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| Due to a lack of organisation these past two weeks I am combining the previous two
weeks into one update. The idea being, hopefully, not to let myself fall behind
this week for the sake of writing updates about last week. The past two weeks have been fairly emotionally charged. First I found my mobile phone (which mysteriously reappeared in one of my bags-- very suspicious since this is a pocket I have used in the past two months and didn't have a phone before). So I and my hosts were quite delighted for a few days. Then the phone got stolen again. This time with the battery charger. This time round neither my hosts nor I were willing to just forget about it. Mr. Rasheed and Malik Wajjid Ali began immediate and thorough investigations to trace everyone who had had access to my room. There was little I could do in this investigation of course. One of the cardinal rules of this village is that guests must be treated well and must be kept happy. No one in their right mind would admit to me that they had stolen my phone. I was advised to seek the aid of Baba Shaikh Daud. Baba Shaikh Daud died about 200 years ago and is buried on the top of the tallest of the three mountains of the village. He is reputed to have been a powerful military commander who organised Bhalotis against Sikh raids during Ranjit Singh's reign. There is another story about his sister being swallowed by the mountain to protect her honour. When one goes to the shrine/tomb of Baba-ji (as he is known) one should scatter sweets and grain over both Baba-ji's tomb and the spot where his sister disappeared. One also should light oil and drink some water from his clay pot (I don't know who is responsible for keeping the pot filled with water). I went up to the top of the hill and made my request. I must admit that I am not inclined to believe that a man dead 200 years ago can find my telephone but I know that some people here believe absolutely that Baba-ji can do things like that. Since Baba-ji is a Bhaloti and pays particular attention to Bhalotis and their transgressions it is possible that the thief might take seriously the notion that Baba-ji would become involved. Since I do not know who the thief is it's impossible for me to determine whether my appeals to the bazourkh Baba-ji had a direct effect. I did however get my telephone back. I returned to my room and found telephone and charger waiting for me. Other than getting worked up over stolen telephones I have continued to ask people about specific incidents of disputes in the village. I stupidly failed to record one very good interview because I neglected to put a disk in my diskman and only noticed when I went to turn the thing off. Fortunately I normally have a good memory and started writing things down immediately. When I am recording an interview I don't bother to take written notes so I had to scribble a lot. Last week I thought it was time for my friend and servant, Mr. Rasheed, to get some kind of day out from the village. I asked him if he liked Chinese food and was told he had never tasted it. So we went to a fancy Chinese restaurant on the Grand Trunk road not too far away. One of my Malik friends came along with us as well at the last minute. The three of us had a pleasant lunch with generous helpings and good company. It was only on the way back that Mr. Rasheed started teasing the Malik that this lunch was Mr. Rasheed's lunch-- not the Malik's lunch. He was a sponger who just tagged along on Mr. Rasheed's special lunch. We laughed about that and to make up for it this Malik promised he would have a special day out in Mr. Rasheed's honour and I could tag along on that. There have been two news items commonly spoken about in the village these past two weeks: World Cup Cricket and the Kashmir crisis. When the news of India's air strikes first spread through the village I expected people to be discussing it passionately. I was wrong. This increase in activity in the spring is an expected event. India doesn't usually us air strikes so people noticed and shook their heads in disapproval but the conversation never stayed on Kashmir for more than 10 minutes. Very quickly people got back to what they were really interested in : cricket. Pakistan has a very good chance of being this World Cup's cricket champions. Even if they don't win the championship they have played well and Pakistan can rightly be very proud. So for the time being I provide regular news updates on Kashmir from European newspapers to those people who ask and we all watch cricket together (though I admit I am usually daydreaming about something else since I am still not a sports fan). So with regrets that I was unable to catch up properly this week on the web side of things I will go back to the heat and the cricket and Kashmir and see what happens next. |
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