{"id":1783,"date":"2024-02-23T14:02:20","date_gmt":"2024-02-23T14:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/?p=1783"},"modified":"2024-02-23T14:02:24","modified_gmt":"2024-02-23T14:02:24","slug":"my-pahari-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/?p=1783","title":{"rendered":"My Pahari moment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On my iPad I was organising my Pahari articles. There seemed to be an obvious omission; that of Dr Farah Nazir. I knew she had written several articles, as I knew her work through the British Kashmiri Academics WhatsApp group which I had established. So, I searched her name on the internet. Up came a long list of entries, including the article I had instigated<\/a>. I saved the links for reading later. One particular entry stood<\/a> out as a bit of an emotional Pahari connection moment. The item came up with the name Awais Hussain (he of the Mirpur Heritage page on Facebook, member of the above WhatsApp group). I then noticed the picture. It looked very familiar, not surprisingly because it was a photograph, of the snowcapped Himalayas, I had taken during one of my visits to my birthplace, taken in Ratta where I had gone to Middle School. My first thought: how did she end up with that?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I carried on reading the post.\nOf course, it was the poem Hill Speak by Zafar Kuniyal, he being the son of the\nman from Mirpur. It went\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no dictionary for my father\u2019s language.<\/em>
\nHis dialect, for a start, is difficult to name.
\nEven this taxi driver, who talks it, lacks the\nknowledge.
\nSome say it\u2019s Pahari \u2013 \u2018hill speak\u2019 \u2013
\nothers, Potwari, or Pahari-Potwari \u2013
\ntoo earthy and scriptless to find a home in books.
\nThis mountain speech is a low language. Ours. \u201cNo\ngood.
\nYou should learn speak Urdu.\u201d I\u2019m getting the\nrunaround.
\n
\nWhatever it is, this talk, going back, did once\nhave a script:
\nLanda, in the reign of the Buddhists.
\n\u2026 So was Dad\u2019s speech some kind of Dogri?
\nIs it Kashmiri? Mirpuri? The differences are lost\non me.
\nI\u2019m told it\u2019s part way towards Punjabi,
\nbut what that tongue would call tuvarda,
\nDad would agree was tusaana \u2013
\n\u2018yours\u2019 \u2013
\n
\ntruly, though there are many dictionaries for the\ntongue I speak,
\nit\u2019s the close-by things I\u2019m lost to say;
\nthings as pulsed and present as the back of this\nhand,
\nnever mind stumbling towards some higher plane.
\nAnd, either way, even at the rare moment I get\ntowards \u2013
\nor, thank God, even getting to \u2013
\nmy point, I can\u2019t put into words
\nwhere I\u2019ve arrived.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I got to the bottom of the\npost and there it was, the acknowledgment:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo credit: Dr Karamat Iqbal,\ntaken in 1986 in tehsil Dadyal. I then remembered something about sharing with\nFarah the photo; memory and old age!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On my iPad I was organising my Pahari articles. There seemed to be an obvious omission; that of Dr Farah Nazir. I knew she had written several articles, as I knew her work through the British Kashmiri Academics WhatsApp group which I had established. So, I searched her name on the internet. Up came a … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “My Pahari moment”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1783"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1784,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1783\/revisions\/1784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}