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| Near Dal Gate, the entry point to Dal Lake |
On a chilly December evening, after riding in the backseats of a Chevrolet Tavera share-taxi from Jammu for ten hours, we got off at Lal Chowk and yawned and stretched. If it was cold that morning in Jammu, the chill had a sharper sting in Srinagar. The driver and some of our co-passengers told us that we'd find accommodation in one of the hotels lining the main street in the marketplace, although nothing looked impressive. The Lal Chowk marketplace wasn't any different from Paharganj in New Delhi or Andheri station road in Mumbai. However, two aspects stood out: the open-air stalls and even the boutiques were closing for the day, and it was not just chilly, it was freezing cold. The next evening, same time, we realised that the temperature was zero degrees Celsius! The only other place where I'd experienced subzero temperatures was in the United States.
We had to find accommodation soon otherwise we would turn into ice sculptures, which we usually see at wedding receptions near the salad counters. The folks of Srinagar were amused to see us with our rucksacks and jackets. Thankfully, we had come prepared. We had thick jackets - mine was an oversized coat that I'd purchased at a Costco outlet in Arlington - thermal inners, sweaters, woollen skull caps and gloves, even woollen socks. But I'd made the mistake of wearing Addidas sneakers to a subzero-temperatures place. Barely ten minutes after getting off the share-taxi, my toes singed.
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| Road to Srinagar near Anantnag |
A middle-aged man chuckled and led us through the alleyways saying he would show us a nice place to stay.
"Houseboat?" he asked.
We were two guys, brothers-in-law; why would we need a houseboat? I had images of houseboats bobbing on the waters of Dal lake in springtime, with tourists posing for photographs in Kashmiri attire, holding wicker baskets of tulip flowers and all, with shikhara boats drifting by. But we followed the man all the same, who walked so fast that we had trouble keeping up with him. Both of us were slightly heavyset then and we had huge rucksacks on our backs. Our jaws rattled even though we were walking as fast as we could through the narrow winding lanes of Lal Chowk.
Go India Go Back!
We Want Freedom!
Get Out Indian Army!
Indian Dogs Go Back!
The graffiti was everywhere. They were daunting, they rankled us, made us wonder why we didn't go to Hrishikesh as planned earlier. When we set out from Mumbai in the Duronto Express, our plan inclined towards going to Hrishikesh, doing some whitewater rafting, and then go further up the hills to Joshimath and Auli. Thanks to this chap we met on the train, who convinced us that we should go to Kashmir if we haven't been there before, we changed our minds. Again, at ISBT, if we wouldn't have boarded that PunBus Volvo bus to Jammu at the last minute, perhaps we would have gone to Mcleodganj or Kasol in Himachal Pradesh. Somehow, we were destined to come here, I said to bro-in-law Govind, as we reached a well-paved road beside a river on which there were two rundown houseboats moored on the riverbank. A gangplank connected the houseboat to the riverbank. The thought of slipping and falling into that chilly river was so frightening, it made me slightly dizzy.
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| Near Chinar Bagh |
"There, that is your room," the man said, ushering us into a tiny, crammed burrow of a room with a fireplace right in the middle. Large enough for a Hobbit perhaps, but not us. He showed us the squat toilet. A wooden plank was removed in the centre. We had to squat over that gap and divest ourselves of the previous day's excesses straight into the river. In the room, there was just about enough place for two people to stand shoulder to shoulder. The rest of it was covered by a double bed, the fireplace with its chimney and pipe extending to the low ceiling, and wooden cupboards and shelves alongside the wall.
"This is a room?" I asked. The man frowned.
"Of course saheb! This is a houseboat! All tourists who come to Kashmir prefer staying in these houseboats only. Why do you want a building? I'm sure wherever you've come from, you stay in concrete buildings only, don't you?"
"And where is the Dal lake?"
"You're standing on it!"
That was certainly not the Dal lake that we were standing on. These two houseboats were moored on some river, which I later realised was a tributary of the Jhelum, not even The Jhelum, let alone the vast Dal Lake. We excused ourselves and went to the main road, wondering what to do next. That was when Shakeel the autorickshawman appeared in his front-engine autorickshaw.
Shakeel was a tall, balding man in his fifties probably, with grey-white wisps of hair and a peppery stubble. In his phiran and boots, he looked warm and comfortable while we trembled and could barely speak coherently. He gave the man a scolding and then took us to Bishambar Nagar. On the way, he showed us a little eatery where he said we could get good, inexpensive, vegetarian food. I wasn't happy. Vegetarian food? I came all the way to Kashmir, travelling nonstop for two days, my bones and knuckles were rattling in that cold weather, and I have to eat vegetarian food? All that the eatery had was chapatis, some dal, a mixed vegetable dish, and a potato mash sabji. All of this constituted a thali for forty rupees. But hey, where are the kebabs and stuff? I'd heard and read about the Kashmiri Wazwan, the Tabak maaz, Rista, Dani phol, and Goshtaba so much and instead, over here, I get vegetarian food?
