Ali Mohammad Shows resilience that is rapidly vanishing in a state where increasing number of migrants from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are exercising free enterprise while native Kashmiris seek government jobs and fruits of corruption
Selling Masala at ‘battlefield’ Lal Chowk
M. Hyderi (Greater Kashmir)
Gunshots and explosions rent the air. But Masala Wala, Ali Muhammad Akhoon remains unmoved as he rolls his Dal delicacy on Lawasa, a local bread. As for his customers, they too don’t miss to get spicy Chutney spread on the roll.
This is the scene at Lal Chowk, just a few hundred yards away from where fierce encounter is going on at the other side of the Ghanta Ghar. Smoke is seen billowing out from the encounter site amid intermittent gunshots and explosions. Akhoon and his customers watch the fight, live.
Scores of people eager to get a live glimpse of the encounter rush to Lal Chowk even though vehicular traffic movement has been restricted. Such avid watchers get more closer to the encounter site. The only barrier between them and the line of fire is the Ghanta Ghar where police has laid concertina wires.
The moment the crowd swells to around a thousand, cops swing to action and disperse them. As the cops chase away the crowd, many shout pro-Islam and pro-freedom slogans. But then they regroup and this cycle continues.
As for the Masala Wala, he avoids the melee moving a few steps back.
“But then I can’t avoid to remain away from my potential clients, the crowd,” says Akhoon while sitting with his basket near junction connecting Lal Chowk with Abi Guzar.
“This is an advantageous position where I have a chance to make sales and escape.”
Akhoon, a resident of Shalimar has been selling Masala at Lal Chowk for the past nearly a decade earning around rupees 150, a day.
But today’s incident could mean no business.
“I couldn’t go home empty handed as I have to feed my family,” says the Masala Wala who father’s young kids, and a wife.
“I am the only bread earner for my family so I have to make earnings even if it means risking my life,” he adds while serving a Masala roll. But then he recalls that in the beginning years of turmoil firing meant that people would stay away from the site for days together.
“If there would be a firing at Lal Chowk, one would avoid coming here for around a week.”
Meanwhile, there’s another spell of sloganeering and spectators being chased away only to regroup.
“Hey walk calmly or you will spoil my Masala,” he cautions them.
Meanwhile, prominent activist and poet Zarief Ahmed Zarief arrives on the Residency Road.
Looking at the crowd, Zarief turns nostalgic of a 1965 episode during India-Pakistan war when warplanes flew over Kashmir and he was an employee with Radio Kashmir, Srinagar.
“We were sitting in the office when suddenly someone on hearing the sounds of warplanes said ‘Pakistan’s Cyber jets have arrived’. We at once rushed out and climbed Jhelum bund to see the planes bombing,” he recalls.
“Except a few Kashmiri Muslims everyone including troops would take shelter in underground bunkers but we wouldn’t mind to move in the opposite direction to see the Cyber jets.”
A few yards ahead of Zarief, the Masala Wala was doing business. And his clients came fast. “On routine days I finish my basket by around 4:30 but today I have exhausted the stock an hour earlier,” he says while leaving the site amid intermittent gunshots and explosions.