Zamir Ahmad
Who says life in winters is dull and colourless? Not the least here in our valley. A multitude of effulgent colours so painfully drawn by the glitterati keep our mindscapes illuminated all the time. Come winters, and we are so graciously reminded of our existence by the high and mighty dotting our streets. The Republic Day frenzy may mean a lot to the hapless soldiers who have to put their best foot forward on the D-day. It may mean fun to those children who in their colorful yet insufficient dresses are made to sing ‘gulshan watan chu sonyue’ on the dusty parade tracks in biting cold. But for the people in general, it means scouting for their long-forgotten identity cards, readjusting them in their wallets and keeping them ready for display. I display, therefore I am—with due apologies to Descartes!
Thanks to the D-day, even the romance between the couples gets rekindled for a good measure. The dutiful wives who never forget to remind their spouses of their laggardness get transformed. For good, that is. “I-Card tulthe haz” replaces the usual adieu-time nagging. Even the olive-livered securitywalahs see this as a refreshing change in their lives. They are all of a sudden thrown to the centre-stage – nay to the centre of roads – meeting and greeting (or patting?) so many people at a time. Establishing contact with all sets of people is no doubt a luxury for those living regimented lives and fighting a war that never was.
The icing on the cake however is the 7:00 p.m. news bulletin aired by the state broadcaster. Both the news content and the visuals. It must be a challenging task for the youthful newscaster to keep his composure when he keeps on parroting “Ath mouqas pyeth aav akh tamadduni program te haavne, after ever sentence.
The dignitaries taking the ‘salami’ is but a sight to see. After all when do you get the chance to see those hands up in the air which are mostly busy in ether behind the back or beneath the table. And what a collection of hands; the chubby ones and the grubby ones, the manicured and the weather-worn. The positioning of the hands and the straining necks is yet another colorful ensemble that merits a separate piece.
But this is not all! The frenzy created by a saffron party for displaying the tricolour – and its true colors – in the Red Square was by no means less colourful. One could not, but, understand one little thing. If the flag was to be hoisted in ‘Lal Chonk’ (that’s what the flag bearer of the saffron youth brigade called it so many times on TV), what made the party stalwarts to land at the Jammu Airport? Lal Chowk is in Srinagar and not in Jammu. Get your geography right then only you can do your maths. And who knows, if the Chinese come to know of your knowledge levels, they may even draw the border near Udhampur. After all isn’t the border dispute with China ‘just’ a matter of perception. That’s what the Army Chief had made us to believe only a few days before.
In any case, all is well that ends well. While the chief minister patted himself on his back on acting out his own volition (first time, eh?), our own black chador clad revolutionary made a colourful photo-entry in the next day’s newspapers. All in all, colours galore, despite the tricolour not being unfurled in the ‘Lal Chonk’!
