MEMORIES REVEAL REALITIES!
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| MEMORIES REVEAL REALITIES! short story Veerinder Patwari 
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| VASUDEV PANDIT, my son, is proud of his ancestors, globally known as spiritual philosophers and intellectual visionaries, brilliant academicians, and creative research scholars! He keeps conveying the delight of following their religious traditions, but not communal ones, and loves all those who respect each other’s perceptions and protect each other’s lives and property! But he is more surprised than shocked to accept the reality that those aborigines of Keshap Rishi’s discovered valley, Kashmir, have been living an economically compromised but socially and culturally protected traditional life for many centuries! They have been desiring to get what they genuinely deserve! But politically motivated, biased reservations and appeasements on their identification by birth eclipse both their academic and professional initiatives, even in democratic rule! He, as such, continues to convey his heartfelt concern about their materialistic struggle for a better life, which is nipped in the bud! VASUDEV is an advocate who admits it with distress that he cannot fight either a legal or a constitutional war against reservations on identification by birth! But as a visionary, he is convinced that compromises due to both compulsions and intentions block materialistic struggle for exploring better options for living a contented life! As such, he conveys with delight that his progressive persuasions for participation in global competitions have helped his academically brilliant son to blitz dynamically against centuries-old static traditions of living with compromises! KESHAV PANDIT, his energetic son, is a competent technocrat who has willfully chosen to be a citizen of Australia! But he is very proud of being a Kashmiri and conveys it with delight that his identification by birth and religious obsessions do not interfere with his socio-cultural activities, education, and profession! And apprehensions of getting victimized by favoritism, appeasements, and reservations do not create hurdles in his progressive initiatives and their materialistic implementations! He keeps on desiring what he genuinely deserves on the merit of his qualifications and the worth of his professional capabilities! As such, enjoying a socially- economically protected contented life in Sydney! KESHAV, my grandson, has never lived in the land of his ancestors, globally known as the aborigines of Kashmir! He was born as a Kashmiri migrant in Delhi, where I have been living as a Kashmiri migrant with his uprooted parents for the last 32 years! We are aware of the unavoidable political compulsions that have forced us to live as Kashmiri migrants in Delhi! It is such a painful reality that none of our three present living generations live in Kashmir! But our frequent WhatsApp conversations keep us in close contact with each other and in touch with our uprooted relatives, neighbors, and both old and new friends living either temporarily as migrants or permanently as citizens in different states of India and different countries like America, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia! AND during their WhatsApp conversations on realities of human sufferings on identification by birth, dictated by communal invaders, intruders, and conspirators, both my son and grandson keep on introducing me to their friends as an eyewitness to all geographic, historical, and political events of the Kashmir valley from 1947- 1990. And invite them for discussions without contradiction due to generation gaps, ideological convictions, and materialistic perceptions for eye-opening conclusions for future generations! It is indeed a delight to get in touch with known and unknown, young and old Kashmiri migrants living in India and foreign countries who keep on posting their written, verbal, and video WhatsApp messages for comments! And describe the realities and define the pain of suffering according to their own perceptions! But it is a reality that most of them who are very well settled in a foreign land avoid discussions on convincing others. They are themselves convinced that they too have been victims of unavoidable compulsions which forced their ancestors in the past and their parents to struggle for survival in exile! They applaud and follow both my son and my grandson for inspiring academically brilliant Kashmiris of ‘Times Now’ to explore global possibilities of fulfilling their creative desires as followers of their ancestors, who were spiritual philosophers and intellectual visionaries, brilliant academicians and creative research scholars! And keep on glorifying their struggle as an inspiration for exploring possibilities for fulfilling progressive desires with creative initiatives and materialistic discoveries, inventions, and innovations! Thus, sharing of both YouTube and Google’s videos/ written documents of mystic and mythological, allegoric