The hills are singing

[Text and images by Sameer]

Kingfisher is India’s most flamboyant airlines. Vijay Maliya, the Kingfisher boss is somewhat like the Virgin boss Richard Branson. Both are colorful, extravagant and have a huge sense of splash. Oflate I’ve started traveling business class in Kingfisher. Not because I feel like to splurge but owing to some random-lucky-selection. Three times -- out of the three times -- that I flew by Maliya’s red bird in recent months, my economy class ticket has been upgraded to business. Frankly I am liking all the pampering but I still fail to understand the largess.

Relaxing on a business class king-size seat in the kingfisher’s belly, reading Aravind Adiga’s ‘White Tiger’ [The Booker boy’s book] and taking on small sips of Diet Coke, I looked out on the majestic Hindukush mountain chain, blanketing Kashmir from rest of the world. Insulating and isolating it. Every time I fly to Kashmir the sight of these lofty peaks makes something shift in me. I feel my nostalgia lifting slowly. The feeling is gemütlich. That is German for describing a blend of homeliness, coziness and comfort.

[ Upgrading the sole airport at Srinagar]

Construction is going on full throttle at the Srinagar airport, much like the Delhi airport. America may be facing financial meltdown, which the pundits say, may now well limp into the next year, but India has no dearth of development funds. Work -- to make India look like a step-brother of China, by 2010 -- is continuing like crazy. A cold but gentle breeze was blowing in Srinagar. The runway was, like always mobbed by security chaps -- Kashmiri and non-Kashmiri [easily identified by the color of their cheeks]. Everyone wore woolens. An hour before -- at New Delhi, it was humid as hell’s fifth level. No wonder, I doodled in my head, they so love the valley.

But the valley is not about fabulous climate and hissing hills. A few kilometers in Suhail’s zippy i-10, I experienced Kashmir’s naked as a jaybird hostility. Boys, as young as 16 were playing ding dong battles with the police, who chased them with bamboo sticks. Occasionally the cops fired tear gas canisters at the protestors. I later realized it was a Friday afternoon and such stone-pelting is part of an organized protest nowadays. A few kilometers ahead, in Lal Chowk [Red square -- Srinagar’s CP], a few hundred lawyers marched, raising slogans. ‘What’s this for?’ I asked Suhail. ‘Keeps happening all the time,’ came a prompt reply. Whatever it is -- frenzy, Azadi, nuttiness -- is not over yet.

[Lawyers protest in Lal Chowk]

There are a myriad vested interests operating in this small dell at any given point in time. Some trade in gold, others in land and yet others in Azadi. Two types of people exist. One, who are ever-willing to be exploited and consequently the first ones to fall to a stray bullet -- in a procession -- by a trigger-happy cop. The second types lead. They plan and organize the chaos and become richer by the day. They drink coffee in plush café’s and hold press conferences by pool-side in upscale hotels. Pity, they are ever willing to exploit and consequently fear no cop. Infact the cops protect them.

Talking of coffee, Suhail and me managed to drive past the hollering advocates, stone pelting teens [most of whom, I am told belong to the exploited class] into the confines of the Broadway café’ -- nonchalantly -- called Coffea Arabica [Coffee of Ethiopia and Yemen, less on caffeine]. NDTV’s local bearded correspondent was readying himself by the hotel porch for his two bytes in his punch-drunk accent. The coffee was well-blended but they give no spoons to stir the sugar [sugar-free in my case]. Instead you blend it with ice-cream sticks. The ambience is intimate and frequented by the well to do kinds. On my way out, I was struck by the instruction card on the pool. No lifeguards. Who needs a lifeguard, I worked a silly smile, when life’s so darn cheap, in Kashmir.

[Coffea Arabica -- like any 'cool' cafe in Delhi]

[They use a lot of wood in Kashmir, Coffea Arabica]

[Instruction board -- No life Guards. Thanks]

[Pool side: Fav venue for press conferences]

[Coming up: On screwing all spellings, corrupt old men and the oddity - that is Kashmir]

Sameer

Amusing Kashmir

Kashmir never fails to amuse me. It is a pixilated piece of paradise.
I was there last month and couldn't help pick some of the oddity out. It appeared peculiar -- and weird -- amidst frenetic slogans, calling for freedom [Azadi]. The phenomenon seems to have cropped up during the last few years and it has become so routine now that the locals either don't mind it or have become too familiar with the sheer absurdity of it.

Lights on syndrome: Call it an original Kashmiri invention or a local compulsion. Whenever a groom goes to collect his bride these days in Kashmir, all cars in the wedding party put their parking lights on. That’s when they are driving! It goes like a rule. An unwritten one. ‘Helps identify the wedding party cars’, goes a standard explanation. It is fun, goes another one. Not to be left behind, the army too has joined the silly party. There is an exception though. The military trucks keep the Head-lights on -- in broad day light!
Now no one really knows why?

We don't care two hoots: There is pan-Islamism in air. We know that such winds are currently blowing in many Muslim lands but nowhere in the world will billboard size posters of polemical Islamists be put up so non-chalantly. I saw a life-size portrait of Hassan Nasrallah -- chief of Hezbollah [a much feared chap in the western capitals] -- firmly pinned to a canopy of green trees near a Shiite village on the national highway, leading to Baramulla. It looked like a permanent feature to me. One thing to like a much controversial resistance leader and another thing to eulogize him!

I want my own concrete: They all want their own slice of concrete in Kashmir. A separate home, complete with a lawn, a red roof [a fast picking phenomenon] and a brick fence. And everywhere you look around in the urban and not-too-urban areas, construction is going on in full swing. Houses are coming up at an amazing rate. As a result agricultural land is fast shrinking. It will soon resemble a concrete jungle. I was recently reading that Kashmir cannot produce enough food to feed itself now. No wonder! They all want exclusive homes. Damn the food and fields.

Meat till I drop: A wedding in Kashmir is nothing but food. Organizers run helter skelter to ensure that there is no stone left unturned for a grand feast. People just wait to eat. There is not much entertainment except for some moments when you briefly catch up with an old friend or an acquaintance. A troupe of wazas [chefs] usually does the cooking in the backyard, which becomes the ground zero of the wedding. Everyone pays at least one visit to see the open-air experimentation with mutton. Then a food extravaganza begins. It never ends.

We have a point: Creativity is at a huge premium in Kashmir. Most business establishments have names that border on funny to comical. One recurring note is ’point’. Almost every fifth or sixth shop is some point. It could be cool point, in case of a soft-drink store or an ice-point, in case of a ice-cream corner. There is a strange affinity with these points. There are print-points, pool-points, fitting-points and the list goes on.

Our national carriage: I have rarely seen a dumper outside Kashmir. I don’t know why TATA makes these monsters and dumps them in Kashmir. The natives call them tippers, which is not an incorrect usage. It is slightly archaic. And dumpers are eye-sores. Usually a garish orange or ugly maroon, the dumper drivers drive as if they are on perpetual dope. Most road accidents are caused by these vehicles, which needlessly outnumber other modes of material transportation in Kashmir. I so hate them.

Living away from Kashmir has its own perks. One is able to go back in a while and look at all the change and metamorphosis that the place undergoes. Some of which is for good and some -- not surprisingly -- plain kooky.

Kashmir, with all its oddity, is fascinating. May be because it is home.

Sameer