Standing clad in loose fit salwaar-kameez, his beard touches his chest and a dash of surma (kohl) gleams in his eyes. He sits on a carpet even in scorching summers and shares the meal with his brothers eating from the same plate. He speaks fluent Pashtun, says he is from “Pashtunistan”.Rabindranath Tagore’s most famous short stories, ‘Kabuliwala’, written in 1892, narrates the tale of an Afghan in Kolkata who comes to the city for trading and befriends a little girl called Mini who reminds him of his own daughter back home. The story ends on a sad note when Mini fails to recognize him on his return after 10 years of imprisonment due to an unfortunate turn of events, on her wedding day. He returns to his country thinking his daughter might have forgotten him too.“Do they still exist?” was the first question that photographers-cum-journalists, Nazes Afroz and Moska Najib asked themselves in December 2012 when starting the three-year long journey of their project to document the lives of Kabuliwalas. Yes, they do and the reality of Tagore’s story can still be traced back to some nook and corners of Kolkata speaking of the presence of that community in the city. The community of nearly 5000 people is scattered all over Kolkata, from the central part of the metropolis to the suburbs, but it has evolved over time. The unique stories of this community and its lives in Kolkata over decades have now been successfully produced in the first ever visual body of work titled “Kabul To Kolkata- Of Belonging, Memories and Identity,” presently on display in New Delhi; it has been shown in Kabul and will travel to Dhaka and Kolkata hereafter.The feeling of displaced identity and belongingness from Tagore’s story is something that Najib understands very well – she was born in Afghanistan but was forced to flee to India when eight years old in early 90s upon the breaking out of the civil war; she stayed with her maternal relatives in India. “The Kabuliwala story and its reference have always come up in conversations and I was really looking for a way to connect back to Afghanistan. For me, it’s the story that stood out,” says Najib.For Afroz on the other hand, this project is a way to appease his conscience and give something to the city that has made him what he is today. Having been a journalist in Kolkata for 17 years before joining the BBC (London), Afroz was disappointed with the disappearing diversity that the city had enjoyed in 1970s. “The neighborhood where I used to live, Park Circus, had Chinese, Armenians, Baghdadi Jews, Kabuliwalas, but from 1980s, it started becoming more homogenized and these smaller communities started becoming increasingly small. It was disturbing because what I am is because of the diversity of this city, so this project could be a fitting tribute,” he adds.The Afghans first came to Kolkata around 1839 during the Anglo-Afghan war as traders through the southern route crossing the land now known as Pakistan; many stayed on because of the amenities the city offered as it was the capital of British India. However, after 1947, because of two international borders, going back to Afghanistan meant having a passport and formal documents which many of them lacked. Ever since, the Kabuliwalas have been a part of Kolkata’s diverse demographics. It would be interesting to know that most of the Kabuliwalas residing today in Kolkata are not from Kabul but from the southern provinces of the country; perhaps Pakitia and Paktika, feels Afroz.Earlier, when family meant 15 people living together in a house under a matriarchal in-charge, every middle-class house had a Kabuliwala of its own who would go selling dry fruits and other different commodities door-to-door. “My family had a Kabuliwala who used to sell dry fruits and my grandmother would buy only from him,” remembers Afroz. But they were also seen as people one had to be scared of, as outsiders by the Bengali majority of the city, as rightly portrayed in Tagore’s story and its numerous visual adaptations. They were often used as reference by mothers to scare their children. However, times evolved and nuclear family units emerged leaving Kabuliwalas as fictional characters of Tagore’s story despite living in the city within the same space. “A friend of mine who is a sociologist asked me why he can’t see them and I said because he had always imagined them in a certain frame wearing a turban and lose Afghani salwaar kameez but over the years, with the city, they have changed too,” says Afroz.Today, the older generation of Kabuliwalas is involved in a series of different trades; some of them have set up shops in Bara Bazaar as tailors, selling ‘Khan’ dresses and sometimes exporting those to Afghanistan. Stone carving workshops and small jewellery shops have been opened by a few others. Interestingly, some of them are into the business of money lending but do not like to be associated with it publicly. “They do not talk about it openly because money lending is prohibited in Islam; it’s a form of sustenance for them, however,” says Najib. The younger generation of the community, however, is more “Indian” in the sense they go to usual schools, have jobs and “play in local cricket teams, a game which wasn’t even played in Afghanistan earlier.”