and symbolic, folk and fictional ancient tales during WhatsApp conversations is an interesting obsession for conveying the delight of being Kashmiris by birth! But those of us who are convinced that ‘East or West, home is the best’ prefer to live a compromised peaceful life, and even after three decades in exile, they are optimistic about the possibility when some God fearing ruler like the great Sultan Zaina-ul-Aabidin/ ’Badshah’ rehabilitates them in their ancestral homeland! Claiming to be dedicated followers of their ancestors who used to meditate for global peaceful co-existence, they convey the reality that the spiritual saints were besieged and targeted by mysterious demons due to their identification of being humans by birth! They were aware of converting matter into energy, so they could convert offensive flames into flowers and convert mirage into an oasis for defense! But they used to avoid converting hideouts of human eaters into ashes just for saving creatures, animals, and birds living in jungles, which are environmental thermostats and treasures of miraculous lifesaving herbs! Thus, they used to avoid confrontation and offer food of choice to demons for a peaceful co-existence! Following this ritual, some of the Kashmiris invite the younger generation living in foreign countries, for their online WhatsApp participation in their devotional celebrations of symbolic rituals like ‘GAADe BATTe’ and offering fish and rice as a food of choice to the invisible intruders! By doing so, they try to justify that our ancestors preferred negotiations for averting confrontations and favored such compromises for peaceful co-existence! But few visionaries who blame non-Kashmiri intruders and global conspirators for their exodus are optimistic that history will be repeated by some ruler like the great ‘Badshah’ who will rehabilitate them in their own land! But few of them who are brilliant academicians and creative research scholars blame our ancestors who yielded and succumbed to the barbaric compulsions for living a compromised survival! They plead that our ancestors, who had learned Persian script for getting jobs for survival, should have migrated to places where they could make use of miraculous materialistic knowledge available in allegorical/symbolic form in their ancestral scriptures handwritten in ‘Sharda’, the oldest scripture of Kashmir! And some visionaries hail our farsighted ancestors for hiding the treasures of valuable knowledge and averting possibilities of ill-willed sabotage by invaders with their usual practice of temptations or compulsions! Most of us who have been optimistic about their rehabilitation in their ancestral houses in both rural and urban Kashmir keep on reviving memories of events when only eleven families of idol worshipers of the Kashmir valley had survived during the barbaric rule of the Sultan known as Sikandar Bout-Shikan/ idol destroyer! They keep on narrating historical realities of inhuman acts of botchery, brutalities, and barbarism that were dictated by communal invasions, subsequent intrusion, and global conspiracies during the 13th to 15th century! They justify it with delight that the inception of ‘Kashmiriyat’ in the golden period of ‘Sultan Zian-ul-Abidin’ was an epoch for both idol worshipers and Muslims of Kashmir! And as followers of ‘Kashmiriyat’, they convey it with pride that Kashmiris have lived a peaceful, socially and culturally protected life without confrontations during Sikh, British, and Hindu rulers till 1947! An unknown Vedic scholar, professionally retired as a curator, is one such admirer of ancient scriptures who keeps on conveying that he had risked his life to save his collection of ancient scriptures, but was betrayed by his neighbors! And instead of conveying his distress and responding to sermons, advice, and suggestions conveyed by both young and old participants in WhatsApp conversations, he keeps on reminding Kashmiris living in exile to send him PDFs of such scriptures for fulfilling his desire of converting allegorical messages written in Sharda script into materialistic interpretations in globally used languages and scriptures! Since I appreciate all those young and old participants who conclude intellectual discussions with perceptive and subjective justifications for contradiction on each other’s conclusions without confrontations, I avoid conveying my own logical and emotional reasons to uphold or reject their descriptions with justification and conclusions! But I do feel alarmed when some visionaries plead that instead of describing the realities of cruelties for defining their pain to each other, the victims must unite to revolt against those who have been taking constitutional, judicial, and administrative advantage of discrimination for political aspirations! Particularly when those who are professional socialites and keep on exploring hypothetical solutions during their political discussion either in university canteens or participation in debates on global tele-communications, keep