[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n a world, constantly in a state of flux, human beings are often thrown into different situations from time to time, by conflict and war, that bring about paradigm shifts in their experiences. It is there that an artist’s role comes into play when they use art to lend voice to experiences that would otherwise be undermined or forgotten. The recent English translation of Kashmiri short stories titled Rupture: The Stories of Sorrows of Kashmir is one such medium of expression in which Rattan Lal Shant has preserved the poignant experiences of Kashmiri Pandits in exile and Javaid Iqbal Bhat has added value to the works by translating them into English. Although this is neither the first nor the last literary work from the conflict-ridden territory of Kashmir, the way in which Shant has weaved loss, longing, nostalgia, and trauma to portray the collective tragedy of Kashmir is unique. The book is an essential read to understand one of the tragedies from the conflict in Kashmir—the migration of Pandits from Kashmir.

Mostly written against the backdrop of the Kashmir of 1990s and a little after that, the stories revolve around the Kashmiri Pandits, before and after their migration from the vale of Kashmir to the slopes of Jammu, to bring home the ordeal of their migrant experiences and the resultant quandaries that they have carried with them, following their hasty departure from Kashmir, “in the darkness,” “soon after Sehri” (Shant 51). The stories provide a very close perspective of their lived experiences and, as Kapil Kapoor puts it in the foreword to the collection, “explore the fabric which began to fray at the edges [in the early 90s] and is now in tatters” (Kapoor ix). The first two stories of the collection set the atmosphere before the migration of Pandits and depict the pastoral rural life of the ordinary people sharing an intimate bond with one another. The rest of the collection, largely set in hot and dry Jammu, provides a stark contrast to the former reposeful serenity. The characters can be seen caught up in an exilic quagmire that ruptured their lives and relations with one another and with their ancient homeland.

Each story brings the reader in close proximity to the lives of the characters to reflect on the challenges a refugee faces both at a physical as well as at a spiritual level. The loss of one’s home and the challenges that come with establishing oneself in Pardes[1], especially when the available resources are meagre, have been substantially explored. Shant has powerfully conveyed the correlation of the protagonist with his land and his bond with the environment that he grows up in by showcasing how ‘place’ gains a novel significance for the Pandits in exile. As Bill Ashcroft, et al. maintain:

.

The references to the geographical features of Kashmir take the characters of the stories down a memory lane to their villages in Kashmir with profound psychological effects that lead to a nostalgic longing for a land that could now only be desired. In the story “Air,” while on a trip to Kashmir, Omkar Nath wishes “that he could take this air [from Kashmir] in his kidneys to hot Jammu and there distribute it evenly among his exiled people” (Shant 45). Likewise, in “Panj Tantra” Bodhrajj is filled with a wishful longing of going back to his native village in Kashmir just to handover “the custody of his white-spotted cow” to his childhood friends “Obula and Hassan” (Shant 95). This continuous longing for their lost motherland while simultaneously not being ready to go back accumulates in the form of trauma that the characters must live with. Shant shows how the characters try to find some meaning in their lives, amid the trauma, by the sense of community that they strongly hold among themselves and the memories of their native lands that they constantly rely back to.

Gauri Shauri is one of the important characters in the collection who stands as an epitome of hope amid despondency. Through her character, Shant brings forth a fascinating theme of finding meaning in seemingly small acts of life and giving a purpose to the lives of migrants in an alien land and culture. She has stuffed a small stone (along with her husband’s bank passbook), which she calls her deity, in her trunk that she has carried all the way from Kashmir to Jammu. This small stone carries an immense cultural significance for her, and she does not want to lose it. It reminds one of the following lines from a poem by Agha Shahid Ali that he wrote in view of the migration of Kashmiri Pandits:

By that dazzling light
we see men removing statues from temples.
we beg them, “Who will protect us if you leave?”
They don’t answer, they just disappear
on the road to the plains, clutching the gods.  
(Ali Agha 1998, 25)

Throughout the story, Gauri Shauri finds herself struggling to build a small temple for the refugee camp where she would keep that deity of hers. In her mission to build a temple, Shant highlights how Kashmiri communities would not betray their cultural legacies even if they are cut off from those cultural roots. Gauri Shauri asks for her last wish to be fulfilled through the planting of a chinar (maple tree) next to the temple as in her native village, back in Kashmir, as she recalls “one umbrella-like chinar” would provide “shade to Div Shuir[2]” (Shant 133).

