The Non-Conformist

by Parikshat Sahni

  So it was with Dad. Wherever he was, he always pined for Kashmir. Some of our closest relatives (cousins, uncles and aunts) lived near us in Wazir Baugh. So for us Kashmir was as much a home as Pindi. But topographically, culturally, linguistically and spiritually (Kashmir, known as the land of the Sufis), it was a different world altogether. The people were different. They spoke a different language, dressed differently and lived differently, as it is with every state in India, with its diversity of customs, languages and way of life, which is is truly mind-boggling.

  Although the Muslims were in the majority, they lived in peace and amity with the Hindus, Sikhs and Christians. Kashmir had been blessed with heavenly beauty, which was mirrored in the way the residents spread love and brotherhood among each other. It was indeed an abode of peace. No wonder Amir Khusrau called it a ‘paradise on earth.’

  Dad, like all who see it, loved the natural beauty of Kashmir, but what was closest to his heart were the Kashmiri people—the houseboat owners, the shikara-walas, the artisans, carpet-makers and the people in general, irrespective of their religion. He considered religion an anachronism anyway!

  Even after having made a home in Bombay to pursue his career, Dad could not keep away from Kashmir for too long. It remained his first love. Every time he had a few days off, he would head for his beloved valley. He was a man who loved nature; city life was anathema to him and he found it asphyxiating. I don’t think he ever liked life in Mumbai. Even if he had only two days off, he would get out of Mumbai and leave for some hill station nearby. Usually it was Matheran or Khandala. Matheran is a picturesque, thickly wooded table-land with steep slopes at a height of three or four thousand feet in the Sahyadri Range. A small toy train takes one up the mountain to it. But rarely did Dad take the train. He walked five or six kilometres up the steep bridle path through the forests instead. Khandala is a beautiful hill station in the Western Ghats, known for its hiking trails—a perfect place for Dad.

  However, while these hill stations offered temporary respite from a busy schedule in Mumbai, it was Kashmir that beckoned Dad. It was in Gulmarg that he recharged his batteries and rejuvenated himself. Gulmarg is breathtakingly beautiful and is situated in the mountains at a height of about seven thousand feet with undulating downs flanked by thick coniferous forests. Gulmarg means ‘the abode of flowers’ and indeed it is resplendent with wild flowers that grow abundantly on its downs and hills. Above Gulmarg towers the Zabarwan, a great mountain range whose highest peak, the Mahadev peak, stands at about 13,000 feet, and is perennially clad in snow. Dad spent as much time as his work in Mumbai afforded him in Gulmarg, holed up in the Nedous Hotel, where he did most of his writing. He carried his bulky Remington typewriter with him wherever he went and wrote from early morning till lunch, and after a light lunch and a short siesta, he would go for long walks, some of which culminated in Khilan Marg, which was a couple of miles above Gulmarg, half way up the Zabarwan mountain range.

  Khilan was a godforsaken place in the 50s and 60s and even in the 70s, and boasted a solitary ramshackle dhaba where a Sardar-ji sold tea and freshly fried pakoras. After a trek to Khilan, Dad would rest a bit, chat with the Sardar-ji, share a cup of tea with him and then proceed to climb up Zabarwan. It was a daunting climb, but not one to deter Dad. He often said that his soul belonged to these mountains. Although he did not believe in religion or in God, he found peace in this environment, where he felt at one with nature. Perhaps at some spiritual level his spirit merged with the creator here, bringing him a sense of completeness and fulfilment.

  Whenever he came across a mountain stream (of which there were plenty; always freezing cold because they flowed straight down from the snowy mountains), he would look around to see if anyone was watching, then disrobe and take a dip in the stream au naturel. Whenever I accompanied him on his treks, he would often cajole me into joining him, advising me to do so also because ‘it makes one feel so free.’ I did not have his verve or his sense of exuberant abandonment, but felt compelled to follow suit. I never quite learnt to adopt his lack of self-consciousness about his nakedness, but went around unclothed with him, pretending an ease I seldom felt. Needless to say, my teeth chattered for hours after those icy dips, which would only amuse Dad! Dad did the same thing when swimming in the sea in Mumbai. He would take off his swimming trunks and put them around his neck and swim freely in an easy and graceful crawl far into the sea, grunting with pleasure.

