Salman Rushdie and Kashmiri Pandits
A comprehensive
review of Rushdie’s latest novel:
Shalimar the Clown
By Prof. G.L. Jalali
*(The author is
Executive Editor of Koshur Gazzette. He has also authored "Jihad in Kashmir")
 Salman Rushdie, India’s most controversial novelist, has eight novels to his
credit. Shalimar The Clown is his latest contribution. He has dedicated
the novel to his grand parents, Dr. Abdullah alias Babjan and Amir Unnissa Butt
alias Ammaji who, as per the novelist, hailed from Kashmir. Literary critics
have hailed the novel as “manifestly mature work: the writing is more
disciplined than in the earlier novels, well-paced and focused, with fewer
Rushdiean loose ends” (Shashi Tharoor in the Hindu, October 9, 2005). To
comprehend Rushdie’s works one must have a wide range of knowledge, for his
approach to the storyline is always holistic. His imagination runs wild
just like an unbridled horse let loose in the midst of a deep, dense forest -
extremely rich in flora and fauna. While going through Rushdie’s novel the
reader has to keep pace with the fleeting images of the “past and present
events” which are portrayed so nicely with suitable words couched in
non-conventional style. Shalimar The Clown has set a new pattern, hit a
novel theme and established once again Rushdie’s credentials as world’s leading
novelist.
Salman Rushdie
‘The publication of Salman
Rushdie’s ninth novel offers an occasion to celebrate the astonishing new voice
he has brought into the world of English language fiction, a voice whose
language and concerns have stretched the boundaries of the possible in English
literature. Shalimar The Clown adds the murderous incertitudes of the
world of 9/11 to his repertoire; it is topical and typical, a novel derived from
today’s headlines and yesterday’s hopes” (Shashi Tharoor).
The main characters of the
novel are Maximilian Ophuls, Boonyi Koul, Shalimar the Clown, Pandit Pyarelal
Koul, Pt. Gopi Nath Razdan, Pamposh Koul, Abdullah Noman, Firdous Noman,
Kashmira, Gagroo brothers, Maulana Bulbul Fakh, Anees Noman, Nazribaddoor and
Edgarwood. Maxophuls is the former American ambassador to India. He was involved
in counter insurgency operations, The novel begins with the assassination of the
former ambassador in Los Angels. His throat is slit by an unknown assassin. His
dead body is lying at the door step of the apartment building owned by his
illegitimate daughter, India who is also called Kashmira by her Kashmiri-born
Pandit mother Boonyi Koul. The killer of the American Jew is none other than his
own chauffeur called Shalimar the Clown. So the novel has a “bloody beginning”.
The story of the novel mainly pivots round Max, Boonyi Koul and Shalimar the
Clown. It is the story of “deep love gone finally wrong, destroyed by a shallow
affair”. Says a critic, “It is an epic narrative that moves from California to
France, England and above all, Kashmir. At its heart (it) is the tale of that
earthy paradise of peach orchards, and honey bees, of mountains and lakes, of
green-eyed women and murderous men...” Salman Rushdie’s “majestic narrative
captures the heart of the reader. The romance is unfolded against the backdrop
of “Partition, increasing Hindu-Muslim tension, the infiltration of Islamist
Jehadis into Kashmir Valley.” It is a novel that depicts historical events in
right perspective. Since the outbreak of insurgency in J&K state, numerous
novels, describing the ongoing turmoil in the state, have come to the
market-place. But Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown crowns the list.
The novel unfolds the emotions of the main characters in relation to changing
political events. Boonyi Koul becomes a sacrificial goat in this blood-curdling
tragic opera. Shalimar the Clown is, as such, a “novel of mourning, nor least
for the loss of Kashmiriat which Rushdie so lovingly evokes in his portrait of
idyllic village life where Hindus and Muslims laughed together, performing
folk-dance plays about tolerant Kashmiri kings and cooking, “Banquet of sixty -
courses maximum.” The locale of the story is Pachigam, which is situated on the
river Muskadum. It is a typical Kashmiri village which commands “superb
landscape beauty.” The village abounds in cherry, apple and apricot trees with
vast expanse of lush green paddy fields around it. In this village two families
- one, a Hindu named Pyarelal Koul, and the other, Abdullah Noman - occupied a
prominent place. “Pachigam was a blessed village, and its two great families had
inherited much of the natural bounty of region. Pandit Pyarelal had the apple
orchard and Abdullah Noman had the peach trees. Abdullah had the honeybees
and the mountain ponies and the Pandit owned the saffron field as well as
large flocks of sheep and goats.” (Page 48). The village was known for “bands”
(Clowns). Perhaps Salman Rushdie refers to village Vathor (in Badgam district)
which is known all over India for “Bhanda-Pather” (indigenous Kashmiri dance).
