J&K's portable brazier kangar' losing its sheen

Srinagar: It is autumn, the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness envelopes Jammu & Kashmir. The days are pleasant, but the nights are relatively cold and it is time when the Valleyites brace up for icy-cold days and chilly nights of winter.

Winter starts in the month of December, but it is extremely cold also in the second half of November.. Like ants, the people of the Valley prepare weeks ahead of the rainy and snowy days by thronging markets to buy woollens, pulses, dry vegetables, rice and other imperishable eatables in  October.

When it comes to keeping oneself warm, including the feet, torso and hands, Kashmiris can’t but think of “kangar” or “kangri”. As the old adage goes, “Give a Kashmiri a kangar and he is perfectly happy”.

The kangar is an earthen pot woven around with a wicker filled with hot embers, routinely keeping it inside pheran or woollen Kashmiri cloak or inside a blanket.

Though many Kashmiri homes have turned to heaters and heating pillars imported from faraway Turkey, South Korea and Japan or invented or copied within India to beat the biting cold during winter, kangar still remains indispensable for the average Kashmiri.

However, this portable Kashmiri brazier, a vital part of the Himalayan region’s “warm” folklore is losing its sheen for two reasons: changing lifestyle of the Valleyites and of it allegedly being injurious to health. Doctors warn that the kangar’s persistent use can cause a specific skin cancer.

W.J. Elmslie, a missionary doctor who came to Srinagar in 1865, provided the first scientific account of Kangri burn cancer in the Valley. He observed that the people use kangar under a pheran in close proximity to the bare skin of the abdomen and when indoors they place it between their thighs. The embers of charcoal reach a temperature of about 66 degree Celsius and its injurious effects include skin cancer in abdomen and thighs. Latest research, however, says that the disease is caused by the result of  carcinogenic elements in charcoal.

Dr Abdul Waheed Banday, former head of the department of medicine at Srinagar’s Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS), cautions against improper and too much use of kangar. “If we use it with wisdom, ensuring it doesn’t have close contact with thighs, legs and abdomen, then it is a luxury,” he says.  

The kangar is a baked earthenware bowl fitted in a woven wicker-work basket. When initially introduced in J&K, it was just a bowl of earthware known as mannan. Today’s kangar, particularly those from Charar-e-Sharief, around 29 km from Srinagar, are beautiful to behold, woven as they are with lovely works of different sizes and designs of different colours. These kangars sell between '150 and '300.

The fuel used in a kangar is tapan tsini, a kind of charcoal traditionally made  by burning hak — the drift wood collected from the rivers, forests and dried leaves of Chinar and other trees.