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Impossible is likely!
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Paro Anand demolishes stereotypes, tells us Kashmir kids want peace, not violence. ZIYA US SALAM speaks to the author who has put together "No Guns at My Son's Funeral", a tale of a boy born into unrest.
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Paro Anand... defying easy definitions. Photo: S. Subramanium.
SHE HAS done the impossible. And can barely stop smiling. She has worked where others have equivocated and is not too sure if she deserves credit. She has just penned a novel after a labour of five years but is getting ready with two more! Welcome to the world of Paro Anand, now with more than half a dozen books, numerous workshops and different jobs behind her. But where is Paro's world? Is it at New Delhi's Panchsheel Enclave where she has taken a day off to be with her son and yet is game enough to take time out for a chat? Is it at those interactive workshops she seems to enjoy hosting for children? Is it in Kashmir where she was at the time of Kargil War, and where she went again last year? Is it in the sessions she had with Kashmir children to discover that those orphaned by terrorist strikes in the State had not given up hope, that children were keen not to pick up the gun to settle scores but for peace to return so that they could go to school, the older ones to college or even jobs, to support the family. All along with hope in their heart that some day Kashmiriyat will prevail, that the security forces will retreat, the terrorists will give up guns.
Kashmiri boy tale
Or does Paro's world lie in literature? In "No Guns at My Son's Funeral", a 172-page essay that goes into the mind of a Kashmiri boy, leading a double life, used by militants, loved by family. Is the book she uses to reveal a few secrets her world then?
Well, all this together is the world of Paro Anand, a woman so warm with her hospitality that coffee with little milk and no sugar does not distract, her words so genuine that afternoon sun gently slides down and evening shadows lengthen without realising that time had lapsed. But then, she is nothing if not credible. After all, that is the trait she has used with distinction on her visits to Kashmir.
"I was in Kargil working for the National Book Trust, bringing out the world's largest newspaper. Then the war took place. I went to Baramulla and Uri, places which make news only for strikes by terrorists. They are heard of in death, not life. I met children who had lost their father to such strikes, children who had been impacted by violence. Amazingly, they did not want to avenge death. They wanted a way out. They felt as if in a trap with two walls, the security forces on the one side and the terrorists on the other. There was a lot of resentment against the forces because they were the visible enemy but they did not see it as a heroic struggle or a fight for freedom. When I went there as part of a Rajiv Gandhi Foundation initiative, I found they could not wait to get enrolled for the voters' list. They were very proud of elections."
Fans of Aishwarya Rai
Then there was an eye-opener too. The kids might have been subjected to a lot of forced feeding but they retained the hope and dreams of innocent years. "They still sing Hindi film songs. Ajay Devgan and Aishwarya Rai are their favourites, not Amitabh Bachchan!"
Okay, but why yet another book on Kashmir? "Simply because nobody has written anything about the youngsters there, the teenagers. Nothing has come out on young adults from the State. And in the course of working for this book, I made friends with youngsters there. Many Muslim and Hindu kids came with stereotypes in their mind on the first day of the workshop. It was a world of `we' and `they'. But by the end, these barriers had been demolished. And when I was coming back to Delhi, they asked me to remember them. One day, many of them, like their counterparts elsewhere, would like to come to Delhi or Mumbai and find jobs and make careers though at the moment their imagination is quite stagnated due to years of violence."
And what is the "impossible" thing Paro has managed? Well, in the book, due to be released in New Delhi this week, she has managed to talk of Kashmir without naming Pakistan! Now, if Pakistan were to go out of the Kashmir equation as easily... .
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