Pandit Pyarelal Koul, a native of Pachigam, is a widower whose wife, Pamposh
Koul, died soon after giving birth to a baby girl named Boonyi Koul. “He and
Boonyi lived at the end of Pachigam in the village’s second-best dwelling, a
wooden house like all the other houses but with two floors instead of one ....”
(page 46). Boonyi was his only child who had attractive physical features.
Abdullah Noman, a fast friend of Pandit Pyarelal Koul, is the head of the
village Panchayat. The Pandit is an expert cook, for “Pachigam is a
village of gastronomes.” He is an “expert-dance master”. Boonyi is the apple of
her father’s eye. “The Pandit had tried to be both father and mother to her all
life. Inspite of his unworldly nature, he treated her as an inestimable
treasure, as the pearl of great price his beloved wife had left behind for him
as a going - away present...” (page 51). As she advanced in age, Pandit
Payarelal Koul” taught her to sing, read and write.” Boonyi, like any pampered
child, grew under the care of her dotting father, Pandit Pyarelal Koul.
Salman Rushdie portrays
the character of Pandit Pyarelal Koul’s deceased wife and Boonyi’s mother
Pamposh Koul in a very derogatory manner and presents her as intensively sexual.
Mark these lines: “ln the matter of lovemaking Kashmiri women had
never been shrinking violets, but what Pamposh confided to Firdous
(Shalimar the Clown’s mother) made her ears burn. The Sarpanch’s wife understood
that what is hidden away inside her friend was a personality so intensely sexual
that it was a wonder the Pandit was still able to get up out of bed and walk
around. Pamposh’s passion for the wilder reaches of sexual behaviour introduced
Firdous to a number of new concepts that simultaneously horrified and aroused
her, although she feared that if she attempted to introduce them into her
bedroom. Abdullah, for whom sex was a simple relief of physical urges and not be
unduly prolonged, would throw her out into the street like a common whore” (page
51). Salman Rushdie is apparently not conversant with Kashmiri Pandit ethos
where sex is not a “bazaar commodity”. To treat Pamposh Koul, the wife of Pandit
Pyarelal Koul, as a live “sex-Bomb’ is highly disparaging and violative of
socio-cultural norms. The character of Pamposh Kaul is just novelist’s figment
of crazy imagination.
Boonyi Koul becomes the
leading dancer in the dancing troupe, comprising Shalimar the Clown, Himal,
Gonvati, Habib Joo, Anees Noman etc. She fell in love with the son of the Muslim
Bhand, known as Shalimar the Clown. Boonyi would often slip out of her house and
“make way up the wooded hillside to Khelmarg, where by moonlight she practised
archery, spearing arrows into innocent tress”. She was, to quote Rushdie, a
shadow, in search of a shadow. She would find the shadow she was looking for. In
fact she was after shadow of Shalimar the Cown. Her love for Shalimar the Clown
was a juvenile passion of a fourteen years old village girl. Rushdie has
depicted it in the most erotic manner “He looked into Boonyi’s eyes and saw the
telltale dreaminess there, warning him that she had smoked “CHARAS” to give her
the courage to be “DE FLOWERED”. In the subtly suggestive movements of her
lips, too he could discern the cryptic seductiveness of her condition.,..Boonyi
pulled her PHERAN and shirt off over her head and stood before him naked....”
(page 60) Shalimar the Clown was not the only person who was over head
and ears in love with Pandit Pyarelal Koul’s daughter Boonyi, the Bhand-dancer;
Colonel Hammirdev - Suryans Kachhawha of the local Indian army unit deployed
in the district “had his eye on her (Boonyi) for some time. Thirty-three years
old army officer, also known as Hammer Kachhwah, was prepared to pay any price
for Boonyi’s love. He was a man of deep feeling, a man who appreciated beauty
and gentleness who loved beauty and who, accordingly felt great love for
beautiful Kashmir.” Rushdie’s describes Colonel’s first encounter with intense
emotional touch:” Thus he saw Boonyi. It felt like the meeting of Radha and
Krishen except that he was riding in a jeep and he was not blue skinned and
not feel godlike and she barely recognised her existence. She was with her girl
friends, Himal, Gonawati and Zoon just like Radha with the milky Gopis....”
