Hello, friend! Or should I say, Kon’nichiwa? I ought to. There is no reason to hide my identity from a loyal companion like you. You are not a mukhbir, I believe, and never will be one. You will not rat out the identity and location of this guest of yours, I am sure. I trust you with all my heart. Well then, Kon’nichiwa, my lovely friend!
As you have correctly guessed, I am Japanese. “What is a Japanese radish doing in a Koshur magazine meant for the curious?” you ask. Well, curious you are. Haha! Let me tell you that I am not here by accident. I am not even a tourist. I do not like visiting new places, and marvelling at crystalline waters of lakes and scintillating snow-clad peaks, while turning a blind eye to the peoples and their histories. I do not even like to visit people living in unfortunate circumstances, to offer my patronizing commentary on the abjectness of their situation, and to ‘help’ in broadcasting their plight to the wider world by becoming their self-styled ‘spokesperson’. No, my human friend, that is not in my nature. I am here by invitation. A small community of red radishes from your beautiful, sad country asked me to pay them a visit and exchange ideas and isothiocyanate. So here I am.
In Japan, war is ancient history but its shadow lingers on. We have become friends with and a great ally of the country that tried to nuclear bomb us out of existence. There is nothing wrong with this. Wars are temporary. Humanity is permanent. What is wrong is that a new war can never be ruled out. It is like an earthquake; we don’t know when it will come; we hope it never does, but, deep under the tectonic plates of our heart, we can hear its unmistakable, inevitable groan. China is rising. America wants to stop it. We might be used as a whiplash in this war by our old tormentor and now best friend.
I grew up among the Ainu people just outside a town in Hokkaido, Japan’s second largest island. It is a small place by the banks of a lake. There is no hustle and bustle of big cities. There is an equilibrium between an ancient culture and cutting-edge modernity. I love it. The idyllic settings meant I had a lot of free time at hand. I used it to imbibe Japanese culture, because one must first study the things closest to oneself. Once I had gained a certain mastery—forgive me for being immodest— over Japanese culture and history, I began to delve into the prevailing situation and past of other regions. I became interested in the Chinese civilization. From there I was led to Tibet. From Tibet I was led to Kashmir. It was like an intellectual journey on the silk route of footnotes.
Wasabi is a Japanese radish of Brassicaceae family. It is hot in taste, stimulating the nose rather than the tongue. It is believed to have anti-microbial and antiinflammatory effects. It is eaten raw in salads, pickled or fried into chips but it is mostly famous for its paste, made from the ground rhizomes, which is an integral part of the delicious sushi and other Japanese foods
The first thing that struck me about Kashmir was the similarities of the topography to the place of my birth. The mountains, the lakes, it all seemed like a watery mirror reflection. I wanted to understand how radishes in Kashmir dealt with snow. It is a big deal where I grew up. Snow is a leaf killer. We like to burrow into the soil when merely the rumours of snow start to abound. How do Kaeshri mujji deal with it? In search of an answer to this question, I came into contact with some of them. I found their email addresses on the internet and wrote them mails. Their responses stunned me. We Japanese are famous for our hospitality. But the warmth and affection with which the Kaeshri radishes responded to my emails was something else. They promptly invited me to pay them a visit. Then they kept sending emails, insisting, even demanding, that I visit. It was all so sweet of them.
I could resist the temptation of such persevering invitation only upto a point. Finally, I boarded a vegetable pick-up truck to a supermarket in Sapporo, Hokkaido’s biggest city. It was a bumpy ride. At the supermarket, I had to shamelessly display myself on a shelf under unforgivingly bright lights, cramped for room among dozens of other radishes, some travelling to America in the hope of seeing the insides of Hollywood, others on their way to Paris, the Riviera, Istanbul and other fancy places. I cannot tell definitely if that was the moment I hated market capitalism the most.
