Love songs of Kashmir

ONE often hears Kashmiris boast that they were, and are above communal prejudices. Though Hindus and Muslims did not intermarry, they lived together in complete harmony, spoke one language, eat the same kind of food, wore the same kind of dress, sang the same songs. Some Kashmiri Muslims have the word Pandit prefixed to their names, some Hindu Brahmins bear the name Mulla. With the contagion of Muslim fundamentalism spreading into the valley of Jhelum and thousands of Hindu Pandits seeking sanctuary in Jammu and other cities of India, the lofty claim of being above narrow religious prejudices has begun to sound hollow. However, there are some who remain unaffected by the winds of communal hatred blowing across the country and continue to sing songs of love. Outstanding among them is 83-year-old Alhaj Ghulam Ahmed Fazil Kashmiri, popularly known as Raskhan.

Fazil Kashmiri has 27 books to his credit and has received innumerable awards from the State and National Akademy of Literature. He has also been honoured by the SGPC for his translations of sacred Hindu texts, Guru Nanak’s morning prayer Japji and Guru Arjan’s Sukhmani, the Psalm of Peace. Translations of some of his most popular songs rendered into English by Shiben Kachroo have been recently published:‘Eleven Horizons of Fazil Kashmiri’ (available from Syed Zeeshan Fazil, D-60 Lajpat Nagar I, New Delhi 24).

I went through the poems in one sitting. What enchanged me more than his exhortations for communal harmony were his sensitive descriptions of the beauty of the mountains and lakes of Kashmir. Here are a few examples:

How beautiful is the evening time!
Down the slopes and across the fields
Lengthen the shadows of poplar trees.
The sun is sinking in a flood of red
and soundlessly creeps in the lurking night.
High on the tall mountain tops
And on shoulders of the nearer hills
the snow is lit in a dying flush,
and far in the west the horizon glows
with a play of crimson against the gold.
The embers of scattered fires below
send upward lazy spirals of smoke
as if to sound the depths of the sky
that’s turned a shade of silver grey.
Yet, bars of clouds reach out to clutch
at shimmering hems of the fleeting light
in the twilight of the evening time.
On the peaks above, mighty giants of snow
stand vigil like guards scanning the land
ready to roll down avalanches of death
for strange ogres on mischief bent.
The sildhouettes of boulders like human busts,
and crags are snugly wrapt around
with fluffy wings of roosting clouds
to keep the cold of the night at bay
Far across, some truant, wilful rays,
straying from the wrap of the setting sun,
streak past the feet of the rolling hills
and restlessly weave in threads of gold
the woof and warp of a golden mesh
in the twilight of the evening time.

Eleven Horizons is beautifully produced with many colour photographs of the poet among chinars and rose blossoms. It would have been more acceptable to readers if meaningless introductions by Farooq Abdullah, Dr Karan Singh and lesser known luminaries had been left out. And more attention paid to proof reading.

What’s in a name?

There was a time when I was the only Khushwant Singh I knew. Unlike most people, I chose this name at the age of five and abolished the one my grandmother had given me. I was the only one listed under that name in the Lahore, and later the Delhi, telephone directory and felt justified in coining my hitherto unknown first name. Then I discovered the existence of Dr K.L. Wig whose first initial stood for Khushwant.As he rose to eminence as a physician, though he was younger than me, people asked me if I had been named after him. Now the Delhi Telephone Directory has half-a-dozen Khushwant Singhs: One is a celebrated athlete, another on bail on a charge of murder, the remaining ordinary, law-abiding citizens who resent having to share my name. The most serious challenge to my one-time nominal uniqueness came when my friend, the late Sardar Mubarak Singh named his son after me. The boy was more than 40 years younger than I and did not mind having to share my name while he was at school and college. But when he took to writing books and articles he was riled when his friends accused him of being a copy-cat. He got out of the predicament by calling himself Khushwant S. Kohli. It was under this name he published his collection of Punjabi poems Jamaan, Zarab, Taqseem (addition, multiplication, division) and translations from Hindi into Punjabi of Rajendra Awasthi’s Beemar Shehar.He was up against the same problem when he took over the editorship of Modern Practical Psychology from his ageing father. It was after his venerable sire’s demise that he finally decided to get rid of the cloud that had hovered over his head all his life and officially changed his name to Khushwant Mubarak Singh.

We came face to face for the first time when I visited Amritsar last month. He came armed with a couple of supporters. It was an awkward meeting as neither of us knew how to address the other. We overcame the awkwardness by exchanging ribald jokes in Punjabi. I had the better of him in the exchange of vulgarities. The meeting ended amicably. I have been reading Modern Practical Psychology regularly ever since his father launched it. I often steal ideas and quotes from it. I find myself stealing from it more and more as the magazine gets more and more readable.

Sense of humour

A cute young woman was consulting a psychiatrist. Among other questions, the doctor asked, "Are you troubled by indecent thoughts?"

"Why, no," she replied, with just the hint of a twinkle in her eye. "To tell you the truth, doctor, I rather enjoy them."

* * *

"And how do you account for your recent defeat in the polls?"

"I was a victim."

"A victim — of what?"

"Of accurate counting."

* * *

"But, doctor," said the worried patient, "Are you sure I’ll pull through? I’ve heard of cases where the doctor made a wrong diagnosis, and treated some one for pneumonia who has afterward died of typhoid fever."

"Nonsense," spluttered the physician. "When I treat a patient for pneumonia, he dies of pneumonia."

(Contributed by A.S. Deepak, Chandigarh)