  I remember the days I spent with Dad in Gulmarg with a nostalgic ache, in particular the long walks and climb to Khilan. The serenity of the hills, the mesmerizing vistas, the heavenly meadows and the meandering streams, they all gave us an overwhelming sense of peace and harmony, with each other and with nature. It was truly a deeply spiritual experience, which I have never been able to replicate anywhere or with anyone other than Dad.

  Being an avid photographer, Dad carried his camera with him wherever he went and photographed any and everything that caught his eye—the deep coniferous forests, the wild flowers growing in the glades, the streams flowing down the mountainsides. And he discussed every topic that came to his mind with me.

  One day, we came across an unpleasant sight while on our evening walk. Two pony owners, for some unknown reason, were fighting, lashing out at one another with their whips. I was unnerved at this sight. It looked like these two were hell bent on killing one another. Their faces and arms were lacerated and were bleeding profusely. There was no one around; Dad walked up to them and tried to pacify them, but they paid no heed to him. He implored them to stop and listen to him, but they were in a towering rage and kept whipping one another mercilessly. In their frenzy, one whiplash accidentally landed on Dad and tore his shirt sleeve, leaving an ugly mark on his forearm. Finding that the two were implacable, Dad backed off. He looked very sad as he stared at them for a while, oblivious of his own pain.

  ‘Come,’ Dad said to me and we walked off. He was quiet for a while, paying little attention to the whiplash he had received on his forearm. He was pensive and sounded dismal when he finally spoke, ‘I am sure the cause of this fight must be quite trivial. This is what poverty does to people. The sad part is that they are ignorant of the root cause of their troubles—exploitation! They have not yet guessed the reason for their poverty and understood who is responsible for it. That is capitalism for you! The poverty-stricken working classes in India are blissfully unaware of the reason why they are starving. The Hindus blame it on karma and their actions in their past lives. These poor fellows are illiterate and have never given a thought to who is exploiting them. They are not aware that just across those mountains lies the Soviet Union, where poverty and exploitation have ceased to exist; where there is equality and justice. When will there be a revolution in India?’

  Whatever happened, sooner or later Dad would return to the philosophy of Marx and Engels and the example of the Soviet Union. That was his answer to every social ill. He walked on, cogitating on what he had seen for a while, but his dark mood soon lifted as he pronounced the final conclusion, ‘There will be a revolution in India one day for sure. It is the law of dialectics!’

  I don’t think Dad’s love of the working class and the poorer sections of society was only because of the Marxist philosophy. I think his empathy was the natural outcome of his innate compassion and ‘love of mankind’ as he called it.

  Whenever Dad went to Gulmarg, the poor and bedraggled pony-owners (the pony being the main mode of transport in Gulmarg) flocked to meet him. He knew each of them by name. He listened to their problems and distributed money among them. He did the same with the shikara-walas on the Dal Lake. And they in turn considered him their own. The last time I was in Srinagar and walked down the Boulevard, the boatmen recognized me and spoke about Dad, ‘Wo to hamaare apne the!’ (He was our very own!) They knew him well and remembered him fondly.

  For Dad, Srinagar mainly meant the Dal Lake and the Mughal Gardens that dotted the banks of the lake; this was where he headed whenever he
was in Srinagar. Blessed with incredible stamina, he would swim from one end of the Dal Lake to the other, from Gagribal Point to the Shalimar Gardens, a distance of almost three miles, while a shikara always coasted alongside him. As usual, he swam at a slow and graceful crawl, with his swimming trunks around his neck. I often swam with him, but I could never keep up with him. It took me hours to swim from one end of the lake to the other!

  The shikara that followed Dad usually carried a picnic basket with a bottle of beer, some food and a thermos flask of hot tea. After the swim, he would offer the shikara-wala a cup of hot tea and some food from the picnic basket, paying him handsomely, and chat amicably with him. He did the same with the houseboat owners on the Jhelum and the Dal Lake. Such simple pleasures gave him unalloyed joy as no amount of wealth or fame ever could; he loved life as I have never seen anyone love it before or since. He lived in the ‘now’ and in the moment, enjoying every minute of his day. Even after reaching the acme of success, Dad retained his love for the masses, with whom he mingled wherever and whenever he could.

