Afternoon 12th April

Himesh Reshamiya has become my favorite singer, music director & actor! Things were not like that all the time. ‘Ram’ our driver for the trip had just one cassette to play in the car stereo, & that one happened to be a collection of the latest Himesh hits!! Valley somehow makes you find a rhythm in everything, so the songs I found intolerable became the ones which were part of my i-Pod play list.
Like all men, my dad & I were confident (& wrong) about the way which leads to the ‘Nishat’ Park. And after finding the right one we found it was blockedJ. The Dal Lake boulevard was being repaired & we had driven about a kilometer into a road that leads to a signboard that tells u that the road leads to nothing but this signboard. To confirm whether signboard is serious about itself or like an Indian politician is merely being presumptuous; my dad got down & asked a worker at the repair site about the same. After the worker confirmed the way is blocked further, my dad complained about why the government could not put the board a kilometer away when the road starts, the worker said something that I can still hear. “It is good they did so. Maybe it was Allah’s wish that I get an opportunity to see you”. Every time we interacted with someone in Kashmir, we were always impressed with the courtesy & love we received. But this was too much for us to absorb. Till we reached the ‘Nishat’ Park, all three of us were in pensive mood. All three of us suddenly realized what & how much we have missed in our lives for the last 16 years outside the valley. Suddenly the pain of separation & the joy of being back there, albeit for a very brief time, became stronger than ever.
In case you can’t make out from the pictures below, Nishat is located between a hill & the Dal Lake. As such the park is just as pretty any other beautiful park at any hill station, somehow being sandwiched between a hill & a lake puts a halo around it that makes its beauty hard to beat. We met some folks with the Kashmiri tobacco pipe called ‘jajir’, so I grabbed upon the chance to capture it, although I had to convince them that this photo won’t come on TV. Again something almost trivial yet very different from the way things are outside valley. Anywhere in south Asia, TV cameras face a hard time to keep unwanted faces on street outside their frame; in the valley if you find someone brave enough to face it, you are one lucky chap. We also visited the other Srinagar parks notably ‘Harwan’ & ‘Shalimar’. Guess what ‘Harwan’ Park had trees with couples beneath them, a far cry from Al Madina Regiment’s cries of banning TV in Kashmir (since it is responsible for all ills of Kashmir). We were told about the winds of change in Kashmir, and not all of them were blowing against the west.

Morning 12th April

Heaven is the place where Gods resides, right? So, why would the valley have any paucity of them? Well it doesn’t. Kashmiri Pandits maybe a small insignificant (statistically) minority in Kashmir, but they have a fair number of pilgrims in valley. Amarnath is the most popular one of them, but for Kashmiri Pandits themselves, the numero uno of religious places is a place called ‘Kheer Bhawani’ or Tulmul. This used to be the favorite place of many Sages to meditate, due to some mystical calmness in the surroundings.
This mystical calmness was what we were headed to on the morning of 12th. The entrance to the temple looks no different to the entrance of any of the ubiquitous army bunkers/instillations you see all across the valley. All through my trip to valley, I had to try real hard to keep armed people out of frame in my photos.
Then there were things I was trying real hard to keep within the frame, but couldn’t. One of these things which even a gigapixel digital camera can’t capture is ‘Kashmiriyat’. The people distributing the ‘prasad’ (offerings to the god) at Kheer Bhawani are Muslims!! There are various concepts of secularism; Western one, where something secular is something atheistic; Indian political system one, where you ban anything offending any religion and give undue favors to people of all religions equally. Kashmiri concept is very weird given the fact that generally accepted norms of secularism are the ones discussed above. Its not mere economics that drives the phenomenon of why so many Hindu religious places in Kashmir are managed by Muslims (Amarnath is another example), it is something else. It is the underlined logic, thought & philosophy behind so many other things there. Some use a word ‘Kashmiriyat’ for it and some like Arun Shourie call it " incomparable blend of Shaivism and liberal Islam" , lets use whatever word you people are comfortable with.
I tasted the mystical calmness in all its glory; there were very few visitors to Kheer Bhawani that morning. I also had what was probably best lunch of my life, oil soaked bread called ‘lichhe’ and milkless tea called ‘Kahwa’. (Please don’t try the recipe in your kitchen, both ‘look’ & ‘are’ very different from what the description suggests).