Shant has not disregarded the communal harmony that existed between the Muslim and Hindu community of Kashmir before the migration of Pandits. Each story throws light on the existence of a strong bond of compassion that is shared by both the communities. This book, being written by a Kashmir Pandit with first-hand experience of the events that occurred before and after the migration, attempts to humanise communities. The stories attempt to dismantle the fake narratives and concocted tales that have been spreading misinformation against the Kashmiri Muslims in view of the migration of their Pandit patrons. Love and affection between the displaced people and the ones left behind dominate the scene throughout the stories. In “Water,” we see how Rasheed literally begs Kishan Lal and his wife Duura to stay in their house that they left behind ten years ago. Rasheed, who has lost his own son to the conflict and has a traumatized daughter Tasleema still hoping that her brother will come back, has been guarding their empty house over the past decade. On the flip side, the Pandit couple is no longer interested in living in their house anymore; they don’t even feel tempted to enter the house for a moment. The emptiness of their house has been haunting their age-old Kashmiri Muslim neighbour Rasheed’s family ever since they left, but they themselves stand unmoved:

Shant has succeeded in showing that the tragedy of Kashmir has shattered the lives of both the Muslim as well as the Hindu communities. The stories uphold the values of integrity and compassion and send forth the ripples of love and kindness to mend the ruptures caused by bigotry and betrayal.

In his “ABC’s of Translation,” Willis Barnstone propounds that “the notion of an exact or perfect translation is impossible,” and goes on to say that “a translation is not an exact copy. A copy is impossible” (Barnstone 12). Yet Javaid Iqbal Bhat has taken upon himself to convey as best as possible both the mood and essence of the original Kashmiri language to English. Translation is an act of close reading in which the translator offers the finest interpretation that retains the substance and conveys the theme to a wider audience. As such, Bhat has done what any good translator is supposed to do. There is a deep flavor of the original text emanating from the translation.

by Rattan Lal Shant presents an important addition to refugee narratives in the context of South Asia. Anyone interested in understanding the pain of the Kashmiri pandits and their dream of a lost homeland must definitely read this collection. In times to come, perhaps no discussion on the multiple tragedies from war-struck Kashmir will be complete without a reference to this collection.

Works Cited:

Ali, Agha Shahid. The Country Without a Post Office. W. W. Norton & Company. 1998.

Aschcroft Bill, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin. Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. 2007.

Barnstone, Willis. “ABC’s of Translation.” Translation Review, 2022, Vol. 112, No.1, 12–13.

Kapoor, Kapil. Foreword. Rupture: Stories on the Sorrows of Kashmir, by Rattan Lal Shant. Translated and edited by Javaid, Iqbal., Oxford University Press, 2022. pp.  ix-xi.

Shant, Rattan. Rupture: Stories on the Sorrows of Kashmir. Translated and edited by Javaid, Iqbal. Oxford University Press. 2022.

Endnotes:

[1] Alien land
[2] Her Hindu deity

About the Book

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Rupture is one long love letter to a partially lost relationship. The text resonates with a frail longing for deep bonds of centuries that were severed; the bonds that had somehow survived many a test in the past. However, with the storm which hit Kashmir in the 1990s, these bonds of common affection and love between Hindus and Muslims were violently shattered, to the overall discomfort and disadvantage of both. The stories in this collection yearn to reflect and expand on those connections which permeate collective memories. The characters in the stories are alive to the possibility of rift and tension in the bonds but long to maintain the bond nevertheless. The severance of the bond also re-characterizes the stories as gentle prose elegies to a homeland. Though members of the migrant Hindu community try to recreate home away from home but the pain remains. The issues of lost identity, home, nostalgia, every day ties between the two communities are immanent in this collection. Some of the characters, especially the elderly people, are on the verge of insanity because of a confusing feeling of alienation in a foreign place. They just bide their time in daily trivia in tents, rented accommodations or even ‘homes’ away from Kashmir. They watch helplessly as the younger generation slowly strays away from the antique rites and rituals and adopt a different identity. There is separation at several levels: the young from the old, Hindu from Muslim, home from its inhabitants, rituals from their connoisseurs, and sacred landscape from its enthusiasts. The hope is that this separation is not permanent but a temporary strain in the eternal bond.

Source: Oxford University Press

About the Author

Rattan Lal Shant

Rattan Lal Shaant was born in Srinagar in 1938. He did BA from University of Kashmir and MA and DPhil from Allahabad University. From 1959 to 1996 he taught Hindi and Kashmiri languages and literature in different colleges of Kashmir and for a short time in University of Kashmir.

Source: Amazon India

About the Editor and Translator

Javaid Iqbal Bhat

Dr. Javaid Iqbal Bhat is an academic, writer and a cultural critic. He teaches at the Post Graduate Department of English, South Campus, University of Kashmir. Bhat has done his PhD from Ohio University, USA. He is the author of books Mourning Memories: From Amarnath Row to the Year of Dead Eyes (2017), Scars of Summer (2017), Covering a Decade (2007-2017): Reflections on the Kashmir Cauldron and Global Affairs (2019) and Calm before the Storm (2021). He has co-edited A Desolation called Peace (Harper Collins). He has published papers in, among others, journals like Third Text and Folklore. He writes columns for the newspapers Greater Kashmir, Daily Times (Lahore).

Source: Amazon India

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