BackSrinagar: Shape of a house
Remembering the warmth of the ‘daan kuth’, the camaraderie of the ‘zoon daeb’, the coolness of the ‘kaeni’ and the joy of a door without a doorbell
PremiumHome was in the change of seasons; in the rooms that don’t exist in my flat in Delhi; in the people I have grown distant from; in the rituals I no longer follow; in the nalmots (hugs, the tighter the better) I have swapped for hellos. Home was in the study desk by the first-floor window, from where I could see the Shankaracharya temple in the distance.
Downstairs, Kakeni (my grandmother) would be sitting, also by the window. If she needed to call me or my sister, she just needed to put her head out and holler our names. But she had her own system—a big, thick stick with which she would tap the wooden ceiling (one tap for this, two taps for that). Downstairs, adjoining the baithak where she sat and where the family spent most of its time, was the kitchen and the daan kuth (a small partitioned area in the kitchen with wood-fired chulhas). Sharing the wall with the daan kuth was the bathroom. It had a huge copper vessel inside a concrete casing, with a tap attached to it. Come winter, the daan would be fired up every morning to cook—usually hokh syun, vegetables dried in summer—and to replenish the kangris (a pot filled with hot embers, which you hugged like a hot-water bottle underneath your pheran. Yes, that garment that can accommodate a mini-world in its circumference). The wood stoves would warm up the room, the kitchen and the copper vessel, ensuring running hot water.
And then there was the zoon (moon) daeb, a sort of covered balcony, where the women would sit and watch life unfolding on the street below. It was Twitter and Instagram rolled into one; gossip travelled faster than news ever could.
The day would start with brand fash, cleaning the area in front of the main door with water at dawn, and end with syandhya choeng, the lighting of an oil lamp at dusk. The front door had no doorbell. It would be opened in the morning and closed late in the night. All through the day, the house would embrace friends, relatives, friends of friends, relatives of relatives, even strangers. And if there was a wedding in the neighbourhood and it started raining, all the rituals, guests and hangers-on would move to your kaeni and rooms. Like the other houses in the mohalla, our house had no number, but letters never got lost and guests always found their way. You just had to take the name of the head of the family and people would escort you to your destination. Everybody had time.
When you went to a wedding, you did not go empty-handed, nor did you return empty-handed—you carried a tippan (tiffin) carrier, the bigger the better, to bring back roganjosh and maetsch. If you were a child, you stood behind the groom so that when the neighbourhood ladies showered him with nabad, shireen and toffees, you could scramble to collect as many as possible. If you were a baraati, you got to savour kabargah (deep-fried lamb ribs) and modur (sweet) pulao, which were rarely served to the rest of the guests.
The rest of the world was beyond the mountains. Travelling away from home meant crossing the Banihal tunnel to Jammu in winter, when schools would close for two-three months. We would come back via that same Banihal tunnel when the snow started melting. Soon spring would arrive, and tourists would start filling the shikaras, the hotels, the gardens and the Boulevard Road. They would be gone come autumn, and the same gardens and roads would be covered with chinar leaves, and then snow in winter.
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