Myean Kath, the title of the book is compelling and unique in itself. It’s not just an autobiography; it’s a life narrative weaved deeply and emotionally with the surroundings. It’s not just a journey of one woman; it’s a voyage through different and difficult phases of her life and the place she belonged to. A woman from Chisti Lane, Zaldagar has ventured to tell her story while concurrently depicting both characters and the characteristics of her land.
The author Prof. Shamla Mufti (1925-2008), a renowned educationist, is the first Kashmiri woman to publish her autobiography in Kashmiri and Myean Kath (My Story) is its English version translated stupendously by Prof. Shafi Shauq, retaining the spirit of the original language. The book has been translated from Kashmiri to Urdu and now English, and includes a wealth of illustrations to guide the new generation through a wide range of possible experiences.
From family history to home town to benchmark moments of her education, Myean Kath is spread over 15 chapters, describing Shamla Ji’s life in a very lucid manner. It holds the factor of motivation and inspiration. She has quite sagaciously written about her personal experiences that shaped her worldview and her approach to life.
Conveying the message with enough clarity, there are some ugly, inelegant and far from perfect realities in the book. We read things both fascinating and sobering. It spurs the reader on to great leaps of insight. Myaen Kath is a life story based on realization, awareness, learning, remembering, and insight. And all of these processes are included in what we call creative thinking or thinking creatively.
The beauty of the book is such that besides being an autobiography, it has a blend of memoirs as well. It’s both a historical as well as an inspirational memoir. Shamla Ji not only informs and explains the motivation and thoughts behind her actions, but she also tries to explore the emotion of that experience. Moreover, in addition to describing personal thoughts and feelings, Shamla Ji also offers access to her reflections and reactions. That’s why, at times the book seems to tell the painful story of disappointments and how Shamla Ji responded to those disappointments. From how she had to abandon her school, get married so early, struggle for resuming her studies and coping up as a working mother—Shamla Ji’s memoir has concentrated not on the overall life, but narrower and more significant parts of her memories. The tear-jerking details of how she started the day with a huge amount of household work; traversed her journey to school at Maisuma after taking simple tea with a piece of bread. She couldn’t muster the courage to ask for some food or lunch for school because “the right of providing food to the family members was vested with the senior-most woman of the house. No one other than her could take a scoop of food from the pot of his/her own for it was believed that the family would lose all prosperity if any other person committed that ominous act” (p 183). The other touching instance is of wintry December 1949 when she had to work in the smoke-filled kitchen for seven to eight hours to cook a meal on the oven (Kashmiri Daan). The smoke caused her eyesore and she had to come to her parental house for its treatment as custom demanded that whenever a daughter-in-law falls sick, she should put stay at her parents’ home until she recuperates.
There are many instances narrated by Shamla Ji which shed light on discriminatory practices and conflicts underpinning these challenges and many more, from root causes to examples of resilience. The characters and scenes are well developed in detail. While reading you imagine the moving visuals in front of your eyes. The setting of the events is described vividly in an interesting manner. Shamla Ji has used objective and subjective details of the anecdotes brilliantly. Though subjective details cannot be proven as they are based on Shamla Ji’s personal opinions and understandings, at the same time while reading these subjective details the reader somehow is compelled to agree with her opinions. Real-life events are put in chronological order that cheer up writing and illustrate a point. This order has been interestingly maintained in the book. As a reader, you experience the true-life anecdotes through the writer’s eye– and that is an art that Shamla Ji has fostered so well. Whether she is writing about downtown alleys, different downtown bridges, patriarchal lingo, wedding scenes and songs, her keen observation and expression is par excellence. For example, the use of Kashmiri wanwun (songs) is mesmerizing and worth mentioning—
Dushmanan saanen gav munh kaalay
laaleh az aav saalay soan….
Since she originally chose to write her story in her mother tongue, she knew the importance of language in self-representation and had discovered the connection between language and identity. She used the Kashmiri language to assess her status as a person and as a medium to integrate her into society. Her mother tongue gave her the liberty to write with more clarity and articulation.
Apart from its title Myean Kath, which has been retained for English edition as a mark of respect to the author’s attachment to her mother language, the very sound and sense of Kashmiri terms in the book is emotively nostalgic. For example, the words she avidly refers to in the book like Samovar, Toer, Kenz, Bushkabe, Kanz, Kadle Taar, Doad Mouj, Chatehaal, Taher, Hayend, Kraich reflect her attachment to indigenous cultural traditions. At the same time, she is also not happy with the fast disappearing words that symbolized the warmth of kinship like Toath, Moaj, Aapi Thaet, Razeh Baiy.
About the Kashmiri language which she loved so much, she laments the prevailing atmosphere in our families where new generation boys and girls abhor using their mother-tongue in their normal conversation; and she regrets that this change in the linguistic habit deprives the children of the new generation an opportunity to converse with the elders of the families, and hence the generation gap.
The book also has a religious facet as Shamla Ji judiciously underscores the principle of equality as the basic tenet in the value system of Islam, and she fervently argues that Islam does not recognize distinction based on lineage or social status, and there is no status of the superiority of one person over another but on the basis of piety and spiritual distinction.