on advising younger generation to read global authors like Victor Higo, and Charles Dicken, Pearl S Buck and Maxim Gorke; Chekov and H G Wells for channelizing a thought process for creating identical situations like French, Russian and Chinees revolution! Such intellectual discussions with perceptual and subjective justifications for contradiction on each other’s conclusions keep reviving my memories of the events I shared as a bright school boy with both my grandfather and father in our ancestral house! Since I was fond of both, I used to listen to their discussions like tutorial lessons on history and memorize the text without understanding the reasons for their contradiction, without confrontation! But I did understand the conclusion of my grandfather’s first and last discussion with emotional confrontation with my father immediately after the Pakistan army sponsored Tribal invasion in 1948! Thus, I understood the reasons why my father reconciled to be known as a dejected visionary and rejected revolutionary, and followed the ancestral tradition of living a compromised socially-culturally protected life in his ancestral house situated on the bank of the river Jhelum in Kashmir till the unfortunate exodus in January 1990! My memories reveal the realities that both my grandfather and father believed in destiny, and therefore accepted it both philosophically and traditionally that all of us are born to live a time-bound, predestined life based on our deeds done during our previous lives! And we have no other option but to face both pleasant and unpleasant, geographical and historical, physical and economic problems with devotion! Thus, accepted disasters created by seismic explosions and cloud bursts, storms, and floods as predestined natural calamities! But he refused to accept catastrophic human sufferings, particularly created by barbaric racial and religious discriminations based on identification by birth as destined! They had their own reasons to believe that biased historians, ancient historical ruins, and archeological evidence do not highlight such an event of human suffering created due to the victimization of the masses on identification by birth! And they were convinced that none other than the victims can describe the realities of eventualities and define the pain of suffering! Since both had their own perceptions, my grandfather accepted the realities of events of ‘Once upon a Time’ by victims of one generation to future generations! He was philosophically convinced that catastrophes are eye-opening cautions to God fearing good good-willed human beings! As such, traditionally optimistic that discussions on such events do help in exploring solutions for facing the present alarming conditions, as identical situations in the past! But my father used to believe and discuss his eye-witnessed events of ‘Times Now’ for exploration of materialistic solutions to avert vulnerable situations! He would, as such, contradict his father’s philosophic presumptions and hypothetical assumptions in conceiving materialistic solutions for living a desired life! KALHAN PANDIT, my late grandfather, believed both geographical and historical realities of ‘Mohenjo-Daro’ narrated by the inhabitants who had witnessed the catastrophic event when the existence of their homeland was getting marooned by gushing water in the 19th century BC! And accepted the historical reality that the uprooted migrants were rehabilitated and very well settled on the banks of the river Jamuna in the Indian peninsula! Thus, he accepted the reality that those who had fought nature’s catastrophe and struggled hard to live a peaceful life were massacred by communal invaders in 711 AD just because they refused both compulsions and compromises to change their faith in centuries-old Indian traditions of living! HE was convinced that the event was an eye-opening epoch of human suffering on identification by birth! And justified that discussions on such events help in exploring solutions for facing the present alarming conditions, as identical situations in the past! As such used to reveal the realities of catastrophic events created by war mongers and communal conspirators from the 14th to 19th century during his frequent social get-togethers! HE used to narrate eye–opening historical realities of forgotten historical events like the perishing of 50,000 innocent Kashmiris in the snow in 1212, and convey his heartfelt concern about the victims who were buried alive in a snowstorm! And justify that the event was not a natural calamity as described by historians! But it was a catastrophe created by Mongol invader Genghis Khan, who had conquered Kashmir without any offensive/defensive resistance from peace-loving, innocent, unarmed inhabitants! And he used to justify that those helpless inhabitants who had trusted the conqueror for their survival as his obedient slaves! But when the barbarian forced them to carry the wealth which he had forcibly snatched from them on their shoulders and accompany him on his back home