"For tonight, this should do," Govind said. He was relieved I guess, because Govind isn't much of a meat eater. In fact, his 'non-vegetarian' comprises only chicken (without bone) and prawns. For him, coming to Kashmir was like coming to another world, another universe altogether.
We gingerly asked Shakeel if there was a liquor shop nearby. He frowned and said that he would take us to 'the only liquor store in Srinagar' but before that:
"You need to find accommodation, don't you?"
Of course. I could not feel my big toes anymore. I was certain that by the time we returned home, I would not have those toes for long. They would fall off before the end of this trip.
We went down a flight of stairs beside the Bishambar-Dalgate road, descending into a narrow alleyway, and came upon a staid building with a signboard above its entrance: Hotel Golden Finger.
That is certainly some finger. Ever since we had landed, we had been privy to hate signs, which categorically stated that weren't welcome as 'mainland Indians' over here.
"Don't worry about these slogans, sirs," Shakeel said when he saw me nervously staring at one of the messages on a nearby wall.
"We Kashmiris love to host you folks! These are our protests against the AFSPA stopped coming here, what will we do? How will we sustain ourselves? Please don't worry. You are welcome in Srinagar."
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| Govind by the Chinar Bagh stream |
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| One of the many bridges to cross to Chinar Bagh |
Eventually, we brought for ourselves a bottle of Blenders Pride whisky and food packets from the nearby eatery, which had shut down by the time we returned from the liquor store. It was only seven thirty. We got a little room for 900 rupees with an electric blanket as well.
"Trust us," the receptionist said. "You will need it."
I made another mistake that evening. I tried to take a bath. The water from the boiler was scalding hot. I could see steam rising from my arms and the back of my hands turning red, but I could just not feel the heat. My toes had turned slightly blue, but the hot water brought back their original colour. I trembled so much that I got back into the four layers of clothes that I had worn and leapt onto the bed on which the electric blanket was laid out. Govind was smart. For the next four days in Srinagar, he didn't even remove his shoes, let alone the clothes.
Bread toast and omelette with milk tea with sugar, not salt. Staple breakfast at Golden Finger Hotel. We weren't the only guests in the hotel the previous evening. Four old folks stepped out of a room conversing in Marathi. They said they were from Model Colony in Pune and were pleased to know that I 'was from Kothrud'. No, I didn't really belong to Kothrud; in fact, Pune in general and Kothrud in particular was the 'place of my undoing', but until then, the 'undoing' hadn't happened. The Puneris were returning that afternoon, so I wished them safe travels and Govind and I set out towards the famous Dal Lake.
We didn't know that the Chinar Bagh was on the Bishambar-Dalgate road where the eatery was located. A tranquil river shrouded in fog weaved along with the road with arched bridges at various points that one could take to cross over to the Chinar gardens. The hotel chaps said that the temperature was 2 degrees below freezing that morning, but by the time we got to Dal Lake, it had risen to about 4 degrees C. The boatmen and other locals were amused to see us. We were tourists obviously. We definitely didn't have the apple and rose cheeks of the locals. We didn't wear phirans and carry kangris within the gowns. It was baffling at first to see no hands in the phirans of most Kashmiris. Did they lose their hands after mishandling some landmines or, worse, were their hands chopped off by terrorists as punishment for siding with 'Indians'? Later we realised that their hands were within the phirans, wrapped around kangris full of live coals that kept them warm.
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| Houseboats moored at Dal Lake |
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| The only one of it's kind in India I guess |
The walk alongside Dal lake, which wasn't frozen yet but was frigging cold, did us good. I had run my first half marathon earlier that year in January 2012, but nothing after that. I was also a regular drinker and ate a lot of fries. Although I went to a gym as regularly as I could, I hadn't really toned up a lot owing to the junk food and alcohol that I consumed. Working in IT also ensures that you lead a sedentary lifestyle, in front of a laptop or computer all the time, sitting in one place for long hours doing nothing worthwhile. So while the walk was exhausting, it was a good exercise. Of course, we took one look up at the clouds enshrouding the Adi Shankaracharya temple on top of the hill and decided that instant that we weren't going to climb that far. But I wanted to see the Hazratbal mosque and so we walked...in the wrong direction.
A little after the floating post office, we took a shikara ride. Gulzar was a young and handsome boatman who took us into the villages alongside the lake. It was a different world, magical and absolutely beautiful. There were crossroads (or crosswaters perhaps) where village folks rowed their canoes to shops and houses. Gulzar showed us the floating farm patches, which need to be tied to the owners' houses or else they float away and become other people's properties.
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| Even the locals were in no mood to venture out in that cold weather |
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| Colourful shikaras in contrast to the leaden environs |
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| The refurbished Gulfaam of 'Gul Gulshan Gulfaam', the old teleserial on Doordarshan |
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| One of the many saffron vendors on the lake |
"Why did you come in this weather, sahebs?" Gulzar asked. "Even we Kashmiris find it too cold to be outdoors. You won't get to see the lovely flowers in the gardens. Everything is barren and gloomy right now."
