On my first night in Kashmir, I was convinced there was a ghost walking above my room. It was an hour before sunrise and there seemed to be a loud, consistent, footstep-esque thud above my wooden room which had woken me from a deep slumber after taking a rail-road journey of almost 5 days from the far-east of side of the Subcontinent. When I first reached Srinagar, a place that I’d read so much about, my initial sentiment/feeling was one of sheer disbelief—of being present, and having made it there. I was in shock. This shock was later replaced with fear that night, and even as the sound died down soon enough, I insisted on our host’s presence. He was sure the only rational explanation could be that these were the drums of a sehriwaala—a designated man for waking the neighbourhood for their sehri, a human alarm clock, making sure the neighbours had the last meal before another arduous day of fasting for the month of Ramzan. However, I, to this day, am convinced it was something from the other world.
While my host in Srinagar was not an enthusiast of beings or for supernatural tales and occurrences, it would be but a few days until I would be surrounded by people who were. It was in Gurez Valley, a region next to the de-facto border of India and Pakistan, where I was strongly advised to keep my doors shut at night—lest any “troublemakers” enter. Gurez was once a part of the Silk Route and remains home to the Dard-Shin people, whose culture and history is steeped in legends about the mountains that envelop them. The mystical mountain pyramid Habba Khatoon, named after a 16th century mystic poet, who was also the last Kashmiri king’s wife and lover, adds an otherworldly tone to this remote area which remains inaccessible during the harsh northern winters. This is exacerbated by the lack of infrastructure or any visible effort for change. After all, “national security” is the only policy priority in an occupied territory.
But it wasn’t fears of a human nature that seemed most pressing to the caretaker who warned me about this- it was that we might have a visitation from a certain supernatural friend of ours. An afterthought from our caretaker had seemed somewhat reassuring, “She will likely spare you, you’re a woman,” he had said. This supernatural being in question was a mountainous witch of sorts. Most often spotted during winters, she was in line with enduring myths of diabolical, evil, dangerous women in folktales and legends that can be found around the world, in all the diversity that humankind has to offer. She goes by the name of raanthas.
I was intrigued. Upon further inquiry, I was told by several people that “I have seen a raanthas/ I know someone who has seen a raanthas”. These people were believers in the popular legend surrounding the woman-who-kidnaps-mostly-young-bachelor-men of a marriageable age. The deeper I delved into the hills, and my inquiry, more details emerged— “when she appears her legs seem twisted,” or “she has very long hair that covers her face.” Tweaks and details of several kinds can be found in the stories of the raanthas, but the essence of the haunting creature remains the same—it is a woman who visits at night with a strong threat of abduction to her cave in the hills.
Months later, back in Russia, where I seemed to have recovered from tales about this horrifying creature, I happened to learn about the Baba Yaga legend from my roommate Nastya. She said that she was told to behave herself in her childhood—lest this seemingly un-aesthetic and unkind witch plan to eat her up. But unlike Baba Yaga, whose name had a rather fixed implication, on my consequent visit to Kashmir, I found that the name of the mighty raanthas had crossed over to our realm—in the form of both endearment and insult. Back in Srinagar, I heard this supernatural friend’s name again. While speaking to a group of students against the scenic backdrop of a chinar tree, I was informed that despite an enduring belief in her prowess, the word raanthas itself took shape in daily conversations, sometimes very casually, sometimes out of spite—to signify a woman who was also a witch, a chudail, a dayan. Meanwhile, the chinars stood still in the sunlight, looming over us, suddenly sinister…
Several similar backdrops of chinar trees and a very colourful autumn later, I grew extremely concerned when I was suddenly informed of the alleged supernatural nature of chinar trees. I was told, by a very trustworthy (and confident) young man that djinns make homes out of chinar trees in Kashmir. The djinn, loosely and rather lazily translated as a spirit, is a creature that brings with it a persistent aura of spaces that humans tend not to inhabit—the shadows, the wastelands, the dark, forgotten corners of the mind. Chinar trees are the last place I’d imagine they’d inhabit. We’ve had our ghosts in peepal trees in India. Myths of haunted banyan trees, and the like. I thought, however, that this tree would be exempt from such supernatural associations.
I was inevitably proven wrong by my trustworthy but increasingly disturbing friend, who now smirked after I told him that I had collected a bucketful of chinar leaves that autumn. This was followed by an obvious question—was my room now haunted? Probably not, he said. Leaves of the chinar are most notably seen as the defining point of the typical, mainstream Kashmiri aesthetic—on the khatambandh—the wooden meshwork used extensively in interiors, Kashmiri fabric design, or shawls, pherans and other items of clothing. If you were to list the defining natural phenomena marking the valley, the chinar would be a strong contender. But my friend later assured me that it was not that leaves themselves that carried djinns; it was the chinar tree that oftentimes served as an abode for djinns.
“No visits to a chinar tree at night” was the new diktat I had been issued, one that was most certainly said as a joke, but one I intended to take very seriously. Djinns live among us, but in an alternative realm of existence. We can never know the true extent of the places they inhabit, but chinar trees are known to be a common haunt. This was news to me. But there could be relief in knowing that djinns belonged to different quams, categories, or classes if you will. And, you know, not all djinns were out to haunt you, some were just tormented souls that meant no harm.