  Looking back, those days are forever etched on my own soul as special times when I bonded with Dad more than I ever did at any other time or place. Kashmir, especially Gulmarg, remains forever associated with him. I truly believe that his soul dwells there and it is there that I feel most connected with him. The lakes, the mountains, the very air speak to me whenever I go there, which is seldom now, but even memories of the place are enough to evoke a sense of his presence around me.

  I spent most of my childhood in Srinagar. And Mummy, who passed away in her mid-nineties in 2017 (leaving behind an emptiness which I cannot fill), like the rest of us, was born and brought up in Kashmir. Like Dad, she didn’t like the plains very much. She pined for her lost home night and day, and stared long and hard at pictures and postcards of the valley in her album till the end of her life.

  Fate, however, had decreed that none of our family would live in their beloved land. Three of my female cousins (daughters of Vedvati-ji, Dad’s sister who died early and whom I never saw), now in their eighties, were also forced to settle in Delhi and Bombay after they got married, could never reconcile themselves to living away from their beloved Kashmir. The three of them have bought a plot of land just outside Srinagar, which resplendent with chinar trees, and it is their last wish that they be buried (and not cremated) there to become part and parcel of the soil of Kashmir after they have breathed their last.

  So it was with Bhrata-ji, Mummy’s older (and only) brother. He was 100 years old when he died and his last wish was that he be cremated in Kashmir and his ashes be immersed in the Dal Lake. Usha-ji, the eldest of the three sisters, died in early 2017. It was a great loss to the family. She was like a wellspring of love—a great banyan tree under whose shade we all found comfort and rest. She pined for Kashmir, like the rest of us, all her life. We tried our best to carry out her last wishes and to lay her to rest in her beloved valley under the chinar trees she so loved, but were not allowed to go to Srinagar because the city was in turmoil and under curfew. We kept her ashes at home for almost a month till a pundit told us that her soul would not rest in peace till we had carried out her last wishes. There were debates and arguments about what should be done. I volunteered to go to Srinagar, but this was out of question. A senior army officer stationed in Srinagar told me over the phone that I would not be allowed by the army to go beyond the airport. It was finally decided that half her ashes should be immersed in the Arabian Sea and the rest be preserved till the time was right to take them to Srinagar and bury them in Kashmir.

  Dad was not an emotional man, or so I thought. Neither was he overtly sentimental. He hated tears. Yet, it was in Srinagar that I saw him crying for the first time. In those days, Hindi films tended to be ultra-sentimental, with actors hamming it up. There was much crying and wailing in the overdone emotional scenes. Glycerine was used at the least pretext (to bring artificial tears to the eyes). Dad didn’t like this. He felt that people wept too much in Hindi films. ‘The actor should perform the scene honestly and truthfully without any artificial aids or wailing and weeping for effect. If he performs a scene honestly, it is the audience that will weep,’ he would say. There were actors who even used glycerine to bring a shine to their eyes. I don’t remember Dad crying or wailing in any film and turning emotional scenes into maudlin affairs. He refused to use glycerine as far as I can remember. And I have said, he hated tears, so much so that he seldom shed them even in films.

  But, to every rule there is an exception. One of my cousins, Harshi-ji, who has been the closest to me since early childhood, taking on the mantle of older sister, mother, guide, philosopher and friend, got married in Srinagar. But her marriage was no ordinary one, and thereby hangs a tale. Unlike the love marriages of her two older sisters (Usha-ji and Prabha-ji), Harshi-ji’s was an arranged marriage. She was Dad’s favourite niece. Innumerable photographs were scrutinized before Harshi-ji chose her husband. In the photograph that Harshi-ji liked—of a man called Kuldip Anand—the young man looked like a swashbuckling knight in shining armour. He was extraordinarily handsome in the turban and gabardine suit that he was wearing.

  Harshi-ji was however somewhat apprehensive (as any girl in an arranged marriage usually is) about spending the rest of her life with a man she was not acquainted with. She was on tenterhooks. Matters were made worse when Kuldip-ji wrote his first letter to her in English. It was a well-written and perfectly worded letter without a single grammatical mistake, and written with great erudition and flourish. This unnerved Harshi-ji even more. She could barely speak any English, let alone write it. She wrung her hands and went into a tailspin of worry and anxiety.

