‘Before I Forget— A Memoir’ by MK Raina is an emotional archive of Kashmir

Malvika Kaul

Theatre actor-director and film personality Maharaj Krishna Raina (popular as MK Raina) has a long and vivid memory, and one is grateful for it. For, his record of experiences, ‘Before I Forget — A Memoir’, captures some significant phases of Indian polity and cultural history. The book appears like an emotional archive of certain difficult periods of Kashmir, but is also a witness to how art and hope can heal the deep wounds of conflict.

Raina’s pen records as a historian and writes as a poet. Like Chinar leaves spread across Shalimar Bagh, his memoir transmits through decades, carrying a rich tapestry of events and anecdotes.

The book begins with enchanting memories of a childhood in Kashmir — when its beauty was untouched by violence, though dissent was never unfamiliar in the region. Raina creates a magical world of living in Sheetal Nath Sathu mohalla, a neighbourhood where Hindus and Muslims lived together. His wonderful Lal Ded Primary School, where his teachers inculcated a strong love for the languages; his joint family home, with separate houses and built-in kitchen gardens, and a common lawn where hockey and cricket matches were held.

The early chapters are dotted with reminisces of a picture-perfect Valley, a space of harmony between Kashmiri Pandits and Muslims. Subsequent chapters deal with events and figures that influenced Indian politics and culture — Sheikh Abdullah’s charisma after he returns from long imprisonment, the Emergency, the growth of institutes like the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) and the National School of Drama (NSD), Indira Gandhi’s assassination and the terrible Delhi riots, and the killing of playwright and director Safdar Hashmi. Raina’s narrative carries both the joys and sorrows of a citizen living through the travails of a nation.

However, it is his memory of Kashmir that dominates this chronicle. In the winter of 1990, Kashmir slipped into incessant cycles of violence that continue to this day in some parts of the region. That year, Raina’s mother was hospitalised with brain haemorrhage. Amidst curfews, bandhs, encounters, firing and security checks, Raina struggles to look after his mother in a hospital that rarely sees a doctor. He hears loud screams and painful wails at night — the wounded militants were smuggled into the hospital at night for treatment or surgery and would disappear by the morning. The news outside the hospital was worse — the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits had begun. Raina laments that “centuries-old links of interdependence that existed among neighbours were washed away”.

Raina later describes the nightmare of cremating his mother amidst curfew and threats of violence. His family moves on a road that is covered with soldiers and their weapons. Every 200 feet, security forces stop them to check the truck carrying his mother’s body. Each time, they order Raina to lift the shroud to show them his mother’s face. Amidst funerals, protests and killings, watching people leave their home, Raina writes, “The basic fibre of a centuries-old world was being ripped.”

Through the 1990s, Raina feared he had lost Kashmir forever. “Every evening, Kashmir would appear within me quietly and leave me quietly,” he writes. Meanwhile, Kashmir’s cultural space had been hijacked by religious diktats and militants. They banned folk-song parties and traditional folk theatre performers like Bhand Pather. Several eminent poets and artistes were forced to pay extortion money to terror groups.

Raina eventually returned to Kashmir after almost a decade to conduct theatre workshops. These workshops brought him closer to his people — writers, performers, shopkeepers and teachers. It is in the telling of their stories that Raina’s memoir is important. It avoids the nationalist or liberal narrative and focuses on the ordinary people of Kashmir whose sufferings have largely gone unnoticed. Like the tea-drinking and chain-smoking Aslam, a workshop participant. While talking about his brother, Aslam said, “I cannot express to him what I think or feel because I don’t know what he is thinking. The lack of trust has gone very deep. Brothers have become strangers.”

‘Before I Forget’ is Raina’s story of India, unfurling like the diverse colours of Chinar leaves, bringing tears and cheer.