“Kolkata was never supposed to be a home. It was a temporary stop for a lot of Afghans to come, make money and go back. The intention was never to settle down but it transpired into one because of the advantages that the city gave at the time which is why they ended up marrying locally,” tells Najib. When they came to India, they never brought their families along. Today, all of them are married to Indian Muslim women and have families with them. However, as one goes through the photos, women and children are conspicuous by their absence in the pictures. In one of the photos, her presence can be discerned behind a veil, reflecting her role in the male-dominated community. “They still follow their code of conduct and despite having a woman photographer, women were behind the curtains,” says Afroz. In fact, Najib says she was glad to have a male colleague with her because there were many set-ups where she didn’t have access to.The community has tried to create a little Afghanistan within its cozy abode. The color of the walls exudes Afghani décor and the floors are always carpeted despite scorching humid heat in the city. Afroz, who has been travelling to Afghanistan for the last 12 years, says, “The houses are very typical of Afghanistan and they would all sleep, eat, drink on the carpet.” Most of them have tried to keep their tradition and culture alive. For instance, regular jargahs (in Pashtun, a traditional assembly of leaders to take decisions on issues and conflicts within the community according to the teachings of Islam) are held, male-dominated Pashtun dance is performed on all festivals and auspicious occasions. The customary meal is taken together, sharing from a single plate during communal gatherings called dastarkhan. Most amazingly, the children speak in fluent Pashtun like their counterparts would in Afghanistan, despite having no formal access to the language.The man behind keeping the community intact is Amir Khan, not the Bollywood star but the star of Kabuliwalas. Titled “the most interesting character” by Afroz, Khan was photographed stout in his salwar kameez in a dilapidated, rugged and an extremely old haveli, a place where he was born and his grandfather and father lived their entire lives. They say he is the face of the s community to the outside world and the go-to person if anyone is in trouble. He gives them a sense of identity amid a population of four million people. Also, he is the president of their organization called Khudai Khidmatgar, which helps people in case they have to deal with authorities or paper work, etc. “He understood what we were doing while most of them did not, initially. He understood that this body of work may give them some sort of identity,” says Afroz.When the two started the project, the doors were not very welcoming. People were frightened and constantly questioned their motives; always wary of what they were doing with the camera and the big lens. “Why us?” they would ask the two. “I couldn’t understand why because this isn’t a community that is born out of a conflict but then I realized that while they have lived in Kolkata for so many years, they are in many ways still devoid of an identity. They don’t have any physical documentation or a passport to say that they are from India, so they’re always worried about their identity. They don’t want any sort of recognition that may be misleading about them or cast them in a negative light. So, because they think they are outsiders, they always have a sense of fear,” reasons Najib. Some families, apparently, had cassettes with recorded messages from families in Afghanistan but they never allowed the two to listen to them. “They were very protective of their belongings,” she adds.They feel they are outsiders; they are rooted in Afghanistan yet rootless. Where do they belong? Afghanistan or India? Though they have lived in Kolkata for decades, home is still far away. The last picture of the exhibition has inverted the ending of Tagore’s story – it has the Kabuliwala smiling while Mini is getting married in the backdrop.“Kabul To Kolkata – Of Belonging, Memories and Identity,” is a travelling exhibition. It was opened in Kabul on March 17 and closed on April 1. It’s on display at Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi till April 23, in Dhaka (at Drik) from April 24 to May 6 and will finally come to Kolkata in an exhibition at The Harrington Street Art Centre, from May 16 to 29.Follow @ARTINFOIndia
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