Her comparison to Radha in the company of Krishna is metaphorically odd and inappropriate.
The novelist presents Boonyi Koul as a beautiful, live human sex-bomb which
spills disaster not for her own self, but also for her cuckold husband Shalimar
the Clown, and also for her future lover Max Ophuls. Boonyi had no soft comer
for Colonel Kachhawa. Says the novelist: “Boonyi disliked him on sight and
before he had opened his bony face she told him: You must be looking for someone
somewhere else. There is nothing for you. “But of course there was.” (Page 102).
Boonyi and Shalimar the Clown
were “married according to Hindu and Muslim rites.” Pandit Pyarelal”
agreed to resume his teaching duties, to shoulder the dual burdens of education
and gastronomy as long as his strength lasted and preparations for the nuptials
of Boonyi and Shalimar the Clown began,” (Page 112). From this day onwards
Boonyi Koul was known as Boonyi Koul Noman, the daughter-in-law of Abdullah
Noman and Firdous Noman. The union of two families, Pandit and Muslim through
matrimonial relations is unnatural.
This has never happened in
the history of Kashmiri Pandits - a daughter of cultured educated Kashmiri
Pandit villager marrying an illiterate Muslim boy who knows nothing beyond
“Bhand Pather.” Is the girl converted after marriage? It is a must after
marriage of the girl. Salman Rushdie is silent on this subject.
Such a re-union is the figment of novelist’s
crazy imagination. It is misrepresentation of Kashmiriat to which Rushdie refers
so often in the novel. Referring to the mutual cultural interaction, Rushdie
remarks: ‘The Pandits of Kashmir, unlike Brahmins anywhere else in India,
happily ate meat. Kashmiri Muslims, perhaps envying the Pandits their choice of
gods, blurred their faith’s dustier monotheism by worshipping at the shrines of
valley’s local saints and pirs. To be a Kashmiri, to have received so
incomparable a divine gift, was to value what was shared for more highly than
what divided” (page 83). Pachigam, the village where Boonyi and Shalimar the
Clown were born, was a flag-post of the Kashmiriat. “Abdullah (father of
Shalimar the Clown) then mentioned Kashmiriat, Kashmiriness, the belief that at
heart of Kashmiri culture there was common bond that transcended all other
villages. Most ‘Bhand’ villages were Muslims, but Pachigam was a mixture...”
(page 110). One fine morning the Bhands of Pachigam received an invitation to
stage Bhand Pather in Srinagar’s Mughal garden in honour of the visiting
American ambassador Max Ophuls. The Bhands of Pachigam felt themselves honoured
at the invitation from the state government. The American ambassador “was a
scholarly gentleman and evidently took strong interest in all aspects of
Kashmiri culture”. “Ambassador’s personal aide, Mr Edgar Wood, had specially
asked for an evening of festivities during which the Banquet of sixty courses
maximum would be eaten, a Santoor player from Srinagar would play traditional
Kashmiri music, leading local authors would recite passages from the mystical
poetry of Lal Ded...” (page 132). In the Bhand-Pather Boonyi played the role of
Anarkali.
Her
very dance and demeanour bewitched the heart of the young sexy American
ambassador. “When Boonyi met Maximilian Ophul’s eyes for the first time he was
applauding widely and looking piercingly at her while she took her bow, as if he
wanted to see right into her soul. At that moment she knew she had found what
she had been waiting for. I swore I would grab my chance when it showed up, she
told herself, and here it is, staring me in the face and hanging its hands
together like a fool” (page 133).
