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That safe place called home
By Roohi Nazki. Dated: 9/20/2014 10:53:30 PM
It is ironic that even during the most dangerous times of militancy and after, Kashmir continued to remain the 'safest place' in the minds of most Kashmiris. Tucked away in the deep recesses of our hearts. We are forever going home. From wherever we are in the world.
I don't know how others relate to their places of origin. But I know that for most of us it is the Raison d'être of our very existence. No matter what we do, where or who we are, Kashmir and what it means to us is fundamental to our being. It is the most beautiful, the most sacred and the only safe place in the world. It is home.
As the floods breached the boundaries of the river Jhelum and as that beautiful river turned into a unrelenting serpent, slithering into our homes threatening to devour the entire city, that safe place called home lay shattered. Weeping silently, from near and far we watched as the devastation played on. And as it continues to do so.
I was in Kashmir the week before the rains started. During the most terrifying moments of the flood as I spoke from Mumbai to my parents in the dead of the night, the water rising insidiously into the 2nd storey, and as I kept shouting that they need to move to the 3rd storey, my father kept mumbling, almost to himself, that he can't afford to lose his books. He had not yet gauged the extent of devastation or perhaps he had. Everything any of us had ever treasured lay devastated.
On the day I left Srinagar while waiting for the car to the airport, I sat with my parents in the lawn having a cup of tea. As is my wont I was soaking in the sights and sounds of my much loved home and filing it in my memory, to access in my need of hour, while in Mumbai. A local rabaab player who often comes to our house, came by. He sat with us, played the rabaab and sang a few compositions of WahabKhar as we sipped tea. As he sang and as the notes of the rabaab filled in the air, I kept thinking in my mind how idyllic and unreal the whole scene was. And kept asking myself for the upteenth time what I was doing in Mumbai living far away from all that I really treasured. For the strains of the rabaab, the blooming flowers, the warmth and the subtle almost spiritual quality of the scene seemed to me like a dream. A dream so unlike any other. And I was at peace.
It is that feeling that symbolizes what Kashmir means to most of us. And it is that feeling that has been washed away and laid in ruins by the floods. Even though Kashmir had been ravaged by militancy, even though it had been just a shadow of its former self the quality and the intensity of its essence lived on somehow. While hoping and praying that we can somehow retain and recreate that feeling yet again, I am reminded of the lines of my grandfather MirGhulamRasoolNazki. He composed them for my sister Rabiya, in 1991, while she was working on some short films post-militancy, but ring true even now.
"Kasheerah ayes tyath achedari kyahgov,
Rawadyeri ti tath patche pryaari kyah gov,
Ama thath tchare chi braswari kyah gov
Wadaan kongewaer tyath pirewaari kyah gov."
"The Kashmir that was is no more
That beauty, that trust, and the togetherness are no more
I long to know what happened to the urs of chrarishareef
The saffron fields are wailing
For that garden of saints is no more."