People are the place

Mirza Waheed wants to talk about cricket today. In the Capital for the launch of his second novel, The Book of Gold Leaves , he bubbles over with excitement when he describes his mean leg spin and his bendy wrist. The London-based author avows that he can bowl a batsman behind his legs — the dream of every leg spinner. In 2012, when he was first recruited to the Authors Cricket Club (or Authors CC) by his friend and fellow author Kamila Shamsie and skipper Charlie Campbell, he quickly delineated Shamsie, Will Fiennes, Nicholas Hogg and Campbell as “the greatest people alive in the British Isles”. He waxes eloquent about Fiennes’ batting prowess — his shots and sentences share a similar flair. He adores Campbell’s obsession with the game — he orders his bats from New Zealand. And admits that Shamsie is actually the “non-playing manager of the team”. Authors CC last played in 1912 with the illustrious PG Wodehouse and Arthur Conan Doyle on its rolls, Waheed says proudly. Having given up a high-profile job with the BBC four years ago, to write full time, cricket allows him the opportunity to leave the house and leaves him with the bruises, aches and happy exhaustion that only athletes know. But for Waheed, cricket is also “a game of return”. It transports him to Kashmir, which he left in 1993 for Delhi University, but which continues to be his muse, his home and his “Sarajevo”.

In The Book of Gold Leaves, Waheed takes the reader to a land that seems all too beautiful, and is too colonised. With its minute detailing — from the delicacy of pomegranate flowers to the fragrance of lavender to the might of the Jhelum — this book is sensory rather than cerebral. At its heart it is a love story between Roohi, a Sunni woman, and Faiz, a papier-mâché artist and a formerly wealthy Shia. Faiz, the essential artist, is arm-twisted by certain events to adopt a more violent course. While this is a tender love story, the satellite characters prove to be the most interesting, be it Shanta Koul, the headmistress of a girls’ school, or Major Sumit Kumar, who has turned her school into a garrison and must establish ‘Area Domination’. Through his characters Waheed illustrates the impossibility of arriving at an “unquestionable truth” in a place like Kashmir. The contrasts — the delicacy of Faiz’s golden tigers and long-necked cranes pitched against the brutality of the Zaal (an armoured vehicle that seizes people from the street) — meaningfully evoke an idyll in the midst of war.

While Waheed, father of a five-year-old son, wrote this book at his kitchen table in London or propped with a tower of pillows on his bed, the book pulsates with sounds, smells and sights because of his deep familiarity with its setting. He was born and raised in Kashmir, spent his teenage years in Srinagar and lived all over the state as his father worked in the tourism industry. He learned to swim and fish in the Dal lake, and lived by Nigeen lake, which he says is even prettier.

His absolute admiration and reverence for Kashmir become apparent as soon as Waheed opens a conversation. He leads you, by the hand, to Verinag a “pastoral idyll” in south Kashmir, from where the Jhelum originates, to Lal Chowk in Srinagar, where he would cycle after tuitions. But he repeatedly underscores that he is a novelist and not a journalist or historian; his mandate is to invent characters, to “invest the place with colour and texture, to play around”.

Novelists might create fictions, but they are created from facts and events. As a teenager growing up in the ’90s in Kashmir, Waheed witnessed the rising strife in his state. His most vivid memories of the time include the crackdowns, the sieges, and the scattered slippers and shoes after a shooting. He recounts a crackdown that happened when he was 16 or 17. The men of the neighbourhood were asked to assemble in a hospital, where they would be paraded before an informer. As they walked into the hospital, he noticed a couple of ‘dead bodies’ by the side. “You can’t stop. There is a posse of army men and policemen surrounding you. Giving orders and instructions… I think one of them [bodies] was still alive… his lips moved. Maybe he was asking for water, or taking his beloved’s name. No one knows… you simply walk on. And later the bodies are thrown into a truck.”

Another experience he recounts with exacting detail is the thrashing he received on his bottom from a CRPF (or BSF… he can’t remember) jawan. His crime? Riding pillion with his friend Wasim on his beloved All Terrain bicycle. ‘Double sawaari’ was banned at the time, but the two teenage boys obviously didn’t think it applied to lowly cycles. After all, you can’t really shoot a projectile from a cycle, reasons Waheed. While the bamboo cane stung, for Waheed the humiliation proved indelible.

Waheed is quick to downplay his own experiences, calling it “banal” because in Kashmir everyone suffered, everyone endured. But the rupture in the ’90s sowed the seed of his writing. Carefully rolling a cigarette, he says, “It was worse than war… at least in war, you know this is war. If you are a very young person… it will do things to you. You will be marred for the rest of your life. It takes years to process. There is no point fighting it.” He fought it the only way he could — by writing.