Atoofa Zaeem
Fully crowded room filled with the mixture of relatives and neighbors with the eyes fixed on TV, holding the small white and sky blue round cups with hot light yellow kehwa (Kashmiri beverage) just poured from the huge and heavy silver samovar (traditional kashmiri kettle) by my mother who had taken the responsibility of keeping the beverage hot in samovar by feeding coal to it in installments. Kehwa is incomplete without sheermaal (Kashmiri traditional bakery) especially when it comes to the match between India and Pakistan. My cousin had brought a long strand of hot crispy brownish sheermaal from the market and distributed it among all members. Males were enjoying cricket in the room and ladies were enjoying both cricket and their talk shop from the kitchen attached to the room.
Sitting in the lap of my grandfather who was feeding me kehwa from his own cup and had given me a slice of sheermaal dipped in kehwa. I was cheering when all were cheering, i was sad when all were sad. I was hardly 6 years old but was well aware that the match between India and Pakistan is telecasting on TV but didn’t know why all supported the green team. My dad was giving instructions that how the player should have played whenever any player of green team was out. My grandfather was badly cursing the green team players that were clean bolded by the blue team bowlers. Some of my relatives were showing directions to the team from where the ball had gone as if the players could hear them. There was a celebration in our house if green team won and from every side you could watch 32 teeth’s of my relatives.
Besides cricket on TV, we were having a good cricket match in the field of our house. No age difference in teams, everybody’s original name was replaced by the names of Pakistani cricketers. And believe me my dad; the Wasim Akram of the team cheated the most when he was declared out by the chosen umpire. The boundaries for fours were marked by the bricks and for sixes; it was the neighbor’s wall. Still i didn’t know why they had given so much importance to green team. I had no concept of state, country, only that I knew was I belong to Kashmir. I grew older and so grew my cricket mania and of course i loved the green team as well because all my relatives and family supported it.
One day i asked my sister where is India? She told me duffer you are in India, this is India. I was really puzzled how can Kashmir be in India, I had some imaginary thinking about India, its people, their living, its climate. Suddenly the environment around me looked in a different way and I said to my sister are you sure this is India?
I asked the question to myself when we live in India why don’t we support the Indian team, we don’t belong to Pakistan, then I made my mind may be there is a belief that Pakistan is Muslim dominated team and that is why majority of Kashmiri cheer for them. Many gave me the answers that Kashmir is Indian occupied that is why they support Pakistan but that was not my answer, we don’t belong to Pakistan as well.
Despite knowing I am the Indian citizen, my passion for Pakistani team didn’t fade away .Today whenever I watch cricket match I cheer automatically for Pakistan, I still don’t know why? But when it comes to cricket between India and some other team .yes, I support India I don’t know why..?