narcotic stupor

On an icy Chilla Kalan evening, the freezing cold congeals drains ditches, cesspools and even the famous Dal Lake. ‘Kot koush’ freezes the successive drops trickling from the point of attachment into the glassy icicles of tapering formation. The vast expanses of the white snow here and there, in the pitch dark night sparkle as if it were a moonlit night. The thirty something mop-headed youth dressed in rags and tatters would normally be seen loitering here and there on the roads. With his boorish and filthy looks he looks all the time dazed, sleepy and drugged/doped. During the late 1980s when we occasionally dropped at his show room we would be absolutely mesmerized by his towering personality and the dexterity exhibited by him in selling the Kashmir handicrafts to the visitors. Knowing his worth the owner of the showroom paid him a handsome salary. He was the shadow boss. When the militancy started in the valley the owner of the showroom shut shop and left for good. Most of the showrooms in the city dealing in the handicrafts either shifted outside state or simply switched over to some other business.

On that chilly evening he has returned to his home earlier. As he sits in a corner in his room, he suddenly goes restless. His pain stricken visage is a telltale story of his woes. The charcoal in the firepot that he carries underneath his long robe, the pheran, does not warm his ice cold hands and body. He would time and again fish out his firepot from beneath his pheran, and stoke the unburnt mass of the charcoal along with fresh ones obtained from the bag placed in the storeroom. To his utter disappointment he fails in his attempts to ignite them. Nettled, he pushes aside the firepot and frantically gropes about in dark for the stuff stashed under a grimy mat. As he rolls the charas laden cigarette he lights it up to puff out the spirals of thick pungent smoke, which fills the room. The kick soon dispatches him on the subliminal pleasure trip. He has the visions of the smell of warm eager earth glowing suddenly with rainbow of colors, and people hailing the spring, flocking to the almonds gardens and paying pilgrimages to the sweet liliacs. The sun shines bright. The mountainsides, the crystal clear streams, the fresh green tints of magnificent trees soothe his eyes. He sees birds crooning. He wants to hum and sing the spring songs. The ducks that play with water thrill him. He wishes he were a duck and he would plunge into the serene waters.

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