Finally, I saw a Koshur guy talking over his cell phone. When I say “saw”, I mean I recognized him by his booming voice. He was so loud that he could be heard across the long aisles of the supermarket!
I discreetly dropped myself into his trolley. Once he was home and I was safely tucked into the refrigerator, I could hear him tell his mother over Skype that he was planning to book his return tickets for a Friday. His mother replied that it was a bad omen to travel upwards on a Friday. He laughed, saying these were ancient superstitions, but eventually relented. I liked that. Superstition or not, he made his mother happy and that is what counts. I was also happy that we would be travelling to Kashmir soon. My plan was coming together.
Kashmiri red radish belongs to Raphanus raphanistrum family. If it is watered on 22 September, it tastes sweet after it ripens. However, if not watered on that date, it will taste hot
Finally, he booked a ticket for a Sunday. Soon enough, we were on our way to Kashmir. Sure enough, the Koshur guy was taking me along as an exotic gift. Our journey to New Delhi was uneventful. From New Delhi, we boarded another flight to Srinagar. In her announcements, the flight stewardess kept referring to it as “Shrinagar”. Every time someone mispronounces words, particularly names, the errorists win. I could bite her tongue off.
At Srinagar, a friend of my co-traveller was waiting for him in his car. They hugged each other with such warmth that it renewed my faith in humanity. My host lived some 30 km away from Srinagar. Soon we were on the road, crawling between checkposts. There were so many soldiers covering every inch of the land that you wouldn’t believe every Koshur was not a combatant. We were lucky at the first few checkposts, but were eventually stopped by the soldiers who demanded that my host and his friend show them IDs, which they promptly did. A few checkposts later, we were stopped again and this time they not only asked for IDs, but checked the luggage as well. I saw that the search party was led by a sharp, young officer with a well-groomed moustache. But he was definitely an Indian, not a Koshur. When his eyes fell on me, he promptly asked, in a tone that seemed like an unholy alliance between vulgarity and anger, “Tu kis khet ki mooli hai?”
I turned red under my leaves. It was a very humiliating experience, compared to which being displayed on a supermarket’s shelves seemed like an honour. I swallowed my anger and produced my papers, which were examined disdainfully. Finally, the ordeal was over and we were allowed to move on.
The question kept ringing in my tuber—tu kis khet ki mooli hai? I couldn’t sleep that night and kept turning from one side to the other— “tu kis khet ki mooli hai?”
Finally, I stood up just before dawn and decided that something needed to be done.
I met my Kaeshir radish friends. We exchanged notes. I told them about my humiliating experience. They heard patiently but brushed aside my reaction with a smile.
What had happened to me was a commonplace occurrence in Kashmir, they told me. They also told me to thank my lucky stars it was not worse; much, much worse. In Kashmir, radishes were sliced with a butter knife simply for the crime of being radishes. I was surprised to see how easily violence and humiliation Could be normalized. But I could not take it lying down.
Through a local underground rhizoidal network, I found my way to one of the upmarket restaurants by the banks of the Dal lake in Srinagar; you know, the kind to which only rich and powerful Indians and their Kaeshir clients have access. There I waited patiently till I spotted a military officer with his beau. She was all dolled up and he had something in his clenched fist. Probably a ring. This was my opportunity. I lay still as I was taken to their table. The girl saw my creamy texture and thought I was some harmless mayonnaise-like substance. She lifted a spoonful out of the bowl I had planted myself in and took it to her lover’s mouth. Like an idiot, he opened his mouth wide and gulped it all. I could see the stupid expression of puppy love just before my chemical anger hit his nose. He was momentarily knocked out and the ring fell from his hand, producing a distinct metallic clink on the floor. Then it made a beeline for the lake even as a waiter—a nice, young Kashmiri boy caught in the wrong job—hared off after it. But the ring won the race. An engagement ring was added to the blood-addled lake.
“My name is wasabi and I am not your salad,” I wrote on the slate of the officer’s mind, using his tears as ink.
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