This week Rajya Sahba MP GN Ratanpuri went to meet Geelani Sahib at Malviya Nagar in New Delhi, where the padre of Kashmirs resistance has been confined to a solitary room by the mighty government. On the first day the honorable MP wasnt even allowed to shake hands, leave alone meet up the ailing patriarch. Both Geelani sahib (standing on the doorway) and Ratanpuri (standing a few feet away) were not allowed to touch base. Like jinxed lovers.
But Rantanpuri is not someone to give up so soon. After all he has been the editor of the quirky Urdu Daily Aftab in the heady 70s, not to mention his celebrity broadcaster days at Radio Kashmir, Srinagar. He persisted on Day two and finally, with a great degree of wriggling and contacts, managed to convince the paranoid security grid that he wont really leak any of the radioactive substance that Geelani Sahib apparently emits.
He shall, he pledged, simply have a photograph taken with the old man on his new BlackBerry. Armed with a tablet (akin to the Ten Commandments Thou Shalt not types) and under the watchful eye of the pot-bellied Delhi Police constables, the MP managed to sneak into the small room-cum-prison to meet up Geelani Sahib. Only to get an earful from the bed-ridden paterfamilias, who said what he always says without fear or favour — with or without Haryanvi cops around — that Kashmirs right to self-determination is the final answer to all the questions.
Interestingly for the entire while that Ratanpuri spent by Geelanis bedside, he was supposed to talk in Urdu only so that the eavesdropping Haryanvi constables could make sure that no nuclear secrets are changing hands (This being the trust deficit season just before the tourist season). Given the chaste Urdu that Geelani Sahib speaks and drawing from Ratanpuris long years at Radio Kashmir, where he spoke into the microphone like a velvet throat, one wonders how much did the poor cops finally pick up?
Did jargon like Haqe-Khud-i-Radyat, Aqwam-i-Mutehda, Bunyaadi Haq, Jazbe Ehsar, Qaabiz Afwaj slightly dull the heads of the special cell cops? We might not know their states of mind! However Ratanpuri, coming as he does from the pro-India camp, after updating his Facebook, revealed truthfully to the media, Geelani Sahib was lying with pain in left side of his abdomen. With Ortho-collar around his neck he stood up to wish me. Tells a lot about the grace and fortitude of Indias code orange level threat. © Sameer
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