A hot summer day, with no usual cacophony of the peacocks –which has been an integral part of every hostel in the university –but the creaky ceiling fan that had not been greased for decades and there I was lying in my bed. Another pesky sound that was smashing the silence of the room was the one made by the snores of my roommate. It was a tradition in our university hostel to sleep till noon after Sehri; some after offering the obligatory Fajr and most of us without wasting a moment after two to three rounds of unpalatable Cholapuri, a signature trait of hostel dining halls across India.
With countless second thoughts, donning a monstrous yawn I entered the washroom. The stench was excruciating. I rushed out and jumped into another. We had six ill maintained washrooms with broken washbasins and leaking taps.
Toilets are the best places where ideas come in my mind. I have heard stories that the ideas behind some famous inventions of the modern world and many mathematical theorems were born in toilets. Who doesnt know about Archimedes’ famous ‘Eureka’ cry! I can’t stand anyone who disagrees with the fact that toilets are the only places on this planet where no one can disturb us particularly when we relieve ourselves comfortably on the ‘western style’ seats. In our part of the world these ‘seats’ signify affluence and elite culture.
Within ten minutes I was sitting in Absar’s room. Absar was lucky enough or, like we used to say behind his back, politically strong enough to get a single bedded room in the hostel. Our hostel had a few such rooms which were allotted to the rich and well-connected-with-the-corridors-of-university-political-spaces students only. The pride we used to derive from the fact that one of our friends occupies one such room goes unsaid. It was not an empty gratification but an actual stream of benefits that flowed down every time that particular address was cited. Some teachers too used to be extra polite while dealing with such students. There was a story doing rounds in the college that Absar had managed his admission through some special quota and that his uncle was identified with an assemblage characterised as the hurriyat –a group seen as an advocate of an alternate socio-cultural and political identity. In fact his uncle had come to our college once in a long sedan car with three to four Kurta Pyjama and Karakul wearing gentlemen with him.
Absar was looked upon as a religious boy, though he too was the one who skipped Fajr that day and never offered Tarawi. There was an impression that his family members had never voted in any of the elections except once when one of their relatives fought it unsuccessfully. Later on, to appease him so that he wont re-join the separatist faction, a mainstream political party nominated him for the legislative council. Absar told me that he had shifted to Australia after completing his tenure in the council. No one in Absar’s family applied for government jobs and they were against doing business.
They believed that one can’t remain honest and can’t earn halal rozi in business. With no known source of income Allah had shown great benevolence towards his family as they had a mansion in Kashmir and two houses in Jammu where they used to shift during winters. Earlier they had a house at Gujjarnagar but later on his father and uncle had constructed another big house which span on around two kanals of land at Bathindi. Absar’s youngest uncle was an imam in a local mosque in Srinagar and people used to visit him often as they believed that Peer Saeb had a direct connection with Allah. Though Peer Saeb never charged for the photocopies of the taweez he offered to his mureeds yet his men had kept a donation box near the main gate which was guarded by police. It was obligatory for all the visitors to give donations, the amount being voluntary, for the humanitarian work which Peer Saeb’s team had taken up in some unknown surrounding villages.
Even on the slightest provocation, Absar would recite verses from the Quran and most of the times decipher them into customized Kashmiri versions, every new translation differing from the earlier one- the frequency of doing so being contingent on the exigency in hand. I realise it now that he had memorised around a dozen verses and that he used to relate these verses with any topic under the sky. Absar was the only son of his parents who wanted him to become a software engineer. Absar had told us once in the class that he had some relatives in the USA and as soon as his degree was over he would shift abroad and settle there. He had a strange liking for the English girls and thus had planned to marry a meem.
His elder sister was doing M.Sc. in Chemistry from the University campus near their kothi. She seemed to be an intelligent girl, given that she spoke fluent English whenever she video-called Absar on his i-phone. It was later found that she had done her schooling from Convent and though not very good in studies managed to pass her college. Absar told me once, with tears in his eyes, that during her final examination she was diagnosed with jaundice and got bed ridden for a month. Sadly she couldn’t appear in the final exams yet by God’s grace she passed with second division.
Absar had a trimmed beard and he never forgot to comb and oil his hair with Dabur Amla. Most of the times, he used to wear imported shoes and loose formal dresses. He made it sure to wear a skullcap whenever he was out.
I knocked at his door and with a ‘get in’ command I entered. I sat in his bed which had two bed-sheets on it- one in simple cotton and the other an expensive shineel. Without any intention of conversation we started talking casually but soon the discussion converged to Kashmir issue, Absar’s favourite. As he was from Srinagar, he started to narrate the heroic tales of the Kashmiri boys who sacrificed their lives for the ‘movement’. He talked high of them and urged that more boys should join the rebels to fight the tyrant. Absar narrated a verse from the Quran and translated it for me that it was obligatory for all the believers to wage a war against tyranny. Though it struck my mind that in one of the previous discussions on pollution he had quoted the same verse with an entirely different meaning yet I did not dare to question.
Our conversation turned more serious when Shahid joined us. Shahid was from a middle class family whose father was a clerk in some government department. Shahid’s family too had a small house in Sidra, Jammu but he was against shifting to Jammu during winters. He told me once that he feels compelled to accompany his family to Jammu as he had no other option. Shahid had a poetic outlook and belonged to the highly revered Syed family.
Shahid was from Pulwoam and he loved to shop at Gandhinagar and City Square as he believed that these were the best places for shopping.
As he too started adding to Absar’s rant against the ‘occupiers’ I kept listening with full attention till it was broken by Absar’s question, “Why have no boys from your area joined the movement? You people too should have contributed to it like us”.
I was about to answer when Shahid interrupted in his usual straightforward and no non sense tone, “Why should they join? They are not Kashmiris”.
Both of them grinned as I gathered words to speak, “What do you know about my area?”
Now both of them looked at each other and laughed.
“What is there to know? Jammu is Kachi hai Chawni to Pakka hai Danga“.
Before I could tell them that I am not from Jammu, that I too speak Kashmiri like them, that there are thousands of people other than Dogras and Kashmiris who live in this state, that I have answers to their questions, Shahid got up and said, “Kashmir is up to Jawahar Tunnel. On the other side is Jammu”. While saying this he left the room and I could hear him saying, “You two wasted my time. I was going to have my breakfast….”
