Sunday, January 14, 2007

10 things about a typical Kashmiri…


  1. A Kashmiri will never like or appreciate a Kashmiri cuisine dish served in a restaurant, club or a hotel anywhere – say a Kashmiri Dum Aloo. Guess why? Simple. Because a real Kashmiri would know what a real Dum Aloo is supposed to be – and they never serve you even anything close to that.
  2. First thing when in a new place, hunt for a reliable and close by source of collard greens, lotus stem vegetables, good quality red chilly powder, dry ginger powder and other such typical Kashmiri cuisine ingredients; find out that they aren’t easy to get there (at times it’s a pretty damn simple thing to guess that it won’t be available in that place, yet its mandatory to try) and then settle for a supply from the native.
  3. When in a new place, always try to find other Kashmiri’s in that area, company, organization, city… There won’t be a Kashmiri who hasn’t run a search on his company directory (where it make sense to run a search) for the surnames Kaul, Koul, Raina, Dhar, Razdan, Ganjoo, etc…
  4. And when s/he finds another Kashmiri and then wonder to themselves – “Ah! Where all on earth these Kashmiri’s have reached? Is there a corner on earth where I won’t find a Kashmiri”
  5. And when finally met – ask the other Kashmiri – “where in Kashmir you originally hail from” – notwithstanding the fact that it’s been over 17 years now that s/he hasn’t visited that place.
  6. Always try to tell a non-Kashmiri in certain indirect way that such and such celebrity is of Kashmiri decent – irrespective of relevance to the context. People from Anupam Kher to Kunal Khemmu, Vivek Razdan to Suresh Raina, Jeevan to Jawahar Wattal, Nidhi Razdan to Shirin Bhan, all names have been counted umpteen times. For that matter, its pretty secular here and also unconstrained by time. So Kashmiri decent of Alama Iqbal and Salman Rushdie or Katrina Kaif are no different in the above context. Or that Shahrukh Khan's great grandmother was half Kashmiri...
  7. Which ever tourist destination they may go – end up comparing how the place is worthless compared to such and such place in Kashmir. Always find a tourist place without mountains and fresh water as worthless…
  8. Always try and find out by face recognition other Kashmiris. 9 out of 10 times, a Kashmiri can tell another Kashmiri even in a crowd of 50 – just by facial features, and even say with same accuracy whether it’s a Kashmiri Pandit or a Kashmiri Muslim. I have some rather interesting anecdotes on that. Even just recently, a newly appointed head of sales in my organization jogged down to me after a group event – asking me my full name – just to check if I was really a Kashmiri as he had guessed. I myself had been in the same dilemma earlier, but in spite of my confidence – got misled by a wrong input on his surname.
  9. Always secretly believe that they are an intellectually smart race – and often allude it to the food habit of eating rice; and then co-support it with Bengali’s and South Indian’s being equally smart intellectuals because they are rice eaters too.
  10. Always talk about Kashmiris in the third person.

7 comments:

booy said...

hat mahrah tauhi hai chuk kashiran saynd rag rag sayth wakif.

Keep it up great one will try to send it to as many as possible

Musadiq Ali said...

amazingly I can't agree anymore...
such a factual description from I suppose a kashmiri pundit...
And I wish to add one more point here...
*When ever the elders are collecting the memories of childhood...A kashmiri would look at the window and say, I wish I had my 'clever' pundit brothers back...!
We miss the great teachers and scholars of kashmir...
Kashmiris a race unlike any other...

Praful Mattoo said...

great post Sid!
Ek dam sahi bola ...

Unknown said...

Kashmiri people are mostly selfish

Unknown said...

I have ten to 12 friends who are from kashmir.i found that are not good friends of any one.thats why kashmir occupied yet.they are not honest people

Unknown said...

I have ten to 12 friends who are from kashmir.i found that are not good friends of any one.thats why kashmir occupied yet.they are not honest people

Unknown said...

Hey man i am using few of your lines in my novel and against which i will gift you my first copy. :)

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