Jaffna Street: Tales of Life, Death, Betrayal and Survival in Kashmir by Mir Khalid

Author:Mir Khalid [Khalid, Mir]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rupa Publications India
Published: 2017-02-28T18:30:00+00:00

*A gang of sadistic toughs recruited locally, under the employ and protection of the Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad government of 1953–62, whose job entailed browbeating the antagonistic population of the Vale into submission by violence, both physical and sexual.

The Butcher’s Wife

…she must reverence that within in her which struggles for expression.

MARGARET SANGER, ‘A Parents’ Problem or Woman’s?’

The Birth Review (1919)

MY OWN ENDURING memory of her is from when I was a preteen, watching her, an ageing, traditionally attired grey-haired woman, as she, on a summer day, publicly manhandled a neighbourhood bully who had had the temerity to push and hurt her grandson while playing cricket on the Safa Kadal streets. She not only punched and slapped the tall bully, she also proceeded to spit on him while hurling invectives.

Noorie Massi had already greyed by the time I was old enough to remember and appreciate faces. But to everyone, my generation included, she was a tough, feisty and indefatigable old woman. Boys, a generation senior to us, spoke of the times in the mid-1970s when she would barge into the local government-run Ali Beigh School and cajole the teachers to release the whole class so that they could tend her recently purchased flock of sheep in the vegetable field adjacent to the school. The teachers would unfailingly oblige.

A neighbour of my father’s, she was an anachronism of sorts in many ways: a refined woman from a waza (traditional chef) family who married into a butcher household of some means. Though widowed in her middle age, she came close to being what Arab societies term or define as ukht-ul-rijaal, sister of men—she was indomitable and industrious, well-versed in a man’s world and tough in a way intimidating to an overly traditional patriarchal set-up. Widowhood combined with poverty of means would have left any other woman of her time a work-worn nervous wreck, but not her. She was a slugger. Although unlettered herself, she insisted on educating her children, including her daughters—even if it meant taking up cudgels with her spouse or accompanying them to their schools. For many, including me, she embodied the venerated neighbourhood grandma who never failed to indulge one with a kind word or genuine affection. She was at every occasion in the locality—congratulating school graduates, officiating condolence meets for the bereaved, joining the chorus for wedding songs or turning up to share in the joys of newborns.

Her unflagging spirit was legendary and one would always see her attending to one chore or another. And while she was appreciably aware of the deep respect people gave her, the nurturing, maternal caretaker that she was, she never took her stature seriously and many a times would be seen walking the road fetching merchandise to and from her son’s butchery near the bridge.

A known Sufi, she was a regular visitor to various shrines around the city. Rumours abounded about her own status within the sufi hierarchies, but she would rather bemusedly brush away any inquiries into her saintliness or forays into mystical realms.

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