Shabnam Mondal
The art of Kashmiri bakery is as underestimated as the culture of a conflicted area could be. The political disturbances, the abrogation of Article 370 as well as the most recent blow in the form of a pandemic makes nothing in this valley salvageable.
Shops gather dust, closed for months at a time, the owners and bakers overcome with a deep sense of dread that can be justified as the only valid emotional reaction in the daily lives of Kashmiris.
The caste that was in history known to carry on the art of baking in Kashmir were the Sofis though the trade now is dispersed across society and young people from all over travel around their local regions looking to learn the craft.
The kinds of breads and the process of baking-
The different kinds of breads that can usually be seen baking in the old tandoors in the galis (streets) of Kashmir are Girda, Bagirkhani, Lavasa, Kandi (sweet) kulcha, namkeen(salty) kulcha and shirmaal.
The basic ingredients for the products are Atta (flour), ghee, refined oil, water, salt/sugar and often poppy or sesame seeds.
Mohammed Qasim Dukroo is the owner of the first small bakery I visited. He has worked in this world for almost 40 years, his entire life hidden in one of the side streets in Islamabad (Anantnag) and with his main worker Arshid Khan, he shared the nitty-gritties of bread and biscuit making with me.
Sitting cross-legged in a dark soot painted shop, Mr.Dukroo offered chai and food to me and pointed towards the kulchas placed on blackened iron trays on a hot wooden desk while Arshid brushed ample ghee on them dipping an industrial paint brush in a clean British Paints bucket and talked of their craft.
Bagirkhani, a brown and white flaky bread that tastes brilliant with a thick brush of butter is eaten with the special Kashmiri noon chai for the 4 PM quintessential teatime in Kashmiri households. It is baked for ten minutes in the Tandoor.
The mixture starts off with flour put in water and repeatedly beaten till firm. Salt is then added and mixed further with ghee and refined oil. The mix is divided into medium sized balls which are then flattened into circles by hand. It is then patted with a thin layer of water and sesame seeds are stuck onto them.
The product is stuck to the sides of the tandoor and voila! Ten minutes of waiting time and it is now ready.
The difference in Kandi Kulcha, the sweet variety of a dome shaped biscuit is that instead of water, the mixture uses sugar, milk and sesame. And the salty version uses salt and water again.
Kandi kulcha is the only product that is cooked at the bottom of the tandoor instead of the sides.
The Abrogation and Covid –
The second shop I had visited was 100 years old and was given a name only when I asked, ‘Zuhoor Bakery’, a small and dark space with two workers, 18 year old Zuhoor and 19 year old Gowhar, and the 25 year old Irfan, the Ustad from Kulgam who knows the tricks of the craft. He however looked much older. Maybe it was the constant smoke he had to breathe in or the long hours Kashmiri bakers have to pull off every day to sustain themselves.
The abrogation of Article 370 on 5th August 2019 was a very big blow to the baking industry in Kashmir as the shops were forcibly shut down for almost 3-4 months and the livelihood of the workers was completely cut off.
Barely having recovered from this, they were again hit with the Covid’19 pandemic which again had them close down their shops for 3 months again. In barely an year, these people had no method of earning for almost 9 months.
While talking to the bakery shops I found out that these people had been surviving on something called ‘baitul maal’. This was money from the reserves of local mosques which had been dispersed amongst civilians during these desperate times.
In the last shop I stopped by, the owner said, “Inshallah, my sons will not do this work. My wife and kids hate what I do. I’m an M Com graduate but I have to run this shop like my father did 40 years ago and I don’t like this work. It is my ‘Majboori’.”
The hours are awfully long. The profit is not enough. There are constant curfews, hartaals and this year has been exceptionally bad. There is also no time to rest and breathing in tandoor smoke causes chest and eye pain.” he added.
The one common thing that was noticeable in all these individuals was the unwillingness to allow themselves to dream or talk about desires. When asked about the ‘tamanna’ (desire) they had had as children regarding who they wanted to be and what they wanted to do, the answer was always ‘khodayas hawaal’ which loosely translates to ‘handover to God’.
Continuing to work so extremely hard despite the money not compensating for the labour and handing over the rest of their destinies to God is a strange and complex human behaviour.
This belief of ‘khodayas hawaal’ is either the thing that keeps them going day after night with their sanity intact despite the volatile nature of the Kashmiri conflict or the very thing that holds them back from exploring more options in life.
The vibe given off by the sheepish expressions when saying they had no other hopes from life made me wonder if they believed that to want to do something else or to say it out loud would insult their livelihood and insult God by their lack of gratitude. The long hours starting from 4 AM all the way to 7-8 PM and visiting home once in two months is not work for comfort-lovers.
However, the young men of Zuhoor bakery say that they would rather choose to be bakers than go back home to their village in Duroo Shahabad in the hills of Islamabad (Anantnag) because they don’t want to do farming. Farming work is just as taxing as baking work but they have more ‘aazaadi’(freedom) in the city, no matter how ironic that might sound in Kashmir.
Irfan, the young and quiet baking Ustad said, “Family members don’t let us rest. There is work to do at all hours. Work never seems to end, atleast here we work for 14 hours and then shut shop”.
The other common thing was the reiteration of the fact that younger people are no longer interested in baking. Factors like long hours, smoke filled shops and lack of profits puts them off hard labour which eventually will affect the future of these traditional Kashmiri goods.
How and when this will happen is heavily influenced by the poverty and desperation of families and whether the love of girda, lavasa and bakirkhani will overcome the hardships of their making.