journey, they were caught in a snowstorm! They could have been rescued, but the barbarian they trusted for their survival betrayed them, and they were buried alive while travelling on faraway snow-clad mountains! He used to narrate the realities of historical events for awakening and convey it with heartfelt concern about historical reality when good-willed Kashmiris were betrayed by ill ill-willed stranger whom they trusted as their caretaker ruler was a self-centered barbarian in disguise! He kept cautioning followers of ‘Kashmiriyat’ not to trust strangers who can be foes, not friends! He would convey with pride that, religious but not communal inhabitants of Kashmir have proved right in rejecting communal politics of ‘Two-Nation theory’! He complimented them for not trusting those who persuaded them to accept ‘Two Nation Theory’, which converted communal invasions on borders to door-to-door and person-to-person confrontation for survival during the partition of Punjab and Bengal in 1947AD! My grandfather was neither a preacher of any religion nor a social activist with political aspirations! He was a prosperous landlord who was proud of being Kashmiri! He used to glorify his delight with pride that global mystic messengers, philosophers, historians, and academicians were also Kashmiris! He was a dedicated follower of ‘Kashmiriyat’ and a committed promoter of its miraculous energy which gets converted into a power for protecting life, faith and properties of all religious but not communal peace-loving aborigines of Kashmir valley who are widely known for stimulating their determination of living a socially and culturally protected peaceful life without stresses due to apprehensions of invasions/ intrusions and strains due to subsequent vulnerable compulsions! He was popularly known for admiring and inviting scholars, promoters of socio-cultural activities, politicians, and government employees on tour in rural areas for discussions on the welfare of inhabitants and apprehensions of human sufferings, cautioned by simmering communal provocations! He used to amplify all activities for glorification of social and cultural traditions of Kashmir and sponsor professional singers and story tellers with their musicians for dramatized songs recitation of mythological stories, folk tales recitals of mystic poetry and devotional songs popular poetry and traditional acts of ‘Baand Paether’ and ’Ladishah ‘ in our ancestral house situated on the banks of river Vitasta/ Jhelum in Kashmir! With this gesture, he would convey his faith in ‘Kashmiriyat’ and follow his ancestors who enjoyed living a socially and culturally protected life since the 15th century during the golden period of great Sultan Zain-ul-Abidin, alias Badshah Patshah! PRAKASH PANDIT, my late father, was a revolutionary who used to admire his father’s faith in living a contented, peaceful life promoted and protected by the ancestral way of living popularly defined as ‘Kashmiriyat’! And appreciated his claim that dedicated followers of ‘Kashmiriyat’ have rejected ‘Two Nation Theory’ and conveyed a global message of peaceful coexistence! He never hesitated to accept his father’s convictions about human suffering due to clashes during both wars on the borders and riots on roads! But due to his own perceptions about human sufferings and materialistic conceptions about viable remedial rescue solutions, he used to feel more concerned about the slow poisoning of communal conspiracies of discrimination on identification by birth during peace! As such, define economic disasters without caution as more dangerous than bomb explosions despite defensive protections! He used to condemn remote-controlled conspirators who targeted human suffering during the partition of India in 1947! But he used to contradict his father’s perceptions and miraculous expectations in ‘Kashmiriyat’ and his philosophic presumptions and hypothetical assumptions in conceiving materialistic solutions for living a desired life, which they genuinely deserve on their own worth! He was a visionary who used to revive memories of his eye-witnessed events, which revealed the pain of human suffering he shared with his grandfather, who was a dedicated follower of ‘Kashmiriyat’ and admirer of ancient scriptures handwritten in Sharda script! Though he too followed the tradition of worshiping while chanting scriptures with devotion, yet he had an obsession for reading, understanding, and interpreting both allegorical and symbolic verses in materialistic form! My father’s grandfather had an aptitude for converting illustrations in scriptures into descriptions and project descriptions into illustrations! By doing this, he convinced his visionary friends that if the existence of ‘Shiva and Shakti’ is interpreted as ’Matter and Energy’, the scriptures can provide miraculous knowledge for discoveries, inventions, and innovations for living a better life in both ‘Times Now’ and the future! But, his desire to revive the Sharda script, which was intentionally abandoned by biased invaders