Sania Shabir Soherverdy Writes
The Women of Kashmir
As physics says, “nature loves symmetry.”
Indeed nature has created everything in symmetry and balance. If fire exists, nature gave us water to put it out too. If there are huge intimidating trees, we also see small beautiful herbs. We come across massive bouldering mountains but after crossing the plains of crop fields.
In the similar manner God created humans into two different but symmetrical beings. One side of the coin has the strongest of the creations, perfecting everything he does and able to handle everything with utmost ease. Flipping the side we have the epitome of beauty, a mark of pure grace endowed with geniality & gregariousness.
Describing her as the best creation of almighty wouldn’t be false. Creativity can be seen in every way she is, battling her way into this cosmos and fighting for her existence every now and then, a women indeed is the most beautiful of his creations.
I’m from a country where women are thought no less than goddesses and whenever there is a discussion of beauty and elegance the first picture that comes to one’s mind is a beautiful Kashmiri women resting on the riverside humming the waakhs of Lalleshwari in the air of benign affability. Being from this beautiful place Kashmir, where women are picturised as the archetype of patience and fortitude and observing the women here over a decade now I’ve understood many things.
Over the years, I’ve seen beauty changing its meaning for the women like seasons, always extravagantly beautiful. With changing definitions of beauty, the mentality and perception towards her has also been changed. The women who first thought fashion more of a feature than a statement are now following the latest trends to keep up with the society. In the past, when “Sadna” haircut was followed by folks in India, the women of Kashmir wore a ‘Casaba’ to cover their head which was tucked with a bunch of fancy pins and to seem fashionable, the sides of their head scarves had this lacy appearance called ‘Jaalar’ followed by the ’powt’ and only the boldest of them had the guts to have a flick of hair draping on her face known as ‘Ghoongar’. At the time when everywhere, the impact of westernization was clearly evident, women of Kashmir were also developing secret desires to camouflage with the rest of the country. Today clothing would seem incomplete if a women doesn’t look foxy while in those bygone days the traditional ‘Pherans’ with finest of the silver/gold embroidery (Tilla) works added moonlight to feminine beauty, of which every girl dreamt.
Those were the days, natural beautiful face glowed more with a bit of traditional kohl which they made themselves with clarified butter or milk fat. Gazing deeply into those bewitching eyes one could see their pure soul asking not a single thing but love. Watching them in their daily courses like preparing food on the Kashmiri ‘Daan’ or blowing air into the ‘Samawar’ to ignite the sparks to prepare the ‘Noon Chai’ or preparing a ‘kangri’ for everyone was no less than a treat to eyes. The secret to their beauty lied in the way they had their perspective about life. In those days in Kashmir, women with a slight tinge of color on her lips or face was thought to be too rebellious. The maximum of the fashion could only be seen in the women living far from a village and that fashion included a maximum of a fancy tilla pheran, kasaab with more pins, scarf with more lace, lowers with more folds and eyes with no more than a kohl on it and that was it. No other thing was thought to be fashionable than these few ones yet these few things only made them as sparkling as a pearl in the ocean.
Understanding only a few words like “Hello !” of English language made them gain immense popularity among their neighbourhood and knowing the full details of the Bollywood movie to be shown on the TV in the nearby panchayat houses made them a moving Google of our time. With all these little yet great things, women of Kashmir craved for a wider perception. With the bad times coming forth and complexity in minds, poor Kashmiri women became prey to modernization in not so subtle way. Not only the sense of beauty changed for them but the mentality got a boost of ten folds also. Women who used to think fashion more like a comfort now follows the best of Victoria secret’s supermodel. Pherans have been completely reduced to the older section of the populations and the younger ones tend to wear more western clothes.
In the past when women used to gather around the local drinking water facility and gossip about feminine things, they zipped their lips as a man passed by and giggled or blushed with shame when he looked upon them. Today the scenario is different, a women ought to have some male friends to chat with and otherwise, she would be looked upon as a dumb women with same “old mentality”. The question arises here why do people think of following old as an odd or wrong?
The women who used to preach to her children the intricacies of our mother language Kashmiri, are now teaching them how to speak English perfectly, depriving in them the essence of being a Kashmiri child. While the status of the women has seen some sinusoidal changes, the graph of empowerment of women is surely a straight line in the valley with a positive slope .In traditional society of Kashmir women were always considered as subordinate to the male supremacy, they remained dependent on the male members of the family and could not develop their personality or be independent within or outside their family. In the past women were introduced as ‘his wife’, ‘his daughter’ or ‘his mother’, but today their identity is their own and the women is now Miss Artist, Miss Reverend, Miss Politician, and many more ‘Miss’ . Women are today enjoying the best of the carriers and they are allowed to take decisions on their own, no matter good or bad the life today a women is the life drawn by her own hands.
In the past, minds of women were filled only with the enchanting picture of beautiful meadows of the valley and sounds of nightingale singing in a distant forest or the babbling beats made by river Arpath. Watching their brothers or children out in the fields playing cheerfully made them feel alive. The only thing they used to be concerned about, was the food to be prepared for dinner. After the unrest creeped its way into the roots of Kashmir, the minds of the women here lost their sacredness and were all set for a nightmare. Portraying herself as master of everything yet didn’t have a vivid idea about herself, as their minds filled with terrors beyond definition, they echoed with the increase in tension. On one side, as Bharat enjoyed lavish dinners and graceful parties in the lawns of neighbourhood, Kashmir was boiling with thoughts of a never concluding rebellion, the women on this account were the worst hit as some of them lost their fathers in the devastating conflict and some lost their brothers. An expecting lady craving desperately for a healthy baby hoping to keep her child safe from every phantom in the universe gets her hopes crushed looking at the youth of her motherland being torn apart from the existence called life.
Having tremors of a fantastic evening turning into woeful morning headlines. Anxiety and stress engulfs mothers on why hasn’t their kin turned back home while hearing Mu’azzin call for evening prayer and longing for their long lost family members, the minds of women in Kashmir clearly landed into the limbo of never ending trauma and depression. Paving a great road for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder women here took a giant irreversible step into agony and misery.
There is a thin line between progress and evolution, while the status of women evolved in the light of progress yet the perception and mentality only progressed and didn’t evolve. The development of mentality would surely take some time. Women of Kashmir still are just puppet in the hands of some people who want to disturb the balance of nature, but they have overcome all the hardships, kept getting up when they hit the bottoms in their voyage to the present that for them, this problem doesn’t even need a plan to be tackled. The entropy still exists which hinders the blossoming but is the only adrenaline rush to drive mentality towards the evolution. There will be a time when Kashmir would be a utopia for women and they would be more than just a comely and a tantalizing view. They will not only be the personification of patience but the personification of almighty’s best creation, nature’s favourite and a perfect example of humans and humanity at their best.