As a home maker in the UAE, my interactions with the outside world are nominal in a city where people live in their own cocoons. My most numerous interactions have been with chatty taxi drivers that I occasionally chance upon.
Seldom do I get into long conversations with the driver after crisply giving directions as I did yesterday on my way to Mira's new school to collect uniforms. My usual method is to glance at the meter screen for the opening fare and the name of the driver, which is usually a string of four names in the case of Pakistanis. This one too had such a name and ending with a Khan - ah, Imran Khan's people, he must be proud of the new prime minister, I thought. So in reply to his friendly salvos at us, I asked him where in Pakistan he came from. He replied he was from Srinagar, Kashmir. Delighted to find an Indian citizen driving me to my destination, I expressed the hope I'll be able to travel to Kashmir some day as a tourist. Would it be safe, I asked. He replied no place is as unsafe as it's made out in the media, though Kashmir is held by a tenuous thread to India and rightfully it should be independent.
I understood only half of whatever he told me in chaste Urdu, struggling as I do to understand even Hindi beyond simple conversations. In spite of it, I tarried in my meagre Hindi while a Hindi-deficient Mira looked at me dazed and sympathetic. She assumed I was feeling bored, just as she did during my last vacation to Kerala when I patiently listened to an elderly Muslim man at the juice shop as he made "kulukki sarbat" for us; I had made the mistake of asking him if the soda water was potable quality. He had given me a rambling but loving lecture on how one should never give anything to others that one will not have oneself. Give the best to others, not inferior stuff, he advised with a toothless smile.
Our Kashmiri Khan seemed to have surmised I was from Kerala and he went on to discuss the floods and the aid controversy. His son had studied in a college in Thrissur for 3 years, interestingly.
He gave his number in case I wanted a return ride in that area with infrequent taxi service. I took it, confident I won't need it as Vinod had offered to pick us up. But when my prospective chauffer expressed an inability to sneak out of office, I began making frantic calls to the Khan of Kashmir. He couldn't be reached and half an hour later, I found another taxi. Just as we settled down, Mr Khan called. He had gone for namaz and lunch after leaving his phone in the car.
Koi baat nahin, I told him as I cut the call. Another time maybe, I told myself, for a savaari and small talk.
Thank you, my philosophical Kashmiri brother, for helping me see the minds of a people bound to India by force _ like most Indians, I like to think Kashmir is ours ever since Raja Hari Singh turned to the Indian union for help. As a non- practising journalist, I value these insights.
Seldom do I get into long conversations with the driver after crisply giving directions as I did yesterday on my way to Mira's new school to collect uniforms. My usual method is to glance at the meter screen for the opening fare and the name of the driver, which is usually a string of four names in the case of Pakistanis. This one too had such a name and ending with a Khan - ah, Imran Khan's people, he must be proud of the new prime minister, I thought. So in reply to his friendly salvos at us, I asked him where in Pakistan he came from. He replied he was from Srinagar, Kashmir. Delighted to find an Indian citizen driving me to my destination, I expressed the hope I'll be able to travel to Kashmir some day as a tourist. Would it be safe, I asked. He replied no place is as unsafe as it's made out in the media, though Kashmir is held by a tenuous thread to India and rightfully it should be independent.
I understood only half of whatever he told me in chaste Urdu, struggling as I do to understand even Hindi beyond simple conversations. In spite of it, I tarried in my meagre Hindi while a Hindi-deficient Mira looked at me dazed and sympathetic. She assumed I was feeling bored, just as she did during my last vacation to Kerala when I patiently listened to an elderly Muslim man at the juice shop as he made "kulukki sarbat" for us; I had made the mistake of asking him if the soda water was potable quality. He had given me a rambling but loving lecture on how one should never give anything to others that one will not have oneself. Give the best to others, not inferior stuff, he advised with a toothless smile.
Our Kashmiri Khan seemed to have surmised I was from Kerala and he went on to discuss the floods and the aid controversy. His son had studied in a college in Thrissur for 3 years, interestingly.
He gave his number in case I wanted a return ride in that area with infrequent taxi service. I took it, confident I won't need it as Vinod had offered to pick us up. But when my prospective chauffer expressed an inability to sneak out of office, I began making frantic calls to the Khan of Kashmir. He couldn't be reached and half an hour later, I found another taxi. Just as we settled down, Mr Khan called. He had gone for namaz and lunch after leaving his phone in the car.
Koi baat nahin, I told him as I cut the call. Another time maybe, I told myself, for a savaari and small talk.
Thank you, my philosophical Kashmiri brother, for helping me see the minds of a people bound to India by force _ like most Indians, I like to think Kashmir is ours ever since Raja Hari Singh turned to the Indian union for help. As a non- practising journalist, I value these insights.
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