We told him we wanted to see snow.
"Go to Gulmarg and Sonamarg then," he said. "You'll surely see snow there. It could snow in Srinagar too, but when I can't tell. If you're lucky, it might snow tonight even."
He bought us Kahwas from a tea stall, filled with almonds and a dash of saffron too. Many shikharas sailed towards ours in which the boatmen showed us jewellery and artefacts made of beads and colourful stones. Other boats brought saffron.
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| Our first and probably best cup of Kahwa |
"If you rub saffron on the palm of your hands and if a yellow-orange stain appears, the saffron is not real," Gulzar said. "Those are a different kind of flower with saffron dye in them. Real saffron doesn't let colour leak from it. Real saffron also has a richer fragrance."
We didn't buy saffron from the boat vendors but we stopped at a handicrafts shop from where we purchased dress material and shawls for the womenfolk. I'd gifted one of the shawls to a certain someone who I hope still has the shawl, and that the shawl hasn't gone the same way that the wine and martini glasses, which that person had gifted me, went.
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| At the crossroads |
The steely grey skies persisted throughout our stay in Srinagar. The sun looked like a Diwali lantern in the frigid sky, incapable of providing any warmth to the cold, frozen land below. We asked Gulzar about the general mood in Srinagar, the animosity towards outsiders. He wore a wan smile and said that there was no hostility at all in the hearts of regular Kashmiris. He reiterated, like Shakeel, that if there were no visitors in Kashmir, the state's livelihood would collapse.
"We need visitors here, saheb. As many as possible. We want Kashmir to be a grand tourist destination, just like it was before the late eighties."
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| The floating farm-islands that could drift away if not literally tied up to the owner's house |
I noted the stress on the word 'visitors' and 'tourists'. So long as you were only a tourist with no intent of settling down as a permanent resident and certainly not an army man, you were welcome anytime. If every state in India assumed that stance - and I'm not even talking about secession here - then the idea of a Republic of India itself would collapse. We would return to precolonial times when the country did not exist as India and was fragmented into more than 300 states and principalities. Can you imagine a situation in which you, like me, were born in Mumbai and would need a passport and visa to travel to Bangalore or Hyderabad and work there; or if a man from UP was denied work visa to Maharashtra? Apparently there are three broad groups of people in Kashmir: one that wants to remain with India, another that wants the state to be acceded to Pakistan, and a third that wants Kashmir to be an independent country. There are similar movements in some North East states as well, and the Khalistan movement, the struggles and the impending violence, hasn't been erased from our memories yet.
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| A bylane |
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| A wider bylane |
"We are angry with the authorities who have deployed the Indian Army over here," Gulzar said. "For how many years they have been here? How they use their powers to govern us? Tonight, there is going to be yet another curfew in Srinagar. A Shia youth who was in jail earlier was released two days ago. Now they have arrested him again. On what charges? They say he raped a woman. Tell me sirs, why would we rape our own women? All this is done by the armymen, but they put the blame on us and brand us as terrorists. The bandh has been called in protest against the youth's arrest."
We returned to the shore, walked around the barren Shalimar Garden and Nishad Bagh, drank more Kahwas, walked through villages, and sat pondering by the lake. The fog was heavy and it was still cold even in the afternoon, as I mulled over what Gulzar had to say. I could see the outline of the tomb of the Hazratbal mosque, thought I didn't have the energy to walk around the lake up to the masjid. We had lunch where I asked for Mutton Rogan Josh, which wasn't as good as the one I had in Ramban on our way to Srinagar.
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| After our shikara ride, Govind with Gulzar the boatman |
That night, I bought Seekh kababs and skewered mutton with chapatis, while Govind stuck to the vegetarian fare at that little eatery. We returned to the hotel room by six thirty. The chap at the hotel said it was minus two degrees celsius. We drank all of the whisky, went to Gulmarg the next day, and to Pahalgam the day after, and on the last day headed out to Srinagar airport to fly to New Delhi. It snowed that morning in Srinagar. That was the first heavy snowfall that both of us had seen, although I'd witnessed two snowfalls earlier in Washington DC. Our flights were delayed by four hours but the security personnel allowed us to sit inside the airport terminal. Throughout our stay in Srinagar, that one question kept lingering in my head: Would Kashmir become the paradise that it once was, ever again?
One night after our juicy Whatsapp conversations with our respective love-interests back home, when I drifted off to sleep, I dreamt that I was Emperor Jehangir. On one of my campaigns up north, I rode into Srinagar and stood by the Dal lake, spellbound by the beauty of the surroundings. It was springtime and the hillsides were abloom with bright flowers and lush chinar forests. Mesmerised by the sylvan environs of Kashmir, I muttered a Persian quote borrowed from Amir Khusrow, the Sufi poet:
Gar firdaus bar-rue zameen ast,
hami asto, hami asto, hameen ast.
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