Srinagar- The City of Resistance and Culture (Story of Downtown Boy)

About the Book Children of our generation were fortunate in as we had inherited stories of resilience, resistance and great culture from our fathers and grandfathers. Having fought battle royal against the oppression they not only made us proud but also passed on the glorious traditions of resistance against injustice to the second and third generations of our land. Notwithstanding, suffering terror and intimidation of the merciless marauders and bigoted rulers our forefather with all perseverance, also passed on our rich traditions, culture, social ethos, language, literature, art and architecture to us. Like all great civilizations, they also passed on the story of our nation to us through oral tradition and written word.

Like many others in my generation, I too was born 'handcuffed to history', in the Downtown Srinagar at one of the most critical periods of our history. I heard booming sound of bombers and bombs while still in the womb. The men in uniform clattering their heavy boots, outside our home, was the first music, I heard on tumbling into this world. Our grandmothers and mothers were our greatest storytellers. Besides, telling the stories of the first woman mystic of our land and the patron said they never shied away in telling the painful stories of curve that our ancestors made to suffer or the brutal lowers drowning boatloads of famished people in the lakes ‘and fleecing our artisans and craftsmen alive and leaving their bodies to be gnawed bit by bit by vultures. For children of our generation many the places of resistance like the Muslim Park, Jamia Masjid, the third bridge of Srinagar, Khanqah Moula and Mujahid Manzil had become places of pilgrimage. In our childhood, the culture of three to week long voyage in Dal Lake, the festivals of almond blossom and different saints enabled us to understand the richness of our culture. A whole share of my childhood, boyhood and teenage memories; some as soothing and romantic as Keats poetry some as complex and choking as James Joyce's Finnegan Wake, are scattered all over Srinagar the city of resistance and culture- a city founded that was founded a thousand year back and had reached to its glory during the period of the great Sultans of Kashmir in fourteenth century. I am not the sole of trustee of these tales of agony and ecstasy there are hundreds and thousands in my generation who share my memories.

About the Author Zahid G Muhammad (Z.G. Muhammad) Isa Srinagar, Kashmir-based writer. He is columnists with Greater Kashmir, Srinagar. He has contributed columns to the Statesman, the Onlooker, Bombay, the Sunday, Kolkata, the Weekly Radiance, New Delhi, the Arab News, the Washington Post, the Post Pakistan, the News Pakistan, the Express Tribune, Pakistan and the Kashmir Times Jammu.

His published books include the Cindering Chinars- Story of Solomon's Garden, Kashmir in War and Diplomacy, Living Uncertainties-Kashmir Problem and People, Kashmir Story-Hope and Despair, Kashmir, Changing Shades, Icons of Kashmir Identity and Sri nagar My City My Dreamland.

His next three volume book: The Troika of Kashmir - an insight into the lives of three protagonists of Kashmir Freedom Struggle.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages