This column is about Kashmir.
But not about Article 370 of India’s Constitution and its abrogation, not about the restoration of statehood to the Union territory, or the granting of that status to Ladakh. Nor is it per se about the persistent and vicious threat of terrorism that wants to make a hell of that ‘heaven on earth’.
It is about a small vignette of the Valley I got, of all places, in the departure lounge of toxic Delhi airport’s terminal-two. To take a flight out from T2, masked against the miasma, I entered the departure lounge only to come to a dead halt at its entrance. The place was full. By which I mean it had virtually no seat left for anyone to take. On a good many of them ‘sat’ passengers’ hand luggage, conferring on those smug bags the status enjoyed by the passengers themselves. Moving hesitantly to the nearest such seat, I noticed that next to it sat a cheerful, middle-aged gentleman with a flowing beard matched by flowing clothes.
I must be brutally honest here. Sufficiently conditioned by the fears and prejudices of our time, I hesitated, imagining an Osama bin Laden or one of his type there. Is it okay to engage with him? But my need to sit down being insistent, I rationalised, ‘Fie, you suspecting little oaf… He is a passenger just like I am…’ and, swallowing all hesitation, asked him if the bag could be moved. “Zaroor, janaab” (Of course, Sir), he said, moving the bag readily to his lap. Sitting down, a little abashed at my fears, on the vacated seat, I noticed he was part of a family or group of three comprising two tall gentlemen in flowing clothes, perhaps brothers, and a lady who was perhaps the wife of the older of the two. She was dressed in a very delicately tailored pale green outfit of the kind many Muslim women wear but with her face of uncommon grace wholly uncovered. A minute into my becoming the gentleman’s ‘neighbour’, he asked me, “Aap kahaan se hein? (Where do you hail from?) Giving the answer (Chennai), I reflected on the elegance of that question. He had not asked, ‘Aap kahaan ke hein?’ (Where are you from?), or ‘Aap kahaan rehte hein?’ (Where do you live?) He had asked an all-too-common a question in none-too-common a form.
I returned the question with “Aur aap, janaab… aap kahaan se hein?” (And, Sir, you… where do you hail from?) When he said, “Kashmir”, another set of caddish thoughts ran through my mind: could they be linked to terr… No… how idiotic of me… why should I assume…? I do not exactly know why but something in me made me do a namaskar and say to myself, ‘Stay safe, you good people, may no terrorist stalk you, no soldier have cause to suspect you…’ Then the gentleman said, entirely on his own, elaborating his answer: “Makkaa se laut rahein hein… Yahaan plane badal ke vaapis Srinagar jaa rahein hein” (We are returning from Mecca, changing planes here and going back to Srinagar). And, digging into the bag he had moved from the seat to his lap, he took out a small, wrinkled, round something and, placing it before me, asked, “Aap khajur khaiyegaa?” (Would you care for a date?) Every manner of elitist hesitation raced through my Listerine-washed mind. He had pulled the khajur out of a much-travelled bag with his bare fingers, which had handled trolleys, travel documents, identity cards, mobile phone… Is the khajur safe enough to be put into my mouth? He continued: “Liijiyegaa, Medina se hai…” (Do try one, it is from Medina). With this, I was overwhelmed. Not just by the gesture of pure friendliness but the language. The “gaa” in his “khaiyegaa” and “liijiyegaa” had gone home with me, reminding me of something my maternal grandfather, whose mother tongue was Tamil but who appreciated Hindustani’s nuances, had said to me: “If someone says ‘Aayiye’ (come), he says ‘come’, but when someone says ‘Aayiyegaa’, he is saying ‘please, do come’, showing breeding, culture. There is no English equivalent to ‘gaa’.” My next-seat neighbour had offered the khajur from the fullness of his generous heart and the aristocracy of his wide and deep culture. Chiding myself for my absurd suspicions and hesitancy, I extended both my palms and received the khajur with, “Shukriya, yeh toh prasad hai” (Thank you, this is a holy offering from a place of worship). He did not pay much attention to what I said and would not have, I think, understood ‘prasad’.
That was all. The threesome promptly forgot all about me and continued to do their own thing, extremely pleased with their pilgrimage, extremely comfortable in Delhi’s airport. They were like anyone else in the lounge. And for everyone in the lounge, they were like anyone else. This is what being secular is, I said to myself. This is what Kashmir is about, this is what India is about. A Muslim devout offers a khajur from Medina to a random Hindu, which the Hindu receives respectfully.
And this set in motion in me the following chain of thoughts.
India must do all it is doing to protect the Valley of Kashmir from external violation and internal subversion. It must not allow Pulwama and Pahalgam to be repeated. This readiness may well be called, to coin a phrase, taiyariyat. But this taiyariyat, in order to hold firm, must be buttressed in insaniyat (human-ness) and in the Kashmiriyat that the former prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, famously spoke of, leading to a few unprecedented, original initiatives like —
1. Urging the United Nations Environment Programme to open a major branch in Srinagar to unveil a stunning new programme for nature conservation and climate change mitigation in this part of the world.
2. Starting in the Valley an Open University that invites students from all over the country to register with it for carefully and relevantly chosen themes pertaining to the earth sciences, particularly seismic studies.
3. Have ISRO open a great branch based in Pari Mahal and named after Dara Shukoh, not to shoot projectiles from but to observe planets from the point of view of current astronomical priorities about dating the beginnings, behaviour and the likely futures of celestial spheres on which new breakthrough studies are being made worldwide.
4. Plan to mark the 80th anniversary of India’s independence two years from now, in 2027, with an eco-friendly, non-polluting, non-noisy, non-littering celebration in the Valley, in Jammu and in Ladakh, essentially as a celebration curated by the region, as the ‘helming’ 80th year national event.
5. And finally, in that anniversary year, hold in the rest of India a pageant of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh, showing the greatness, the learning, and the natural grace of this region which has hosted three of India’s great religions.
Terrorism is not going to let go of its India hatred. Its aim is to frustrate our taiyariyat, insaniyat and Kashmiriyat. While our bravehearts in the defence forces maintain taiyariyat, it is the people of India who must do what one single khajur did with me, to uphold our insaniyat and Kashmiriyat, with the simple, natural, uncomplicated grace of the two gentlemen and a lady returning from pilgrimage to their home.