The
die was cast; the villain entrapped and bewitched the young Kashmiri Pandit girl
who was already married to a Muslim Bhand actor of Pachigam. Max Ophul’s early
career was shrouded in mystery. He was a French Jew who, like the other members
of the Jewish community, had suffered immensely at the hands of Nazis. He had
seen many ups and downs in his chequered career. He was notorious for his
promiscuous relations
with women. Boonyi’s
appearance showed Max in true colours. The womanizer in him
took front seat. “Then Boonyi
Koul Noman came out to dance
and Max realised that his
Indian destiny would have little
to do with politics, diplomacy
or
arms sales, and everything
to do with the far more ancient
imperatives of desire.” She was
carried to Delhi, where the poor,
innocent Pandit girl became the
object to satisfy the lust of sexhungry
American ambassador.
She was provided with all the
amenities of luxurious life. The
Pachigam girl turned into a Panchewing
whore. “In short she
could not get her cuckolded
husband out of her mind, and
because it was impossible to
talk to her American lover about
anything important. She spoke
heatedly of “Kashmir.” Instead
whenever she said “Kashmir”
she secretly meant her
husband, and this ruse allowed
her to declare her love for the
man she had betrayed to the
man with whom she had
committed the act of treason”
(page 197) Salman Rashdie has
been very unfair to Boonyi, the
innocent Pandit girl. It is
unthinkable to think that a
Pandit lady can jilt her husband
as Boonyi did to satisfy her
carnal desires. The novelist has
failed to understand the ethos
of the Pandit community. There
is too much distortion in
depicting the character of the
debased Pandit whore. ‘The
excess of Delhi deranged her.
She became addicted to
chewing tobacco. She consumed
drugs. She took to
gluttony ...Yes, she was a whore
she admitted to herself with a
twist of the heart...” (Page 202)
Boonyi became pregnant and
carried Max’s girl-baby in her
womb. “She had grown so
obese that the pregnancy had
been invisible, it lay hidden
somewhere inside her fat, and
it was too late to think about an
abortion, she was too far
advanced and risks were too
great” (page 204). Max’s
scandal with Boonyi became a
hot subject of public debate
and street gossip. The
American ambassador was
recalled in utter disgrace. A
Kashmiri girl was ruined and
destroyed by a powerful
American. That was the general
impression in New Delhi. Peggy
Ophuls, the legal wife of Max,
prevailed upon Boonyi to give
her newborn child named India
so that Boonyi would escape the
shame of giving birth to an
illegitimate child. She assured
the Pachigam girl that she would
take
every
care of the baby and
carry her to America.
Boonyi was flown to
Elasticnagar where
from she was taken to
Pachigam in a vehicle.
As they reached
Pachigam it began to
snow. She was
dropped a few miles
away from Pachigam.
Poor Boonyi, the whore
daughter of Pandit
Pyarelal Koul, died in a
snow blizzard that
lashed Pachigam and
its surrounding areas.
Thus ended the story of
Boonyi. Rushdie has
wonderfully depicted
her emotions “at the
last stage of her life”.
“She saw them all
through snowstorm,
circling her like cows,
keeping their distance.
She called out, but
nobody called back,
One by one they approached her
Himal, Gonwati and Shivshanker
Sharga, Big Man Misri, Habib
Joo - and one by one they
receded....” (page 221) Boonyi
fell flat on the snowy ground like
a “Booni” (Chinar tree) majestic
in appearance with a sad tale of
love and infidelity written on
every withered leaf
of
the
majestic
Boonyi (chinar tree).
“When her father came hopping
awkwardly through the snow she
felt sure that the spell would
break. But he stopped six feet
away and wept, the tears freezing
on her cheeks. She was his only
child. He had loved her more
than his own life until she died.
If he did not speak now her dead
gaze would curse him”. A
rejected child can place the evil
eye upon the parent who spurns
her, even after death” (page :
222). The story of her Pachigam
husband, Shalimar the clown,
starts where the story of his wife
Boonyi ends He joins the rank
of militants and vows to kill the
former American ambassador
Max Ophuls. He succeeds in
killing him as far as in Los
Angles.... he goes to
Afghanistan for arms training. He
becomes the member of Lashkere-
Pakistan (LeP).
