Congealed blood in Kashmir

Harud
directed by Aamir Bashir Chasingtales, 2010

'Heaven on Earth' is how my teacher used to introduce us kids to the combustible turf that was, and is, Kashmir. Geographically, Kashmir was a fair distance away from Abu Dhabi, where we were students of the Abu Dhabi Indian School. The school followed Indian syllabi, a parental decision which ensured that, alongside my Hindi and physics, I would mimic the quintessential Indian schoolboy, even if it was on Arab soil.

This was the late 1980s. Michael Jackson's Bad had just come out on audio cassette, I was becoming addicted to Inspector Gadget cartoons, and Kentucky Fried Chicken was fast taking over my life. We were still getting used to wearing school-prescribed blue shorts and polished Bata shoes; only cricket, football and birthdays held much meaning. Our teachers, though, worried about us needing to be on par with our Indian counterparts. As it was, we did not turn out to be rabid nationalists, just your average assembly-line patriots. There were no indoctrination rituals, yet we were automatons to some degree, created by a system and, like most kids, influenced by propaganda. Every now and then I would catch a snarky comment about Pakistan from a relative, but I think it was the way everyone referenced Kashmir that did the most damage in terms of forming our mindset. There was little ambiguity; the Valley was ours. Our textbooks confirmed this, our teachers judiciously avoiding the fatalism of know-it-all cynics, treating the Valley as a trouble spot in recovery, not mutinous.