Rameez Makhdoomi
Usually, the coffee cup symbolizes the fellowship in the sense that the fellowship is what you make of it. Not to be a cliché, but idea that a coffee cup is a container– a vessel that could carry a variety of tasty concoctions – should stand as a reminder to current and especially future fellows that the fellowship is open-ended. So a cup of coffee is a good way to light the imagination with creative ideas. But in Kashmir rather than having coffee lovers we have so called pseudo-intellectuals, politicians who are merely Coffee-shop enthusiasts. These enthusiasts in Coffee Shops will talk a lot, criticize a lot, brag a lot, complain a lot but hardly offer any effective solutions to the grave problems confronted by the nation of Kashmir.
The usual gossip of these coffee shop enthusiasts in these Cafe Coffee Day which they in short terminology love to call CCD’S is criticizing the resistance leaders and activists without bothering to verify what they are stating is a reality or their brains poisoned by propaganda. The Chief Minister also seemed to have been impacted by Coffee- Shop Syndrome when he commented –“Music is in our culture. Projecting it in a way that it is against Kashmiriyat or outside its ambit is absolutely wrong. As far as (separatists’ claim) that Kashmir issue would be diluted by the concert, either their leadership is weak or Kashmir issue is weaker to an extent that a musician can affect it simply through his music,”.
I am myself a music listener but can one hold a concert at a place whose civilization, culture, ethos has been vandalized and those who impacted these tyrannies roam free. And does music which entails to surpass all boundaries of caste, creed, religion entail inviting handpicked mostly VIP audiences and curbing the rest of population via restrictions. Human logic and history has been that collective celebrations like feel-good musical concerts take place at collective level when there are happy moments. Dear Chief Minister Kashmir today is a live corpse which demands justice not a concert aimed at eye washing its realities. Kashmir needs those concerts which enforce the feelings and hope of justice upon this browbeaten nation. Zubin Mehta, the globally renowned musician too seems to have followed this coffee-shop syndrome.
He pointed out “Kashmir has gone through difficult times” and music has the power to heal.” Yes you are right music has power to heal but then you played music to those who are no way impacted by pain and misery and acted as an agent of that setup which is the reason behind agony of Kashmir .Your visit caged the entire nation of Kashmir in houses and thus your music gave us more wounds and scars than healing. You should have had the guts to perform at kunan Poshpora which has witnessed deepest scars in form of being a mass rape village courtesy Indian army.
Indian media too gave a coffee-shop analysis of the situation as if nothing has ever happened in Kashmir and tried to falsely portray the dynamics related to this concert.
Hope the sense of humanity prevails upon the minds that brag of championing human values and this coffee-shop syndrome imbibed by authorities and self-styled intellectuals is shunned and more ground zero approach is adopted.