#beyondthepostcards

Faisul Yaseen

I have been a fan of ‘The Beatles’ since high school.

However, during my school days, on my way back home, I heard a fast-moving car playing ‘Paint It Black’ by ‘The Rolling Stones’.

The moment I heard the song, it captured my heart.

This song, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and released in 1966, still takes me into a nostalgia overdrive, not because of the melody, but because of the feelings it evokes.

The song revolves around a narrator who is so engrossed in sadness and mourning that he wants the world to lose its colours.

The famous line, ‘I see a red door, and I want it painted black’, is often interpreted as a metaphor for inner darkness.

However, it is not just about a door and the door paint.

It is more about what happens when despair becomes the lens to see everything.

People often grow up learning colours before they learn the alphabet, like the green of spring orchards in Shopian, the silver of the Lidder River waters, the white of Srinagar winter roofs, the saffron of Pampore autumn fields, and the blue that hangs over the mountains of Gulmarg after rain.

And then there are places where colours become suspicious, where people stop talking about brightness, where they begin discussing shades instead - the acceptable shade, the safe shade, or the shade that attracts the least attention.

The singer in ‘Paint It Black’ wanted the world to match the darkness he carried inside.

However, here, the story feels slightly different, with the darkness having arrived first and the matching colours followed.

Here, a visitor may still find beauty everywhere, as do the tourism brochures, the photographers, politicians, advertisements, and drones flying above lakes. Here, beauty has become the most documented thing and suffering has become so skilled at hiding.

One still stops at the breathtaking sight of the Thajiwas Glacier despite it receding over the years, but who takes note of seeing an old woman waiting in a hospital corridor, the father waiting for the return of his son, the young man looking out the bus window as if expecting something that never arrives.

This is because mountains are easier to market than memories.

New promises were made every spring, new beginnings promised every summer, new declarations of progress and stability made every autumn, and new declarations of peace every winter.

Waking up every morning to discover that history changes its clothes, not its habits, people get trapped in repetition. They continue planting trees, children continue going to schools, shopkeepers opening shutters of their shops, writers writing stories despite writer’s block. Life continues. And yet, they continue to wait for the bus that had been announced but never arrives. The wait has been so long that nobody now remembers what they are waiting for. Only that they are.

A remarkable thing about prolonged uncertainty is not the noise it creates but the silence.

Exasperated after a while, people stop shouting, stop expecting.

They start carrying unanswered questions knowing that they can’t be asked aloud.

The questions become part of the furniture, sitting quietly in living rooms, attending weddings, and funeral receptions.

Darkness is not always dramatic. Sometimes it is administrative, sometimes it arrives in forms and files, in statements and counter-statements, in anniversaries, in promises, in reports, and in reminders that patience is a virtue, especially when demanded from someone else.

People have heard every language of reassurance. What they have not heard less is the language of listening. The result is exhaustion, not of a sprint, not of a circle, but one that comes from returning repeatedly to the same conversation, the same hope, the same disappointment, and the same headline.

After some time, one begins to suspect that the road itself is moving while everyone stands still and yet people endure. They always do. The Kandur in Srinagar downtown still wakes before dawn, the boatman in Dal Lake still unties his rope, the Bakerwal in Shopain still follows the mountains, the mother still waits for her children to return home, the journalist still hopes to report about people and public affairs, each morning wondering whether today’s story will finally not be about the politicians and bureaucrats.

A child laughs in the narrow Habba Kadal lane, a neighbour carries groceries for an elderly person in Khanyar, students argue about poetry in a classroom in Rajbagh, a cricket match goes down to the wire on a dusty field in Kupwara, a wedding procession takes a wrong turn to stop at the Ashai Bagh Bridge for Kadle Taar. Small rebellion in colour.

It is proof that life remains stubborn, that people continue refusing the invitation to become entirely red. This is perhaps why the opening line of the song ‘I see a red door, and I want it painted black’ stole my heart.

The singer got his wish as the world around him darkened.

However, here, people keep repainting the door every spring. Every generation, someone returns with a brush, someone insists on colour, someone plants another tree, someone writes another story.