YOU are absolutely right! The name `Shankar` and chapli kebab is an anomaly of the highest order. Bear with me. In this unfortunate atmosphere of war, where even the usually saner elements feel compelled to reiterate their patriotic credentials, discussing shared heritage will understandably be unpopular.

I love travelling by road and end up in places thought inaccessible. After multiple cancelled trips owing to unprecedented monsoons, early winters, glacial lake bursts, avalanches, and landslides, all driven by climate change, I was recently able to drive to Chitral from Rawalpindi. Just before Mardan in KP on the M-1 Motorway, one starts to see road signs pointing towards the Ashoka inscriptions in Shahbaz Garhi. As I asked my childhood friend from the area how Shahbaz Garhi differed from the Takhti-iBahi ruins nearby, he started receiving frantic calls from a lost colleague trying to locate the famous Shankar chapli kebab.

Despite my self-assessed expertise regarding the wonderful land of KP, I was at a complete loss at the glaring disconnect between someone named Shankar not only selling but excelling at something as anomalous as a meat kebab. Shakeela this is how male names are informally called out among Pakhtuns gave me one of his `you-dumb-scribe` looks and informed me that `Shankar` was the name of a locale with a host of kebab sellers, not a person.

It took some time to recover from the pleasant surprise that, despite frenzied efforts in the subcontinent to rechristen places, such as Ram Bagh in Karachi to Aram Bagh, and Allahabad in UP to Prayagraj, an area in a generally conservative province still holds on to its historic name. This marks the enduring legacy of cultural heritage despite the palimpsest of power and politics over millennia.

Ashoka, the grandson of Chandragupta Maurya, after expanding the empire through conquests, had converted to Buddhism and issued his famous edicts on peace and tolerance. Two boulders in Shahbaz Garhi have 14 of his edicts engraved on them, dating back to the third century BC. Ashoka is credited with pioneering the writing system, or Lipi, as it is called in both Sanskrit and Pali, in the region. The script used is called Kharosthi ofGandhariPrakrit.

The more one travels towards Chitral, the deeper the civilisational imprint gets.

The mountain range is called the Hindu Kush. My friend asked, just to tease me, `Does the mountain range discriminate between its victims based on their religion?` Without realising the pun, Ilaunched into an explanation of how the word `Hindu` is derived from `Sindhu`, the name of the great river whose waters India has recently threatened to deny us by holding the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance as a reaction to the Pahalgam atrocity in April.

My bemused travel companion had to endure a harangue about how everyone from the Indus Valley qualifies culturally as a `Hindu`, ie, people of the Sindhu.

Anyone trying to scale the great mountains in the range risked life and limb, hence the name Hindu Kush. An old joke worth repeating is that someone wondered if Hindu Bagh near Quetta could be renamed Muslim Bagh, why leave the Hindu Kush alone.

Ever wondered why watermelon is called `hindwana` or its variants in Pashto and Punjabi? It consists mostly of water, in our region, mostly from the Sindhu, leading to the name. Ignorance, sometimes, is bliss; otherwise, who knows what we would call the fruit? Some ideas would notdo, as they would not be considered respectful.

The farthest parts of Chitral are home to the Kalash tribes.

The total number of Kalash people in the three valleys of Bumburet, Rumbur, and Birir does not exceed 5,000. Yet, in acountry of approximately 250 million people, 96 per cent of whom are Muslim, many are determined to convert them to the majority faith. Development definitely does not come to mind when one sees the destruction wrought upon these idyllic valleys in the name of tourism.

People from all parts of the country descend upon the valleys, especially around the Chilam Joshi festival, and behave like yahoos. The Kalash also inhabit the other side of the mountain in Afghanistan. In the late 19th century, the inhabitants were made to convert by King Abdul Rahman, and the region was renamed Noorestan, or the abode of light.

Our side is still called Kafiristan, the abode of infidels. As for the prevailing jingoism, the powers that be can fight on; one hopes that the people on both sides continue to sway to the melodies of JaiJai Shiv Shankar, and Jhuley Lalan.= The wnter is a poet. His latest publication is a collection of satire essays titled R indana.

shahzadsharjeel1@gmail.com