Paradise Lost

‘Sorry’, not I for not publishing a post since long, but the word I heard most during my stay at Srinagar.

‘Heaven on earth’, it is said, and so after many futile plans to visit this heaven while on earth, many dismissed in its infancy and many suppressed due to the unrest in the valley, this year the calls from the city said the same thing – the situation is good, couldn’t be better, come as soon as possible. And so one fine day saw my wife (who had just been to Switzerland and couldn’t wait to compare the two), my younger son, my dad-in-law and I on a flight to Srinagar.

‘Beautiful’, ‘Wow’, ‘Heavenly’. These started about half an hour before Srinagar, when the flight was over the gigantic snow-topped Himalayas.

Faizal was waiting for us at the airport and his first word was ‘Sorry’, for himself, for his brethren, for all the residents of the area – ‘we have suffered a lot, we have lost our livelihood, we have been misguided, etc. etc.’ On the hour into Srinagar, this was the topic of conversation.

Breathtaking beauty, awesome scenic landscapes, majestic Himalayas, stunning gardens, the Nishat Bagh, Shalimar Bagh, fresh  flowing spring water at Chashme-Shahi.

But while the land is gorgeous, I was time and again reminded of my mom’s words ‘never trust a mu***m, even if he sits on the hind side of a hot tawa’. She had been through the days of partition and come from Lahore to settle in Delhi and had a lot of experience with this community.

Apart from the hills and the lakes, the next most frequent sight is the CRPF and the Police with their armoured cars parked everywhere. Though the army has an unobtrusive presence, the CRPF and the Police force themselves upon you, and ‘you’ are the sightseers who have gone to see the area. But these forces take out their frustration (maybe?) with the not-so-gentle frisking and the absurd rules – get down from the car and walk a hundred metres (do they really think a terrorist will be dumb enough to carry the bomb or rifle and walk in front of them and not leave it in the car? ) At Shankaracharya’s temple, which is so porous that a terrorist bent on creating havoc can infiltrate from a hundred different directions, the CRPF are busy misbehaving with the pilgrims, snatching ipods, earphones, anything. ‘You cannot sit here!’ ‘But why?’ ‘Because I said so!’ ‘But there is no such sign’ ‘You cannot sit here’ ‘But why?’ ‘Because there is a telephone tower!’ (which, by the way, was more than 400 metres away) Anything to harass the tourist!

‘Sorry’, the first words by Tareeq, the Assistant General Manager at Centaur Hotel. For the dilapidated condition of the hotel. For the lack of staff. For the general condition of the town. But he went out of the way to make our stay comfortable. My wife did give them a few lessons in house-keeping which they all took in good humour.

‘Sorry’, that was the first word by the manager at the state handicrafts emporium. Also by most of the shop-keepers, though it did not look like they meant it. And their behavior and attitude were so good and transparent that, the first time in her life, my wife did not purchase anything while on vacation. The shopkeepers of Srinagar suffered a huge financial loss, though they are blissfully unaware of it!

We are extremely thankful to Nathu’s, Moti Mahal and CCD for when having our food it did not feel that we had left Delhi far behind. Also we were not being looted.

On the topic of food, Faizal, or ‘Jaansoop’ as we had started using his nickname, was always on my case to try ‘meat stick’. So we went to  Shera’s to taste one of the best mutton kebabs that I have ever had. Kashmiri food, it is rightly said, is delicious. I am thinking of earnestly learning the art!

The drive to Pahalgam reminded me of the innumerable trips that I made to Manali, first on a Jawa motorcycle while in college, with my wife for my honeymoon in my Dad’s car and later with my wife and kids from where I was posted at Jogindernagar, and even later driving down from Delhi. I must have made hundreds of trips to Manali and Pahalgam brought back all the nostalgic memories.

Gulmarg was another trip back in memory, to Naldehra and its log huts and golf course. But the gondola ride to the top was out of the world. The gondola ride, a hot cup of tea and roasted almonds at the top and later lunch at the mess were all organized by my friend Sanjeev, now commanding the brigade there. If I ever go back to Srinagar, it will be for this part of the trip only.

But while everyone is saying sorry and maybe not meaning it, the army is taking their words with a pinch of salt, maybe even a spoonful of salt. Because, like my Mom, they also disbelieve them.

It was an excellent opportunity for photography with my son and I clicking about one and a half thousand photographs between ourselves, and uploading about three hundred on Facebook.

Though it may be the ‘Heaven on earth’ but this paradise has been lost, all due to their own fault. Dal Lake, the life line of Srinagar, is a stink. The machinery to remove the hyacinth which is infesting the lake creates another stink. The behavior of the locals creates the last stink.

I told my friend, a radiologist that I would be writing a blog on ‘Paradise Lost’. He said it should be more appropriately called ‘The Lost Paradise’. Maybe he is right!

And, notwithstanding the number of sorries that I heard, it is true that you go to Srinagar only once. And I have been there, the first and last time.

(c) Dr Rajiv Bhatia