This Our Paradise
Karan Mujoo
This week’s selection is an excerpt from the recently released ‘This Our Paradise’ by Karan Mujoo. A friend of the magazine and an exceptional writer, Mujoo’s debut novel has been called ‘tender, heartbreaking and panoramic’, amongst other things, and we agree. This Our Paradise is, at its heart, a tale of exile from Kashmir, but also a book that showcases nuance and detail through narratives of different sides of the ongoing conflict. What shines through, above all, is the clarity of voice and the fact that regardless of religion or political position, violence makes corpses of us all. An excerpt from the book starts below.
A village in Lolab Valley, 1950–76
The boy with the dead green eyes was born at the stroke of midday, on 24 August 1968. When the midwife delivered the news, the boy’s father, who was a poor farmer, raised his hands in front of his chest and muttered a prayer. The birth was uncomplicated, but the conception had been a lengthy and arduous affair. Since the early days of their marriage, the husband and wife had tried for a child, but without much success. No matter how many natural remedies they experimented with (the wife religiously consumed tea brewed with stinging nettle and raspberry leaves), it seemed Allah did not want their home to be filled with the coos and cries of a babe. And so their cradle and their hearts had remained empty.
In the small village of Zogam, where the couple lived, people sniggered behind their backs. Some called the husband infertile. Some laid the same charge at the door of the wife. Rajeshji, a Pandit shopkeeper who owned a small store in the village and who was a good friend of the boy’s father, suggested a visit to a clinic in Srinagar. While the idea was noble, it would have caused much ignominy. So the boy’s parents turned to the next best alternative. Every few weeks, they visited one of the many shrines dedicated to various pirs in the Valley. ‘Give us a child,’ they would pray; their foreheads glued to the cold marble floor of dargahs where saints draped in green and gold rested eternally. After countless visits, their pleas were finally heard. Who among the many munificent masters had answered their prayers was a mystery, so they were thankful to them all. Zogam was situated in the Kupwara district of Lolab Valley.
Dense forests of pine and fir cloaked the sprawling, oval vale. Waves of lush, dewy grass rose and fell over small undulating hillocks; apple, cherry and apricot trees grew abundantly. Deep in the forest roamed Himalayan black bears, snow leopards and hangul.
It was in this fierce beauty that the boy with the dead green eyes was born. And as he emerged from his mother’s womb wriggling and squirming, still bathed in the fluids from the world beyond, in his father’s heart a name spontaneously rose—their son would be known as Shahid. The father could not reason why this particular name had presented itself, but he believed overthinking these matters only led to confusion. What was important, at that moment, was for the boy to hear the word of Allah. So the father lifted the little babe in his arms and prepared to whisper the azaan in his ears. As he was about to utter the words, the fine hairs inside his nose tickled. And instead of ‘God is great, there is no God but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. Come to prayer,’ the first sound the little babe heard was a sneeze. It was at this point, Shahid’s mother would later argue, that the boy’s destiny was forever altered.
In Zogam, as in most of rural Kashmir, myths and omens were given precedence over common sense and logic. Sneezing at important junctures of life was considered a bad omen. If you sneezed while leaving home, the task you were leaving for would remain unaccomplished. If you sneezed before an exam, it was wise not to expect a good result. If you sneezed during your nikah, there would be another nikah soon. So, as the boy’s father sneezed into his ears, the boy’s mother, still recovering from the stress of labour, smacked her forehead with her palm and shrieked desperately, ‘Ya khudaya, save my son!’
But there was to be no saving now. Soon the whole village heard about the sneeze. The young ones laughed it off, but the old folk knew what this meant. The boy would grow up with the cards of fate stacked against him.
As a result of his father’s untimely sneeze, Shahid’s childhood was spent in a protective cocoon woven skillfully by his mother. Zun never let Shahid away from her sight for long. While other children ran around the fields and played Latkij Lutt, Shahid was forced to sit at home and spend all his waking hours under his mother’s watch. She alone was his playmate, his teacher, his friend and, at times, his enemy. She narrated folk tales of haunted mosques, magical ponds, cruel djinns and beautiful houris to entertain the boy and to pass the long days.
After dinner, the whole family gathered around a battered second-hand radio and heard the adventures of ‘Sindbad Machama’. In this quintessentially Kashmiri take on Sindbad the sailor, a man named Machama, after having a hearty meal, falls asleep and becomes a modern-day Sindbad in his dreams. He goes on adventures with his friends Sulla Gota and Rehman Dada to strange islands where they encounter pirates, kings and bizarre giant birds. Shahid, mesmerized by the lively voices and sound effects of the radio, would hear the tale in rapt attention. And when the episode ended, he would continue the story in his own head, putting the heroes in dangerous and silly situations from which benevolent angels rescued them. That’s how Shahid’s days passed, quarantined from everyone else in the village, listening to tales and making them up.
As a result, he slowly developed into a shy, quiet boy who found it difficult to mingle with others. When, after considerable coercion, Zun agreed to let him go to the local school, he was already two years behind other children of his age. The school was a ramshackle building with a small blackboard and a stern Pandit master.
The boys sat on jute sacks and recited multiplication tables and the Urdu alphabet. Passers-by were treated to the harmonious orchestra of ‘Alif, Be, Pe, Te’ at all times of the day. Any mistakes were swiftly punished with the whack of a soi. Contact with the plant led to an outburst of angry red rashes and caused a painful stinging sensation. Shahid, thrust suddenly into the middle of a loud and competitive social setting, struggled, and oftentimes found himself on the receiving end of this botanical punishment.
His mother’s love compounded his difficulties. Zun walked with Shahid to the school every morning, and as the gong rang in the afternoon, she would be waiting for him near the school gate. His classmates, who were old enough to make the journey from home to school and back, teased him, calling him a mama’s boy, a sissy. And Shahid’s already low confidence plummeted even further.
The houses in Zogam were made of sun-dried bricks set in wooden frames. The roofs, slanting and angular, were usually made with rice straws, though the more prosperous residents used iron sheets. In winters, when there was heavy snowfall, the slope forced the snow to slide down before it accumulated. Beneath these roofs were dusty, old attics where the residents of Zogam stored paddy, fodder, firewood, dried cow dung cakes and charcoal.
To escape the omnipresence of his mother, Shahid would often escape to this quiet spot. One evening, after having looked for the boy all over the house, Zun found him sitting in the attic. His chin was resting on his palm and he was staring at the green-brown landscape sprawled in front of him. The boy seemed wrapped in melancholy. At that moment, she realized, sneeze or no sneeze, omen or no omen, she would have to let the boy live his life.
From that day onwards, Zun encouraged Shahid to go out every evening. He reluctantly agreed, but did not make friends or play games with other children in the village. He would quietly go to the far end of the stream and sit on the rocks there. He liked being in nature. It did not stifle him like human interaction did.
About the Author
Karan Mujoo was born in Srinagar in 1986. His work has appeared in Fifty Two, Tribune, Outlook, Arré, Firstpost and Aainanagar. This Our Paradise is his first novel, now available in bookstores and online.. He tweets @mujoo_karan .