This knowledge, meant to be comforting, was followed by a story which was sworn to be true, but could not be verified by the means of knowledge available to us—lovers below a vast chinar tree, unsuspecting of djinns who existed in a different realm than ours, met with a tragic fate when one of them was possessed by a djinn from the tree. What happens when you’re haunted by a djinn? I wondered. ‘Haunted’ was an inadequate, or rather, incorrect term for this very intimate interaction with this being from another world. One is claimed as a possession of another. And only very specifically qualified doctors can help in such cases—with prescriptions ranging from reading of particular verses in the Quran to being methodically beaten up with a broom dedicated specifically to this cause.
If the supernatural were beings that could only be dealt with the blessing of God, I wondered if I had an adequate armour since my brief encounter with Jesus Christ. Or what are believed to be his mortal remains. A long-standing rumour, an urban legend if you will, notes that Roza Bal, a shrine in Khanyar, is actually the tomb of Jesus Christ. In the 1970s, a book titled Christ in Kashmir by journalist Aziz Kashmiri claimed that Jesus Christ survived the crucifixion and travelled to Kashmir, where he was now laid to rest. Whether this was the beginning of said claim, one can never tell, but a mention of this in a Lonely Planet guide to the region published around a decade ago ensured a steady stream of curious (mostly white) tourists. Eventually, the shrine was shut off for visitors, and as of now, photography remains prohibited.
While I couldn’t enter this place, the idea of Jesus being buried in this land known very famously as heaven (it is here it is here it is here), from a quote of contested authorship makes perfect sense to me. Even as many locals scoffed at the idea, rightly pointing out the lengths to which us visitors’ imaginations could run, I wanted to have the opportunity to say that I visited the resting place of God, or at least a God so many believe in.
Coming back to djinns, my first introduction to one (both the word and the idea of it), had also happened at another home for God, in a different part of the city, far from the chinar tree-laden aesthetic of Kashmir that tourism campaigns would have us believe. Downtown Srinagar, thanks to mass media, has often been associated with violent protests, described as the capital city’s epicentre in resistance against Indian occupation. While there exists some variation of “truth” in this claim, Downtown is so much more—a living, breathing entity that has withstood centuries of history and has stories, legends, myths awaiting any listener that acknowledges all it has endured.The broken windows, anti-occupation graffiti, old-and-new military bunkers, the neighbourhood kandur (bakery), brick and wood hold homes sharing walls and shrines tucked away in these narrow lanes carry spirits of memory, and are constantly whispering tales.
On one of my first few visits to this area, I undertook a very generic exercise in the day of a writer-who-travels-to-write-to-travel (again): looking for lanes, by-lanes, buildings that spoke to me. My gracious guide for the day was a journalist from the area, with whom I walked around for hours. My last destination for the day was the Aali Masjid, a divine red mosque aged only a little over 620 years, situated next to the Eidgah, a field that had been a site significant for religious and political gatherings in this part of Srinagar. I’d read and seen mentions of Eidgah in Malik Sajad’s Munnu, A Boy from Kashmir and arrived there on a cold misty day, greeted by the ever-looming presence of CRPF bunkers and Indian troops. In Munnu, as in the lived experience of Kashmiris, these very visible signs of military occupation defined and defiled memory, lingering through crevices of the mind in all their hostility. Despite all their humanity and mortality, these forces evoked fear as they attained an unnerving quality about them, one that mightiest of djinns couldn’t compete with—complete impunity.
I picked up a chinar leaf that was tracing outlines of the snow, unaware of the fact that this mosque had been a long-standing home to djinns. It is still said to be haunted by djinns, and while there may be adequate amounts of djinns who mean no harm, there’s always evil, never a lack of it. While djinns can’t be seen, or felt, unless they willed so, there was one exception to this rule, I was warned—one must never recall a djinn by its name: it was a sure-shot invitation to a stranger who you’re surely not prepared to deal with.
Lost in a conversation on evil, and uninvited, unwelcome strangers, we ended up at a periphery of Eidgah, which was the site of the Martyr’s Graveyard, home to a tiny fraction of those martyred in the fight for an Azad Kashmir. Graveyards serve as constant reminders of mortality for the living—but with an inscription on the entrance that read “Lest You Forget We Have Given Our Today for Tomorrow of Yours.” My first memory of reading about Kashmir that stayed with me was a report on the Indian Army finally admitting to the existence of unmarked graveyards, resting places of thousands of Kashmiris. Years later, standing on this graveyard, exceptional in its ability of keeping the identity of martyrs intact, the Picture-Postcard-Paradise (of Chinar Trees), the Winter-Wonderland-Switzerland (of India) Kashmir that so many know in India seemed ludicrous. Kashmir, one that has always been this way, bare bones, haunted by spectres of freedom forever on the horizon, appeared in its graveyards, but these visions of Kashmir have always been around—if only we choose to listen. I was left with the one question that haunts me more than any supernatural entity ever will—What of the thousands—nameless, faceless souls, the living, the dead, and those in between—who have been laid to rest by my World’s Biggest Democracy?