The beauty of the book is that it has advice for everyone in different roles. The role of parents, role of spouse, role of in-laws, and counsel for elderly as well. Shamla Ji had understood the psychological changes that occur in the elderly called Geriatric Anxiety. To overcome this anxiety, she has boosted the morale of the elderly and advised them to keep themselves busy. She writes, “The elderly men, as well as women, should give up their complacency and understand that they should never give up their enthusiasm and strength so long they live. One must always keep oneself busy, whatever the nature of the work is; only then one does not feel unwanted”(p 312).
Her role as a wife was exemplary. Despite not getting enough support to pursue her dreams and being a woman of courage and assertion, she always wanted her husband to excel and move ahead. This sort of feminism is quite unheard of today. She was a genuine feminist in the true sense with genuine ambitions and concerns.
As a mother, Shamla Ji’s role has been exceptional. For pursuing higher studies, the decision to take her little kid along to Aligarh Muslim University and then the torment of returning him to Kashmir because of unfavorable living conditions over there, she transpires as a burqa-clad sensitive mother who wanted her son to grow wonderfully. She demonstrated the true parenting qualities, whether it was teaching his son Quran or helping him with his homework or seeing to it that he stays back with her when he returned from England as a highly qualified doctor.
Though Shamla Ji’s aim for writing her memoir was to express and communicate an important personal statement about life, she has also acknowledged and given credit to all those who have influenced her from time to time, starting from her parents, teachers to colleagues. There is a certain recollection of events and moments from her professional life which would inspire present-day women. In fact, one of the striking features of the book is that Shamla Ji explains and simultaneously convinces the reader about her actions and responses to different difficult situations. In those times, she was among the few emancipated and educated women who carved a niche for herself. For more than a decade, she not only headed the educational institutions but had been leading them successfully.
Another quintessence of the book is her remarkable power of personal and collective memory. The mention of the Dogra brutality scene in the very first chapter, the famous Shawlbaf protest of 1865 during which 28 shawl weavers were killed by the Dogra army, is a testimony of the author’s consciousness about the happenings of history. Whether it’s July 13 Martyrs; displacement of Moye Muqadas; political upheaval of 1965; or the bloodshed since 1990 armed conflict, the book depicts a revolutionary element not only in social and domestic aspects of life but also on the very dicey political front. Throughout her journey, Shamla Ji meanders into her deep consciousness about Kashmir being ruled by others for centuries. In a way, there is this stream of consciousness that runs parallel in her narration. The presence of colonial mindset, be it kids following foreign visitors saying “meem-saaheb salaam, pata pata gulaam” or government functionaries taking diktats from the regime, Shamla Ji has candidly revealed the stark political realities. That’s why, she in her book calls for an honest and dispassionate historian to record the condition of Kashmiri people through all the years of unprecedented bloodshed and subjugation (p 303).
Despite its wealth of accolades, Myean Kath can be regarded as one of the most challenged books in Kashmir because of its depiction and frankness about issues and other politically fraught topics. Since the challenges author faced came from centuries-long systems of orthodoxy and oppression, Myean Kath is an indigenous voice that has been bold to dispel and expose the fragile convictions and fiendish dichotomies. When personal freedom was something profaned and women had no political say, Shamla Ji’s voice had the quality of being able to become deeply immersed and stay deeply immersed while guarding protected blocks of the society, shielding it from the distractions and interruptions.
People may attempt to advance on the work Shamala Ji has done, but I think perhaps they won’t have this amount of creative honesty that can see their work leapfrogging ahead to truly sincere and gripping narratives. The kind of intellectual dishonesty that has plagued us in this part of the world despite our limitless levels of personal freedoms, is a big bottleneck. Shamla Ji, a woman of substance, alludes to the fast vanishing values of sincerity, affection, empathy and mutual respect which, as she puts it, are becoming the things of the past because all these values have been replaced by materialism. As such, in such a scenario, creative honesty is a colossal calling.
The book is studded with prudent and scholarly pearls from doyens of literature like Prof Rahman Rahi, Prof Shafi Shauq, Dr Altaf Hussain as a learned son, and Mohammad Yusuf Taing. The elaborate (though erudite) introduction to the book by Dr Hafsa Kanjwal extends to 27 pages and seems to influence the opinion of the reader. However, the editor Dr Altaf maintains in his note that this introduction will “help in situating the context of the book for a broader English-speaking readership”. The important part of a memoir is that it is a true story and different readers identify themselves differently with different events written in the book. This not only inspires the readers but they also take a cue from the experiences of the author which helps them in rethinking and reclaiming their agency.
The key takeaways of the book are:
Forbearance and fortitude in the face of sufferings and challenges; Believing in self and taking decisions; Significance of mother tongue for better understanding of life; Understanding religion in its actual form and living it through actions rather than words; Value of family and kinship for a healthy social fabric. And most importantly, the power of memory as a tool for personal and collective resistance besides a process of documentation.