and communal rulers, was nipped in the bud by admirers of our ancestors! My father had desired to follow his grandfather and justify the need for creative study of ancient scripts written in Sharda for promotion of socio-cultural activities which stimulate perceptions of ‘Kashmiriyat’! He was academically brilliant and had desired to get what he deserved! But neither his higher qualifications nor his abilities of reading, understanding, and translating scriptures written in the Sharda script helped him to get a job as a research officer for research on ancient scriptures preserved as archives for many centuries! He used to convey it with pain that his progressive initiatives were nipped in the bud due to his identification by birth! He was more surprised than shocked when admirers of ancient traditions and dedicated followers of ‘Kashmiriyat’, like his own father, justified the need for reservations and appeasements! And he had to accept the reality that his identity was like an invisible dead weight tagged to a swimmer who was wondering why he was sinking like a stone! He used to convey the global reality that we do not choose ‘Place, Parents and Time’ for our birth, punishments given on identification by birth are cruel! He was convinced that those unarmed, unharmful, peace-loving innocent aborigines who were not economically protected agriculturists, traders, and skilled laborers, but professional educationists, materialist reformers, and promotors of fine arts have been victims of both constitutionally and legally unchallengeable cruel punishments given on identification by birth even in democratic rule! He used to feel alarmed as a son of an influential prosperous dedicated promoter of ‘Kashmiriyat’ and admit that when he cannot fight discrimination due to identification by birth, how can bright children of poor Kashmiri who are not economically protected agriculturists, traders and skilled laborers, but professional educationists, materialist reformers and promotors of fine arts survive when they get punished by constitutionally and legally unchallengeable discriminations on identification by birth even in democratic rule! He never hesitated to accept his father’s convictions that communal conspiracies are more dangerous than bomb explosions! And riots are more dangerous than wars! He too used to blame those remote-controlled inhuman conspirators. who targeted human sufferings during partition of India in 1947! And did appreciate dedicated followers of ‘Kashmiriyat’ for rejecting ‘Two Nation Theory’ and conveying a global message of peaceful coexistence! He accepted ‘Kashmiriyat’ as an undisputed tradition for a non-prejudiced, peaceful socio-cultural coexistence! But he had his own reasons to contradict his father’s miraculous expectations in ‘Kashmiriyat’! He did accept the ancient tradition of living as an inspiration for strengthening socio-cultural bonds! But he had genuine reasons to justify that it does not avoid human sufferings created by appeasements, reservations, and discriminations on identifications of ‘Identity by birth’! He elaborated that such discriminations obstruct the materialistic survival of those who desire to get what they deserve! But when their academic and professional struggle is nipped in the bud, their vulnerability becomes catastrophic! He used to persuade his prosperous father to help the targeted victims in fighting grave human sufferings due to individual catastrophes created by unemployment and underemployment! He believed that ‘Voice of the people is Voice of God’! And initiated a blitz for justice as a victim who has been punished for a crime he has not committed! He highlighted the logic that even those who believe in transmigration of souls and rebirth do not claim to have chosen a place, parents, and time for birth! Thus, he justified that anybody born anywhere on the globe is unaware of the mystery of both birth and death! And would then plead that the religious faith does not create hurdles in living a materialistic life! So it has been a precedent for both masses and classes who have been accepting the religious and cultural lifestyle of ancestors as a precedence for thousands of years. He desired that ‘Kashmiriyat’ must reject such politically sponsored appeasements and support reservations to meritorious and economically depressed Kashmiris for their higher education, skilled professions, and research opportunities for a better life! He persuaded his prosperous father to demand higher educational and professional selections on merit and not on appeasements for identification of identity by birth! But he used to sarcastically reject his logical justifications with explanations and materialistic suggestions! Thus, the dejected visionary and disillusioned revolutionary had no option but to follow his father and his ancestors and reconcile to live a socially and culturally protected but economically compromised contented life in Kashmir till 1990! Those who were aware of his progressive initiatives used to feel more surprised