Afternoon/Evening 11th April

Like a cyclist on Tour-de-France, our driver was highly focused on the road while driving through the arduous Srinagar-Jammu highway, but he was buoyant like a WWE wrestler while driving in the valley. He would talk to kids, their parents & people standing next to kid’s parents. He almost gave you the feeling that it was he who was the Ian Wright (of lonely planet fame, remember!!) of this journey & not me.
We decided to stay at the village of my father’s ‘matamal’ (place where you mother used to stay before marriage). It is a town called Pattan. Located in Hunziwara district it looks like a normal Kashmiri village, and it is one. Only thing not normal about it was the welcome we got once we got there. We were visiting a relative there, but my father had spent a considerable amount of time there & was identified by one of his friends of those times. Thank god I had seen red carpets of Hollywood movies on TV so I knew how to react in such situations. About 50 people were all looking at us with one desire; a chance to help us lift our luggage. The love was overwhelming for even me, who thought he has lost all ‘whelming abilities’.
The evening brought many from the village to my relative’s place, most of them were childhood friends of my dad, it hence was a chance at talking about local politics, things like who the best chief minister so far has been & why the candidate of a particular party who did not stand in the recent polls should have stood up etc. etc. It was also the time to relive the memories of the days gone by; somehow all the good memories were from years before 90’s & all the traumatic ones from period thereafter. Happiness & pain have their battles all the time, but when it comes to the arena of memories; happiness always wins. It was a good, old Kashmiri joke that ended the reunion of old friends.

Morning 11th April

Morning was here and so was the mythicalness of Bandipore & the energy to go even further. I have heard the line “my village is prettiest of them all” so many times in 70’s bollywood movies and here it is my turn to say the same, only thing is unlike Dharmendra I will also add the line “my village is heavily militarized”. I was warned by many that the real danger in Kashmir is when you become an innocent civilian caught in a grenade attack by terrorists on an Army/Paramilitary installation. The thought prevailing there was that terrorists aren’t attacking civilians these days. I felt that there are no imaginary dangers in Kashmir, a few days later some unidentified armed people attacked tourists in the valley, none of the terrorists groups took responsibility. Maybe Loch Ness monster was responsible. With these real, imaginary & complex fears with us, we took off for Gulmarg.
I believe Gulmarg is the most filmed location in the world after Wall Street & Times Square. 8 out of 10 Bollywood movies in 60’s & 70’s were shot here (don’t take this statistic very seriously, this is just to give you a general idea J). There is a reason why it is so, because Gulmarg is the Sachin Tendulkar & Amitabh Bachan of the Indian Hill Stations. A few kilometers away is Tanmarg, not exactly a hill station but an aspiring pit stop to the great Gulmarg. We decided to encourage its aspirations & halt there for a while. The place has a few shops which stock most of the things u would want to have while on course to Gulmarg. Someone whom I hadn’t met ever in life (& odds are really low that I would meet again) approached from behind and asked me in Kashmiri “Are you a Kashmiri Pandit” I replied in affirmative. “We are very ashamed of what happened in early 90’s and we really miss you here”. I am not sure if he needed to apologize because I don’t feel he was responsible for what happened (neither the larger self he wanted to represent when he said so). But the short conversation I had with him there once again made me wonder, how could a place that has so much love in the surroundings & the people surrounding them, possibly be such a tragic victim of hate.
Well tragedies fell aside and all the song & dance sequences had come to forefront as we reached Gulmarg. Of many sinful, ambitious desires I had, to play in the snow was the most intense. I did get a shot at it & also to ride one of the most advanced Gondola rides in the world for 500 rupees (11 dollars). Our sledge puller at Gulmarg like so many other people we talked to once again bad mouthed terrorists. Well there is one thing common to terrorists & Indian politicians, both are far less popular than what they think they are.
While coming back we decided to inspire Tanmarg further & decided to have lunch there in a hotel. After we asked for rice for three people, the person waiting on us (who also seemed like the manager there) told us to have one serving, see if it is not enough & then order for more. Damn he was right; we were not able to finish the first bowl of rice. A person who damages his business to ensure you don’t order more than u need. What place on earth was I ???

Evening 10th April

Triumphing over roads which seemed insurmountable, the wheels of our Taxi( an Indica V2) were put through further test by the roads that were leading to Bandipur/Kalusa. Rains had flooded the Wular Lake & that meant the roads besides the lake lost the tar & retained only the stones. U might as well drive over one big, long rock and it would feel the same. If we had any respect for the quality of roads in valley we lost it when we reached at a bridge that connects Srinagar to Bandipur district, the bridge was broken and that meant we had to take a detour which would elongate our journey by more than a couple of hours.
It was at this juncture that I tasted the concept they call ‘Kashmiriyat’. While we were taking the detour we asked a middle aged man standing besides the road whether the road to Bandipur is damaged, the reply, amazed me on one hand and was pretty much what my parents expected from a Kashmiri on the another, “Yeah the way is Ok, but it might be dark by then, why don’t you stay with us till morning’. We meet a person on the road for the first time, and he is inviting us to his house! Having stayed in a big city for many years now, this behavior would have seemed very suspicious there, but here this was the standard operating procedure!!
Bandipur now seemed more mythical than ever before, the journey seemed unending & what was an hour’s ride was now a painful innings on ‘rubber wheels take on rocks’ game. But the jovial spirits of our driver Ram & the beauty of view outside meant the pain was alleviated as soon as it emerged.
Then a place changed it all… Like the place ‘modor’ scared characters in the lord of the rings, ‘Samlar’ evoked reactions from my parents I couldn’t understand. Later they told me it used to be an area which used to be the hub of many terrorist activities & that road was ‘no-no’ even when terrorism had hardly begun. We were on that road only because the numerous diversions due to floods had forced us to. At one of the place on that road a Tata Sumo(Taxi that runs in Kashmir) stopped in front of us. The driver got down & called our driver out. For moments there was silence that couldn’t have been louder. Seconds later the driver returned, “ he said hide the flag” . Our driver Ram, had a knack of cracking jokes that were genuinely funny only in Kashmir or in other places u desperately want to laugh. His other knack was to take things head on. He had put an Indian flag on the dashboard of the car. A rare yet unnoticeable thing anywhere, but a bravado of highest degree for a taxi that runs mostly in valley. We did hide the flag, but not for long.
Finally at around 8 or 9, we did make it to Bandipur, and the myth came to and end. The army has barricaded the area where my ancestral home is, it was night time & hardly anything was visible. Somehow the magic was simply not there.

