5/14/2017 Dear Sir, Do you love Kashmiri apples?

 – Raiot

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RAIOT 

AUGUST 13, 2016 / AMIT SHEIKH CHILLI

DEAR SIR, DO YOU LOVE KASHMIRI APPLES?

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Dear Sir,

Greetings! Hope you are enjoying the monsoon urry sweeping across the North-India. I
can see your Facebook posts about the beautiful rainbows and torrential rains. And how
can I forget that as the season of the great Dashairi might be over, your plates are still full
with the delicious Chausa and Langra. You Sir! I must say are having a wonderful time
and you are without doubt the true inheritor of that great legacy – of the Mango-Wine-
Loving-Secular-Modernist Poet-Mirza Assadaullah Khan Ghalib. But Sir, Isn’t there
something missing in your plate this monsoon rather this late summer? I know you have
many other varieties around you – the American, the Kullu wala, the Kangra Wala etc.
etc., but don’t you miss the red and ripe Kashmiri apple? Oh! You do? How great! In that
case you will also know why you haven’t yet seen Kashmiri apple in Dilli or other parts of

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5/14/2017 Dear Sir, Do you love Kashmiri apples? – Raiot

North India? I am sorry! I am such an idiot. Of course you know everything about
everything – given the love you have for Prime Time.

But I know how much you miss this damned Kashmiri apple, like you miss so many
things from Kashmir – the snow peaked mountains, the famous dal lake, the wild owers,
the golden tulips, the lush and vast Gulmarg and Pahalagam and not to forget the abode
of Baba barfani – the Amarnath Cave. You know only fools can’t see the love Indians like
you have for Kashmir. I mean you love every bit of it. Isn’t it your love, which makes you
call Kashmir with di erent names – Atoot ang, ‘crown of India’, ‘Switzerland of India’ etc.
etc. Forgive these Kashmiri fools who never understood your love for Kashmir. You know
what they say? They say, ‘Indians love the land i.e. Kashmir and not the people of
Kashmir’. I mean can this be an argument? Even your post-colonial thinkers can rip this
argument apart, not to mention the liberals or the intellectual giants of Indian right!

I feel so sorry that you have to be separated from your loved Kashmiri apple by these few
misguided, brainwashed youths. Truly I apologize on their behalf! You know the rot is so
much that even the big traders who send you the juicy apples from Kashmir have said in
a press statement a couple of days back that they are ready to sacri ce their business for
the ongoing Kashmiri movement. They have completely altered my understanding of
class con ict – the one I so hardly had learned from my Indian professors. I mean who
su ers losses for a movement. One doesn’t have to go too far. But never ever did we see
such passion, such involvement… Sorry I mean such fanaticism! Even Gandhian
movements of non-cooperation, civil disobedience never saw such gatherings where
every man, woman, children, old were on the streets. Let me tell you the more perverse
side of this movement. Not only have women been at the front of the strikes, protests
and stone-pelting, but the slogan of Ragda Ragda as the popuar saying goes came from
a transgender. Such regression, such perversion! My God! Thankfully Gandhi’s, Nehru’s,
Tilak’s, Savarkar’s were such honorable men they never allowed women to
independently lead movements. I mean won’t you agree ‘Men should always lead and
women should follow’. Such noble principles you had. Though some ‘anti-nationals’
within you are trying very hard to destroy your great civilizational achievements – the
laws of Manu to be precise. Beware of them.

And with all this perversion and with this fanaticism, Kashmiris have the audacity to claim
that Indians don’t support them. I mean what if Kashmir is closed for 30 days now? What
if 58 people have died and 6000 injured? What if around 100 Kashmiris have lost their
eyes forever? Isn’t it what everyone who ever sort their freedom and dignity have gone
through? History is a witness! No? But most important sir, you are a man of culture and
di erent tastes. Why will you write about Kashmir when you could endlessly write and
discuss Ghalib’s poetry – vo batlayein to hum batlayein kya… I mean is it being less radical

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5/14/2017 Dear Sir, Do you love Kashmiri apples? – Raiot

when you can sing symphonies of Marx, Derrida, Butler and Foucault in your AC seminar
rooms? These ignorant fools won’t understand the historic role that has been assigned to
you. It is not to organize protests or write about ‘violence in Kashmir’, but to discuss and
write about the epistemic-violence and the multiple subjectivities of the post-colonial,
post-industrial societies via an ontological and phenomenological analysis mediated by
the multiple circuits of power, multiple subjectivities and the multiple fractures within the
discourse of a post-nation state through a discourse analysis of Kanti Shah’s movies. I
mean u f! Do you even think that these laymen and women of Kashmir can even
understand the burden history has put on your shoulders – condensed in this one
sentence?

At last my humble request sir will be to not get bogged down either by your separation
from the Kashmiri apple nor by the call of your conscience. Kashmiris as of now have
stopped requesting you, as they have understood your ‘historic role’. Your ever increasing
army in Kashmir will make sure that you will get apples as soon as possible. But how
long they can keep bringing you the famed Kashmiri apple, I am not very sure.

Wishing you more cups of Nationalist drinks derived by squeezing Kashmiri apples.

Your most sincere well-wisher,

Sheikh Chilli

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INDIA OCCUPIED KASHMIR LETTER

WRITTEN BY:
AMIT SHEIKH CHILLI

Amit Sheikh Chilli aka Amit Kumar is a Doctoral student at the Department of
History, University of Delhi. He considers himself a amateur ction writer by
compulsion and a passionate history researcher by choice.

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