'Chapter One'

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1946. Srinagar. Morning - a very yellow sun rises from a sea of fog.

A sluggish canal flows out of the limpid Dal lake into the deep blue Jhelum river. On its banks stands an immense chenar tree. Tethered under its vast shade, gently rocked by the canal waters, one sees a dunga (cargo boat). A cool morning breeze from the lake gently caresses the foliage above. On the nearby mudcaked waterfront, a host of white waterbirds spread their wings and put on a vigorous show of dance. And at the bow of the dunga, hunched over a little earthen hukkah, sits Old Zainuddin.

The smouldering tobacco in the hukkah emits a strong odor that defiles from time to time the gentle fragrance of the many bundles of deodar twings stacked on the dunga.

"Kashmir Chhodo!" - shouts are suddenly heard in the distance.

Holding the hukkah close, Zainuddin screws up his eyes and looks intensely across the waters at the opposite bank. A crowd has formed there; it moves along the path that wound among birch trees.

"Kashmir Chhodo!" the shouts are more audible, closer, now.

"Quit Kashmir!"- Zainuddin muses, puzzled, bewildered. "Who are they asking to leave Kashmir? The tourists? If so, we are finished! If the visitors go, what do we do but starve?!"

He shakes his head in vexed disapproval.

"Kashmir Chhodo!" - they are now quite close - a crowd about two hundred strong. Famished-looking men in tattered and filthy clothes. They are being led by a fellow who holds aloft a crude flag - a black crescent against a red background.

"The porters!" Zainuddin mutters. "You, see what is going on!" he calls out to his wife who he knows would be in the boathouse.

Amina's head appears thru a hole in the roof. What she sees leaves her shaken: "Don't look that way. Rioters!" she warns.

"Shut up, will you! They aren't rioters or looters! It's old Qasim who leads them. Him, a rioter? Nonsense!" Zainuddin says. Then, he adds, to himself "But, who the hell are they telling to clear out?". He takes a thoughtful puff or two and stands up, watching the crowd.

"Know what? They want the Maharaja and his Dogra troops to leave. That's what they demand!" Amina says to Zainuddin, making sure there was no one else listening.

"As if the Maharaja and his men would simply run away!" He says mockingly, then starts to blow into the hukkah.

"Kashmir belongs to the Kashmiris. The Dogras have illegally taken over it. They have no business here and should quit!" Amina. She is actually repeating words heard from Ahmed, the porter.

"Bullshit! Do we people have guns and soldiers? The Maharaja has them. And are these Dogras some flock of sheep that we could simply them drive out?"

"If every Kashmiri, man and woman, rises as a soldier, these devils will have no choice but to run away!" says Amina, earnestly.

"Hey, who put all this nonsense into your stupid head?" asks the old man, spitting out clouds of smoke.

"Ahmed"

"Oh, that rascal! He should be driven out of here first! Did he give you the one and half rupee that he owes us?"

"No, not yet!"

"That swine should be repaying his debts before feeding you such shit! Thoo!" Zainuddin spits hideaously into the water, then closes his eyes tight and takes a long drag from the hukkah.

"Kashmir Chhodo, Kashmir Chhodo!" cries are now close. Their goat bleats as if echoing the slogan.

"Wonder who is behind all this!" Zainuddin says aloud to himself. As if in answer, a new slogan is heard, from right behind. "Sheik Abdullah Zindabad!" It is Gul Muhammad, the shikara-pilot. He paddles close. "Yes Grandpa, Sheik Abdullah leads this movement!"

"Sheik Abdulla.." Zainuddin stops in a bit of a surprise. "but Sheik is a good man. Very noble. You know Gul, last year I delivered a load of firewood at his place!"

The old man's face now showed some pride. But he still said: "But I don't understand at all what's going on now!"

"Know what Grandpa, we all have lost the power to understand. We have been so badly subjugated and exploited. Its our poor oppressed people - boatmen, porters, traders, peasants - they all now demand their rights, in one voice!"

"Rights? What rights, boy?" asks Zainuddin, stroking his beard.

"This land of Kashmir, its ours - yours and mine, we who were born and bred here. These Dogra encroachers don't belong here. They should leave. We have given them an ultimatum!"

Gul Muhammad takes the hukkah from the old man and has a strong drag, then says: "That's what. If they don't leave, we shall throw them out. The Sheik has raised our war cry: "Kashmir has risen, Oh ye robbers, get lost!"

"But the Maharaja and the Dogras, they have been ruling us for long. So, what's happened now that they have to be expelled? Somehow, I don't like all this rioting!" Zainuddin shakes his head.

"Rioting?! These poor men are no rioters! They are proud rebels. We have been like sheep for long but now have risen like raging wolves. We shall send these Dogras scurrying like jackals to their homes in Jammu!"

"I don't understand at all. In all my sixty years, I haven't seen anything like this!"

"True, Grandpa. The long suffering Kashmiri has risen. He was once asleep like dead winter snow. Now, his anger is an avalanche. Nothing can stop him!"

Suddenly there is a roaring sound. A military truck approaches, fast.

"Here come the jackals!" Gul Muhammad looks in intense anger at the opposite bank.

"Kashmir Chhodo!" slogans.

"Rat-tat-tat...." a rather different kind of sound is heard.

And then a "Dhup!" - a stray bullet has smashed into old Zainuddin's skull just above his ear. Like a log, he splashes headlong into the water. The white birds leave their dance and take off together into the empty sky.


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That was a translation from Malayalam of the story titled 'Aadyathe Adhyayam' ('Chapter One') by S K Pottekkat (1913-1982). He wrote it in 1947! Now, in its platinum year, the story, as old as our Nation, reads as ominous as ever - and nothing is as ominous as its title.

And Pottekkat wrote another story 'Aseesinte kuthira' (Aziz and his horse) where he refers to the wanton gunning down of some "Kashmir Chhodo!" shouting shepherd agitators by the Maharaja's Dogra troops and draws parallels between this incident and the then still fresh memories of the Jalianwala Bagh massacre. By way of intro to my non-Malayali readers, Pottekkat, as he appears in his writings, was a staunch Nationalist and left sympathiser.