End Time Humour; Living with ‘Bad’ Weather in the Kashmir Valley

By Arif Hayat Nairang (PhD candidate), Department of Anthropology, University of Minnesota

Two months after the Indian government had imposed a military clampdown in Kashmir, villages in the rural and mountainous southern part of the valley were struck with a different kind of catastrophe. Though the Indian government expected a massive backlash and stone pelting protests in this “troubled” part of the valley, the villages were eerily quiet. Exhausted by the shutdown, people were hurriedly trying to wrap up the autumn - harûd watûn - in Kashmiri, which is an apropos term for end of season agricultural activities before the long and cold Himalayan winter sets in. Men were pruning the apple trees, women were burning farm waste- mostly twigs from the freshly pruned trees to make coal for the kangris - a traditional fire pot to keep oneself warm, and young boys in the village were trying to spend as many hours as they could in the playground before snowfall. The local market in town had started to stock up with woolen clothing, freshly woven kangris, electric blankets, water heaters and other winter paraphernalia. Even though very few shops had opened given the political tension, a lot of people were frequenting the market. The ones doing the pruning, burning and buying were being laughed at for doing it so early in the season when winter had not even begun. But they were not the ones having the last laugh. One early morning, while it was still dark outside, a commotion in the apple orchards near our house woke me up. Frightened, I thought it was the Indian army and one of those ‘cordon and search’ operations where they rummage houses and neighbourhoods for militants. I was actually relieved to find that the stir was caused by our relatives and neighbours dressed in layers of pherans (traditional winters coats) and shaking the snow off the apple trees with huge sticks. Relief gave way to worry however, as I saw everyone helplessly trying to rescue their apple trees- the only cash crop of Kashmiri farmers.

Snow was here and it had accumulated to about a foot in the night. My elder brother, cousins and I got together to rescue our trees. Knee-deep in snow we walked shivering in cold, lifting the smaller trees, freeing the branches that bear fruit, and giving a strong shake to the bigger trees by holding a long and crooked wooden stick against the trunk. The crackling branches added to the frustration as we waded through the snow to the branch that was breaking. Meanwhile snow was not stopping, and everyone was cold and in a hurry. “Every crack feels like a spray of bullets (tāsrāi)”, retorted a neighbouring farmer shaking the trees with his son. Exhausted and frustrated by the whole process, we changed tactics. We took breaks after every half hour, went inside the house, huddled in a blanket with kangri, wore fresh clothes and came out again when we were warm enough. The crackling branches went on, like the apocalyptic tones that signal the imminent  final gunfight in a war movie. My younger cousin added a different tone, much to my annoyance, as he started making fun of how I had ended up doing actual “fieldwork” (work in the field) instead of the now laughable idea of conducting interviews in the village. He started teasing me with the song, “men at work- *thump *thump- fieldwork.” I gave up and joined him in marking the irony of my return home;in which it did not matter whether I held an anthropology degree or not, all that mattered was how many trees I could shake in a half hour. While being the object of ridicule did not feel great, the laughter in the middle of a catastrophe made it easier for all. We stopped paying attention to the crackling branches and tried to rescue as many trees as we could, all the while beating off the apocalyptic tunes of branches cracking under the burden of snow with our hurriedly assembled song: “men at work *thump* thump*- fiēldwork” “men at work *thump* *thump- fiēldwork.”

            Kashmiri villagers normally welcome the first snow of the season. A snowy winter means an abundant summer where there will be plenty of water for cultivating rice, fruits and vegetables. But seasons have been out of tune for a long time in the valley. This snow was not celebrated. The crackling branches felt like gunshots and, huddled around shop fronts, people were making fun of their helplessness at the snow’s timing this year. “Bring me the one who says this is a paradise on earth! Yei chu jahanam-e-kashmir- this is hell”, I jokingly added that it was the Mughal emperor Jehangir who referred to Kashmir as a paradise in a Persian couplet. “What did he know, he came in summer!” All of us cracked up in laughter. “Anyway, he was a king, even in Delhi he would have been in paradise!” Kashmir continued to be a “paradise” in imperial times, a place worth visiting only in summer when the weather was pleasant. Srinagar is the capital in summer, and in a quixotic fashion, it actually shifts for the winter to Jammu, a city that is closer towards Delhi and Panjab. This practice is called darbār move and has been going on since the Dogra kings ruled the valley.

The older men in the group mentioned that the old days were different: they were slow, and everything happened on time, but now it’s all “kharāb.” Kharāb, an Urdu word for bad or badness (kharābì) is often evoked in conversations about weather in Kashmiri. However, in Kashmiri it does not necessarily mean bad, it qualifies the experience of a general sense of ruination in the surrounding milieu. It refers to the uncertainty due to the relentless political violence which also follows the seasons. Winter is normally when the guns fall silent as the snow halts the army operations, and everyone gets a “breather” before a summer full of gunfights, killings and protests. It also refers to the moral and political failure of being unable to sustain a struggle for self-determination due to a weakness of self where Kashmiris have lost their way from being pious and dutiful Muslims. It invites the wrath of God like the snowstorm as we have failed Him. In Giorgio Agamben’s terms, “it is not the end of time but the ending of time or the time of the end (2005, 62).” Reading Paul as an apostle, Agamben says that the prophetic announcement concerns the coming of the Messiah - “a time not yet present” - whereas, “the apostle speaks of the arrival of the messiah (61).” The time of Messiah is, therefore, no longer the future but the “present” or “the time of the now (58).” The present in this manner is marked with “exigency”, a need, a necessity or an urgency. Humour in the middle of a catastrophe is such a necessity of messianic time in which one responds with laughter to a crisis in the milieu.

The winter ebbed away with more snowfall and in February, low speed internet was restored by the Indian government. Joyous, everyone was out with their screens but soon internet just brought in distressing news of the pandemic. Now we were all keeping an eye out for the number of positive cases reported in Kashmir that were updated on a daily basis by Rohit Kansal- the principal secretary of the Jammu & Kashmir administration. He also kept giving future dates when high speed internet might be restored. After every date was reached, a new tentative date was published. One evening at the shop, a friend showed me a meme that had gone viral in the village. An icon of the quotidian life in Kashmir, the meme made complete sense to us and we kept laughing late into the evening.

The meme shows the life of a Kashmiri as a pendulum swinging between Sonam Lotus- the weatherman of the valley on the left and Rohit Kansal on the right. One, the bearer of bad and faulty weather reports and the other a constant reminder of the ongoing political uncertainty and the upcoming health crisis. The pendulum marks the space-time of a ruin where living through snowstorms, political turmoil and violence, one develops a sense of humour about the existential uncertainty that marks human condition. How else to live through kharābì, if not by laughing at it? How else to come to terms with the fearful possibility of non-existence, if not with laughter- the only relation worth having with a world that does not need you. A relation or a response to the exigency of the present that marks the delimited and yet moving pendulum like life in Kashmir. Laughter, the rhythmic residue of life, introduced - like our hurriedly assembled song - a different rhythm into the space-time of a ruin.