The infidelity of his wife,
Boonyi, is a personal tragedy for
Bhand-actor, Shalimar the
Clown. He takes revenge in a
volatile political background
which is marked by the Jihadi
terrorism and Muslim
insurgency. Shashi Tharoor
writes in the Hindu dated
October 9, 05 “As always with
Rushdie, the personal is
entwined with the political, the
tangled love affairs of the
protagonist unfolds against a
backdrop of Partition, increasing
Hindu Muslim tension, the
infiltration of Islamist Jihadists
into the Kashmir valley and
brutal repression and the
destruction of the peaceful,
syncretic Kashmir from which
Rushdie derives his own
heritage.” Shalimar the Clown
may be termed as a historical
novel in which the author refers
to important historical events
ranging from the Tribal Invasion
of Kashmir (Kabalee Hamla, 1947)
to the ongoing Jehadi terrorism
that has been raging in Kashmir
valley since 1989. He also delves
deep into the medieval history,
describing the golden period of
Kashmir’s (only) secular king
Sultan Zain-ul-Abdin and the
atrocities perpetrated on peace
loving Kashmiri Pandits by
world’s most fanatic Muslim
ruler, SikanderButshikan.
On page 85 of the novel the
Booker award winner novelist
alludes to the “looting, burning
and killing of Kashmiris by the
Kabalis in 1947. He also refers to
Indo-Pak war in 1965 and
hijacking of plane from Srinagar
to Lahore airport by Hashim
Qureshi. He alludes to the
founder of JKLF, Maqbool Bhatt
and Indo-Pak War (1971). But the
novelist’s main focus is on the
ongoing Muslim insurgency in
J&K state. The main ideologue
of the ongoing Muslim
fundamentalism as depicted in
the 400-page novel Shalman the
Clown is Maulana Bulbul Fakh.
Says the novelist, “The iron
Mullah Maulana Bulbul
Fakh was their appointed
superior. His breath was
still the sulphurous
dragon-breath that had
earned him his striky name
Fakh and still spoke in the
old harsh way... He
carried a lump of rock salt
at all times: This is
Pakistani salt,” he told the
liberation front
commander and his men.
‘This we will bring to
Kashmir when we set it
free. He wrapped the salt
in a green handkerchief
and put it away in a bag.”
The green is for our
religion which makes all
things possible,” he said
(page 264). The iron
Mullah was the guide for
militants. He would
brainwash the new
recruits. The novelist
gives a peep into the daily
routine of militants who would
offer prayers five times a day.
According to Bulbul Fakh, “the
true warrior was not primarily
motivated by worldly desires,
but he believed it to be true.
Economics was not primary,
ideology was primary” (page
265). He represented the essence
of Jihadi fundamentalism:
“It was a part of his gift to the
revolution, a part of God’s work.”
The Iron Mullah, Bulbul Fakh,
was responsible for the suicide
attacks on army camps including
Border Security Force Camp at
Bandipore, Army Corps. HQ, at
Badami Bagh, Civil Lines,
Srinagar. He was the
embodiment of the hatred for
Kashmiri Pandits. At his bidding
Shalimar Noman’s dreaded
terrorist brother Anees Noman
killed the Pandit inhabitant of
Shrimal village, Man Misri in
cold blood. Man Misri’s widow
zoon committed suicide. The
village of Pachigam, known for
song and dance all over the
valley, was razed to ground. Its
inhabitants were mostly killed by
the Gagroo brothers. Salman
Rushdie gives a pen picture of
the widespread devastation
caused by militancy in the valley.
The destruction of Pachigam and
Shrimal stands for the
destruction the Kashmiriat which
forms the
integral
part of
Kashmiri culture and ethos. How
pathetic the life of Kashmiris
proved! Old people had
nostalgic memories of past - the
past that was a glorious period
in their placid lives. They were
given to day dreaming. Rushdie
describes the bruised psyche of
Pandit Pyarelal Koul as under.
“He closed his eyes and
pictured his Kashmir. He
confused up its crystal lakes,
Shishnag, Wular, Nagin, Dal,
its trees, the walnut, the
popular, the Chinar, the apple,
the peach; its mighty peaks,
Nanga Parbat, Harmukh. He
saw the beauty of the golden
children, the beauty of the
green-eyed women, the beauty
to blue eyed men. He stood atop
Mount Shankaracharya and
spoke aloud the famous old
verse concerning the earthy
paradise; it is this, it is this....”
(Page 305) The prophecy of
Nazribaddoor came true with
Kashmir becoming a hell. The
novelist portrays the grim
picture of the valley, which was
once called the “Earthy
Paradise.” Now, death has
overtaken it under its paw.