when he followed his ancestral tradition of living a compromised life! And I am the only person who knows the reason why he accepted the reality conveyed by his father in 1948! I want to narrate the reality of an incident, eye-witnessed and shared by my grandfather and father, to my son and grandson as an eye-opening historical truth! WHEN the Pakistan army-sponsored Tribal invaders were just 55 kilometers away from Srinagar airport, my father, aware of the barbaric atrocities of the tribals, persuaded his father to shift to some safe place! But the old man was confident that his neighbors, whom he used to invite to listen to the news bulletin on his battery-operated radio, would protect him and his family! They succeeded in saving the life of the family, but since they were not warriors, they could not stop the unknown intruder who burned my father’s book and collection of ancestral scriptures preserved with a desire to disseminate the knowledge! Both my grandfather and father cried with pain, but my grandfather confronted his son and rejected his plan of shifting to Delhi where he could take advantage of his Vedic knowledge and aptitude for translating Sanskrit verses written in Sharda script! Instead of responding to his son, he welcomed neighbors and conveyed it with pride that the Indian army saved Kashmir and Kashmiri Muslims saved non-Muslims living in both urban and rural Kashmir! Then he paid tributes to Martyr Mohammad Maqbool Sheerwani, who sacrificed his life and dodged the Pakistan army, which could have captured Srinagar airport before the Indian army landed! My grandfather consoled his son and conveyed the historical reality that compromise has been shielding our existence since the golden period of the 15th century! We had to neglect the Sharda script and learn Persian for survival! We are not warriors who could fight for human rights with bullets! We are not a vote bank either, even for the Panchayat poll. We cannot fight for constitutional rights with ballots! My father was wise enough to understand why he was addressing me, his eight-year-old grandson! He wiped his tears and vowed to reconcile and did not cry when we had to leave our ancestral house at midnight without knowing where we were going….. we were compelled to follow the unknown dictations of destiny! Though we had decided to live a compromised life, my grandfather, if alive, would have complimented my grandson for converting his dream of reforming centuries-old static ancestral traditions, which do not provide scope for economic growth for survival, into a reality! He was a follower of the ‘Bhagwat Geeta’ and preached the philosophy of ‘Karma/ deeds’. He was philosophically and logically convinced that those unarmed, unharmful peace-loving masses and classes who do not revolt against the cruelty of inhuman invaders, offenders, and conspirators are sinners! He applauded those targeted inhabitants who explore possibilities of viable alternatives instead of yielding to compulsions or temptations for living a reconciled life under prejudicial dictations, and struggle hard to live a contented life they desire and deserve on their merit and worth to live anywhere, nearer or faraway places! He awakened them to either revolt for reform or migrate to chosen places which provide opportunities of living our ancient traditional socially culturally protected life without the favors of appeasement and fears of getting victimized for cast, color, and creed! KALHAN PANDIT, my grandfather, would have described my grandson’s Australian citizenship as a predestined event dictated by unchallengeable destiny! He believed in ‘Transmigration of souls’ and used to justify it philosophically that all of us are born to live a pre-destined life! He always pleaded both logically and emotionally that we have no other option but to accept both agony and ecstasy of unusual and usual events which are predestined according to our deeds done in previously lived life/lives! And he would have affectionately advised my grandson to hope for the best and be prepared for the worst! Since he believed that our past gives us the courage to face the future, he would have conveyed it sincerely that instead of overplaying his achievement, he must wait and watch what destiny has in store for him! But he would have also conveyed that living in a foreign country is also a compromise! …!!! |
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*Pandit Veerinder Patwari, a retired Civil Engineer from J & K Govt., is an eminent Urdu short story writer with more than 300 short stories published in various reputed Urdu magazines. He has authored 15 books of short stories, dramas, and poetry, in Urdu, English, Hindi, and Kashmiri. He has been a popular television screenwriter for Srinagar Doordarshan in the 1980s and 1990’s. Urdu Academies of Delhi, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir have awarded his work. He was honored with the Shreshta Samaan Harmony India Award in 2022. |
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