Afternoon 10th April

All through our way to the Jawahar Tunnel, we were all praying for one thing..... the rain to stop. It was raining heavily, at least it seemed like it was. And that meant that the road wasn’t getting any better soon. We passed many small towns and many more smaller ones, with our fingers crossed & minds engrossed in the fear of getting struck at some desolate place on the Jammu-Srinagar highway.
But just like cowardice, bravery rewards you once a while and this was one such occasion. When we reached the damaged portion of the road, it was getting cleared & we had to wait for mere 15minutes for the roads to get cleared. And as soon as we crossed the Banihal Tunnel, it seemed heaven had come from all the places where it could & surrounded us with itself. The weather turned sunny, valley was visible & we finally had our lunch. What followed is something I still find difficult to express. The truth is no matter how hard I try I cannot write anything that can prepare you for the beauty that the valley has.
One of the sights I remember is that of a farm full of saffron flowers, till that time it was the most beautiful thing I had seen for the last 16 years. That record was broken again & again & again in the next four days. (and by the way my father corrected me later, what I saw was not a saffron field, it was an insignificant flower whose name he was not sure about, saffron does not grow in this season & saffron fields are much more beautiful)
We reached Srinagar & had it been one big garrison it couldn’t possibly have been more densely populated by army. We stopped at a Tea stall & visited a temple besides it. I was told the temple floor used to be clean as the lobby of a five star hotel.
We left the city of temples for the village of my dreams. Bandipur, kalusa; my ancestral village was where we were headed to. It almost seemed mythical, I had heard detailed descriptions & thousands of stories regarding it, from my parents, cousins, grandparents, but I almost didn’t remember it.
As we passed through the unbelievably beautiful Kashmir villages, there was one painful observation that my parents made; the exteriors of houses seemed….depressed, tired,not the way they used to be 16 years ago. They had somehow become, just not worthy to be at the paradise on earth.

Off we go...

It began when I was somewhere between the certainty of my future yet the unsureness of myself. I had landed a job & hadn't joined it yet, and i had more time to relax than I needed. A trip to Kashmir had been on my mind for a long time but the will to take it up came at this time only.
So three of us (my parents & me) booked a taxi in Jammu & left for the valley on the morning of. It had been raining all night & though we hoped other wise we did not expect road to be open. The Jammu-Srinagar highway is amongst the most sensitive & ferocious anywhere. Sensitive because even a rainfall of few hours can block the road, ferocious because it has definitely claimed more lives than any single terrorist of Kashmir.
Udhmapur a small town which comes after Katra & before Rambhan, is the northern headquarters of Indian Army. It is also the place where I stayed for about a year immediately after I left the valley & it is also the place where the police stopped us & told us that the road is blocked & we can’t head towards valley. The policeman, who stopped us, asked us in Hindi where we are going.
My parents & our driver wanted to take the risk & go ahead and try to be there exactly by the time road gets cleared; if we are lucky we would find the road clear by the time we reach there, if not, we might get struck there for a while(a day or two inside a taxi isn’t that bad). Police discourages such bravado & hence doesn’t let people take this journey unless the Borders Roads Organization has already cleared the road.
So we acted smart and told the policeman that we are headed to Patnitop (a hill station around 60kms from there, about 8 hours away from Kashmir & a safe distance from the place where the road was damaged). Policeman, a Kashmiri, judged us well & now changed his language & tone, asking us in Kashmiri whether we are headed to valley. We also changed the language & our stated facts & confessed we are headed there. He told us that he would let us go, but he warned us that other check post 10 kms away from there might not let us go further. So we cruised past that checkpost & the other one also! Like a piece of saffron in a wind, that is gushing with urgency only either the ‘piece of saffron’ or the wind can understand, we moved ahead.