“Every one carries his address
in his pocket so that at least his
body will reach home” (page
305). The novel, Shalimar the
Clown, is a dirge in prose
lamenting the death of
Kashmiriat which Rushdie so
beautifully and lovingly evokes
in the depiction of the idyllic
rural life where Hindus
(Pandits) and Muslims laughed,
danced and loved together.
While evaluating Salman
Rushdie’s novel
Shailmar the
Clown,
the reader cannot ignore
the description of the miserable
plight of 3.5 lakh Pandit
refugees by the novelist. He has
graphically described these
details from page 294 to 297.
Kashmiri Pandits were pushed
out of valley by gun-toting
militants with an idea to change
the demographic character of
the valley and turn the whole
of Kashmir into an Islamic state
with Nizam-i-Mustafa (Shariat
laws) in force. Hundreds of
Pandits were brutally killed by
the Mujahideens.
Salman Rushdie has no
inhibition to draw the pen
picture of the atrocities
committed on the minuscule
Kashmiri Pandit community.
“In the time of Sikandar
Butshikan Muslim attacks on
Kashmiri Hindus were
described as the falling of
locust swarms upon the helpless paddy crop. I am afraid
that what is beginning now will
make Sikander’s time look
peaceful by comparison.” (page
294) Referring to the role of
Jamat-e-Islami, the main sponsor
of terrorism, Rushdie has to say:
The radical cadres of Jamat-e-lslami
party had new words for
Pandits: “Mukbir, Kafir” meaning
spy, infidel. “So we are slandered
as fifth columnists now,
“Pyarelal mourned, “That means
the assault cannot be far away.”
Rushdie refers to the vandalising
of temples and torching of Pandit
houses in 1986 carnage in
Anantnag district of the valley.
A few days later in Anantnag
district there began a week long
orgy of unprovoked violence
against Pandit residential and
commercial property, temples
and the physical persons of
Pandit families. Most of them
fled. The exodus of the Pandits
of Kashmir had begun (page
295). The novelist does not fail
to refer to Sangrampora,
Wandhama and Nadimarg
carnages
in which hundreds of
Kashmiri Pandits and Sikhs were
brutally shot dead. He also
describes how pathetically
Pandit Tikka Lal Taploo was
shot dead by militants in his
residential locality. Salman
Rushdie says,” Three hundred
and fifty thousand Pandits,
almost the entire Pandit
population of Kashmir fled from
their own homes and headed
south to the refugee camps
where they would not, like bitter
fallen apple, like the unloved,
undead dead they had become.
In the so-called Bangladeshi
Markets in Iqbal Park - Hazuri
Bagh area of Srinagar the things
looted from temples and homes
were being sold.” (Page 296)
Describing the horrible
conditions prevailing in Kashmiri
Pandit refugee camps, Salman
Rushdie remarks pathetically:
The camps at Purkhoo, Muthi,
Mishriwalla, Nagrota were built
on the banks and beds of
nullahas, dry seasonal
waterways and when the water
came the camps were flooded
why was that. The ministers of
the government made speeches
about ethnic cleansing but the
civil servants wrote one after
another memos saying that the
Pandits were simply internal
migrants whose displacement
had been self-imposed, why was
that...” (page 296) Kashmiri
Pandit refugees, says the
novelist, are left “to rot in their
slum camps”, dying so miserably
in the very dream of returning to
their flowery valley.
To sum up, Salman Rushdie’s
Path-breaking novel Shailmar the
Clown is a Kashmir-centric novel
in terms of character, locale and
situation. It is a song in tears; it
is the story of man-made tragedy
told in a simple language and
couched in out of the mill” style,
it is a saga of the sufferings
heaped upon 3.5 lakh Kashmiri
Pandits who have become
refugees in their own land. Infact
Salman Rushdie’s latest novel,
Shalimar the Clown is excellent
as well superb literary work in
the post 9/11 period. Details in
the novel are gripping and
sustain reader’s interest all
along. Of course, the novelist is
not realist in portraying Boonyi
Koul’s character. On the whole,
the novel is a literary gift to
readers keen to know the ground
situation in Kashmir. It deserves
another Booker for Rushdie.
*(The author is Executive
Editor, Koshur Gazzette, a
weekly published from New
Delhi. He has also authored Jehad in Kashmir). Source: Kashmir
Sentinel
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