vigor, and with the advent of social media, they do share their pictures, clippings, and videos, which is very encouraging. In this context, Anupam Kher, Kailash Kher, and Kunal Khemu to name a few, have been echoing their sentiments especially related to the celebrations of Koshur birthdays. This speaks of the struggle of this community to keep alive and pass on to the future generations the rituals, the value, and charisma of being a Kashmiri Pandit. Whether in the joint or nuclear family which is in vogue, the attempt of the minuscule Kashmiri Pandit community is to apprise the younger generation of their rich culture and heritage. Taking them to Kashmir, their homeland, on a short visit as a tourist is to keep connected. Like many I, too, have many sweet reminiscences about my ‘gorgeous life’ in Kashmir. Post exodus, I miss my Kashmir and the surroundings and I wish if I ever have the opportunity to travel to Kashmir to celebrate my birthday as I used to do in the past.
I miss Kashmir, my friends, and the serene surroundings. Evoking the memories of the valley every day does strengthen my identity as Kashmiri Pandit. We can torture ourselves until the end of time, but first, let us make sure that we are looking at the whole picture, and ask ourselves an honest question: If I could go back in time and undo this one choice, what else would I long for and what else would I miss? Possibly I share the same emotion which Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese-American did when he wrote “I write in verse life’s prose, and in prose life’s verse. This I am a stranger, and will remain a stranger until death snatches me away and carries me to my homeland.”
(The author is Official Spokesperson Incharge Media University of Jammu)
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