  Dad noticed this and asked her what the matter was. Harshi-ji showed him Kuldip-ji’s letter and confessed that she didn’t know how to reply in English, and that if she replied in Punjabi she would be taken for an illiterate woman. I was doing my BA in English literature at the time. Dad asked her to dictate the letters to me in Punjabi and asked me to translate and write them in English for her. I agreed and after that it was our own rendition of the story of Cyrano de Bergerac, a play by the French dramatist Edmond Rostand, in which an ugly-looking man with an enormous nose writes love letters on his friend’s behalf to his beloved, as a result of which, his beloved falls in love with the letters! Carried away by my recently acquired knowledge of literature, I quoted liberally from Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley and Byron in the letters Harshi-ji dictated to me in Punjabi—and the letters were a hit! I believe Kuldip-ji was bowled over.

  It was the day before the marriage was to be solemnized that Harshi-ji saw Kuldip-ji face to face for the first time. In his photographs, he had worn a turban and looked dashing. In real life, he was not too tall, a little on the thin side and completely bald. Harshi-ji was stunned. She was so upset that she told Dad about it. He pointed out to her that it was too late now to call off the marriage and that she should not go just by looks. She reluctantly acceded to his counsel and went through with the wedding.

  Dad’s advice proved to be right. Kuldip-ji turned out to be a wise man and a loving husband, and later, an ideal father; Harshi-ji has been supremely happy since her marriage. She gave birth to three sons who are now strapping young men to be proud of. They have done extremely well in life and are at the very peak of their professions. Not that the children of the other sisters are any less successful. All three sisters have been blessed with extraordinarily gifted children.

  It was at Harshi-ji’s wedding ceremony that I saw Dad weeping for the first time in my life. When she was getting into the doli (palanquin) and taking one last look at our ancestral home, Dad broke down. He had remained calm till then. When I saw him weeping, it shook me up. For me, Dad had always been a pillar or strength. I could not, for the life of me, associate tears with him. I was so moved that I left the marriage cortege, rushed into the bathroom and bawled like a child.

  The second time I saw Dad crying was many years later when he visit
ed me in Shiv Teerth, the building I was staying in temporarily on Warden Road. He sat in the drawing room, sharing a drink together and listening to Ghalib’s ghazals on the tape recorder. Dad sat with his eyes closed and repeated the words of the ghazal, ‘Mushkilen itni padi mujh par ke aasaan ho gayeen.’ (I have had to face so many difficulties that it became easy for me to bear them.) He suddenly burst into tears as he said this. I looked at him, failing to understand the reason for his tears or the import of Ghalib’s words. In those days, I was bereft of the finer emotions and sentiments of mankind and took his tears as a sign of weakness. But I understand them now that I am almost twenty years older than he was at that time.

  Return to Kashmir

  I returned to my beloved valley in 1968 for the shooting of a film called Shayar-e-Kashmir Mahjoor, which was inspired by and was based on the life of the eminent Sufi poet, Ghulam Ahmed Mahjoor, one of Dad’s closest friends. He was a great poet who later received the appellation of Shayar-e-Kashmir—National Poet of Kashmir. When he was in Moscow with a delegation the year before, Dad had told me about this film that he was planning to make with the help of the Government of Kashmir. He had told me the story of Mahjoor Saheb’s life already. Not only is the story interesting, it goes a long way in proving Dad’s emotional and sensitive nature.

  One day, during one of his sojourns in Srinagar, Dad heard someone singing a melodious song in the street. On inquiring from a man, he was told that the song had been written by his boss, a man named Mahjoor. He told Dad that was how Mahjoor Saheb reached the people of Kashmir. The songs had such a deep impact on Dad that he sought out Mahjoor Saheb and arranged a meeting. He was profoundly impressed when he heard the translations of Mahjoor Saheb’s poems. Gradually, the two of them became close friends. Dad admired his poetry, but rued the fact that he refused to have his songs and poetry published. It was Mahjoor Saheb’s contention that since the local population was largely illiterate, the best way to get through to them was to write songs and have bards sing them through the length and breadth of the valley. The idea was to reach the people and inspire them—in the best traditions of oral literature.