Kashmir!!!! ooh! Look what they've done to our song, Grand Ma!!

Hellllo!
This is Henje from Kashmir! And this is my first hellllloo to you all!
I am the most beautiful girl and I have a really beautiful voice. I'm a rock star and my great great grand ma was a rock star too...we all have beautiful voices ...
So can you imagine how I can't imagine it, but they've DONE it! 'THEY'VE done it' Wow!!!
They've locked up all the voices of Kashmir!!!!!!--(and I'm not taking about locking up the 'separatists').

I'm talking about all the people who live in Kashmir, the one's who lead every day lives!!!

They've LOCKED UP ALL the poets, the painters, the rrtists, the intellectuals and bread makers and grocers, and college and school kids and their parents and their dogs and cats and sheep and the vegetable vendors and the tailors and the chai wallas, and the villagers in villages and EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN KASHMIR? They've locked them all up! Isn't that sooo funny?

And then a whole lot of people from outside Kashmir have arrived there for a dialogue to understand and to resolve the situation. Isn't that soooo funny! Dialogue with whom? Who's voice have they gone there to hear?

Omar Abdullah's? Poor little boy with his confused visage.
Rahul Gandhi says 'Omar is young, and needs time and support'

Oops if he's young he should be back in school! What is he doing playing CM-CM! That too in my Kashmir. Didn't his Daddy-O tell him 'Beta, Kashmir is complex because it is a 5000 year old civilization, and you really need to be erudite!!! You need to have lived the culture, to speak the language, breathe it's breath to KNOW what has gone into the making of Kashmir and Kashmiriyat'

But then if Daddy-O Abduallah knew that himself he would have inculcated that in his son, no?

Here's a little quiz for the Sonny and Daddy-O, and all their buddies who have flown into the Valley:
a) The Kashmiri language is a composite of which ancient languages?
b) What is the meaning of my name, 'Henje'?
c) What is the one ceremony Kashmiri Pandit girls and boys used to undergo which in the rest of India only the boys are initiated into?

Incidentally, watch OA's buddy -Rahul Gandhi speak on the news and notice how many times he uses the word 'Rule' when he refers to the administrative functioning of his and his Mommy's party! He is soooo cute with his beard and trying to look soooo grown up.
"But 'rule' is a bad word in democratic parlance RG! !
I have a whole new dictionary of democratic parlance ---- the Youth congress could begin changing the system by changing the language ---but all that in the next note".

Right now young OA and his buddy RG who is 'batting' for him need to get down to studying their Kashmiri lessons!!!!

P.S : It might help boys, to unlock the intellectuals and the connected- to- the- grass root's- people, like teachers and bakers and artists and cultural academicians, and village panchayts (do you have those in Kashmir?) and sit at their feet in proper shishya-guru parampara style and begin learning your alphabets.

I go now, to practice my music.
More in the morrow!
Henje!!!

INTRODUCTION

On June 1, 2001, I entered the gates of a remand home for the first time. To conduct a theatre workshop with trafficked minors. The workshop was scheduled for two days---

Early that morning, I had woken up, my makeshift bed on the floor--- surrounded by brown mountains.

The brown mountains were the landscape of my life----my belongings, furniture, luggage and my life of several years, packed in brown cartons, parked all over the flat waiting to be moved.

It wasn't the greatest phase of my life---- The worst, infact.

I stuffed my face in the pillow wondering if I had the strength to get through this workshop.

But I had volunteered for the workshop myself, three months ago, when Nandita from the ngo Akshara had invited me to be chief guest at a "stree mela".

They were screening the music video 'Mann Ke Manjeere' that featured me as a gutsy truck driver, living her life and singing in Shubha Mudgal's unmatched voice.

Nandita wanted me to be the chief guest on the last day of the mela, give away the prizes, and also to say nice things to the girls/women.

Nice words to 'downtrodden' women in terrible situations suck... I'm uncomfortable with those We love you and feel for you and we are with you and everything is going to be just fine speeches.

But I didn't tell her that.

'I'm in Delhi..' (I was)..' Can't you just say hello to them from me and tell them I will return soon and do a theatre workshop with them' (I meant that)

'A theatre workshop?' Nandita's voice shot up several decibels...

'Oh please Meeta not those awful theatre things where you make them cry and tell their stories and do cathartic things..' She had obviously suffered one of those.

'No no no... that's not theatre, not for me anyway. Listen I can't explain..except to assure you that it will be fun'

'But you have no experience of these girls...they are young and have been through hell'

Nandita has a way of pulling you into a debate.

'Listen Nandita...I teach at the NSD..young first year students. They're hysterical, tough, full of fears and insecurities--- sexual- professional- personal- economic- you- name- it- insecurities. They can be nasty as hell and can have the teacher leave the class with a nervous breakdown in five days. They come from different backgrounds, across the country, economic, social you name it---and half of them are thrown in with the opposite sex, for the first time ----I have to deal with their LIVES even as I am teaching them about acting or directing. I have to be bloody good at what I do, and I am----I'm gentle and subtle and half the time they have no idea that I am changing their damn insides even as I am talking aesthetics with them.'

I paused for breath, Nandita said okay okay we'll think about it and hung up.

Three months later Nandita called me and reminded me of my offer.

So here I was, heading for some remand home in some place called Deonar --- a place for somenthing known as trafficked minors.

I suddenly remembered. I dialled frantically, my mobile, and hoped I would get through to Nandita this early in the morning.

'Nandita..? Hi this is Meeta..ya ya I'm on my way to the remand home...I'll find it...listen I just wanted to know...what is 'trafficked minors?'