Two Pandit families return to the Valley to find their homes taken over by security forces and their land grabbed by locals. The government has offered little help.
Bhatt still remembers the night when he left the Valley with his wife, son and daughter-inlaw, leaving behind two houses and 35 kanals of apple orchards and paddy fields. “We were scared and we took the decision in haste. Everything was intact then, but today I am an alien in my own land,” he says. Bhatt also owned a house in the nearby Arin village. In his absence, the building was demolished by a man who later got the land transferred to himself. Bhatt says officials of the revenue department assisted in transferring his land illegally. Read More.
About nostalgia, metaphor, reality, dreams and despair for a city of memories
Friday, December 21, 2007
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Blue Notebook (Update 2)
Pages from my diary about my first visit to Kashmir after more than a decade in December 2000.
22/12/2000. Srinagar.
Hotel Room.
For long time last night, bangings and knockings next door kept me awake frightfully. I had double-locked the door from inside and even made sure that it was safe to escape from the second floor window only to realise in the morning that the window is too high.
BS has told me it will be easy to get in touch with the people i want to meet for my film. He said going to my ancestral village in Pulwama may be a problem. He has asked A, the messanger boy in his office (a close relative of his who he put on the office job) to accompany me around. I feel shitty having to be accompanied in my wn city, butr there is apprehension still. I see it in the eyes of people when I tell them about my mission.
In the morning, I took a local bus to Hazratbal, where I went for 5 years everyday to go to my college. Today is the last Friday of the Ramazan. Overheard a woman at the shrine "Today, first time in years a large crowd has come.'It appeared to me a crowd that had converged from all the nearby villages and localities. All the open spaces around the hrine was crammed with people, who all bar none just let me be with my still camera as i stared at them through the camera lens. At the check point, I told the police I was from the 'press' and they just let me in. They didnt even ask me about my ID. 'press' it seems in this place has a passport like quality. I could'nt imagine they would have just let me walk through into the inner sanctum of the shrine just like that maybe in the early years of militancy. I remembered the seige and the hostage crisis of a few years ago...
This was my first view of the Dal Lake after so long. It seemed like a huge ditch shorn off its colour and sheen that I had always seen it naturally imbued with, it seemed lost and forlorn in the wintersun haze, it had lost its brilliance the invitation that never failed, or was i seeing it through my own sense of desolation that i have found here since yesterday. I was hocked to see that the Old and young men alike bared their asses to the shrine to 'cleanse' their private parts in th dirty waters of the lake, but inspite of which the fresh produce of vegetables (nedur, palak, gogz) and fish (gaade) from the lake being sold from nearby stalls did not invite any censor from any buyer in the crowd.
Over the loudspeaker, the head priest of the shrine sounding serene, moderate and peaceful was exhorting the faithful to pray for peace in the future. I did not see any tension in the crowd, the kind of tension I would have imagined that all crowds in violence torn Kashmir would be exhibit. I did not see tension nor did I see any sign of boisterousness or excitement anywhere. People looked weary to me, minding their own business. They do not run after empty buses anymore, a sight I was more familiar with during my student days. There is no pushing and shoving and shouting and aggressiveness. I felt a certain serenity in the atmosphere. Nobody seemed to bother anybody else over anything serious or trivial.I milled among the crowd to feel a closeness with them. A closeness that I had not ever sought before, yet I remained an felt an alien in the midst of a very familiar people, I was no more than a curious glance to them. I thought to myself, ‘all I have to do is keep my mouth shut and I will cease to be of any harm to anybody – just like a terrorist seeking anonymity. I let A do all the talking for me as if I was a foreigner who did not know his way way around. I only passed the money and took pictures.
To be updated
22/12/2000. Srinagar.
Hotel Room.
For long time last night, bangings and knockings next door kept me awake frightfully. I had double-locked the door from inside and even made sure that it was safe to escape from the second floor window only to realise in the morning that the window is too high.
BS has told me it will be easy to get in touch with the people i want to meet for my film. He said going to my ancestral village in Pulwama may be a problem. He has asked A, the messanger boy in his office (a close relative of his who he put on the office job) to accompany me around. I feel shitty having to be accompanied in my wn city, butr there is apprehension still. I see it in the eyes of people when I tell them about my mission.
In the morning, I took a local bus to Hazratbal, where I went for 5 years everyday to go to my college. Today is the last Friday of the Ramazan. Overheard a woman at the shrine "Today, first time in years a large crowd has come.'It appeared to me a crowd that had converged from all the nearby villages and localities. All the open spaces around the hrine was crammed with people, who all bar none just let me be with my still camera as i stared at them through the camera lens. At the check point, I told the police I was from the 'press' and they just let me in. They didnt even ask me about my ID. 'press' it seems in this place has a passport like quality. I could'nt imagine they would have just let me walk through into the inner sanctum of the shrine just like that maybe in the early years of militancy. I remembered the seige and the hostage crisis of a few years ago...
This was my first view of the Dal Lake after so long. It seemed like a huge ditch shorn off its colour and sheen that I had always seen it naturally imbued with, it seemed lost and forlorn in the wintersun haze, it had lost its brilliance the invitation that never failed, or was i seeing it through my own sense of desolation that i have found here since yesterday. I was hocked to see that the Old and young men alike bared their asses to the shrine to 'cleanse' their private parts in th dirty waters of the lake, but inspite of which the fresh produce of vegetables (nedur, palak, gogz) and fish (gaade) from the lake being sold from nearby stalls did not invite any censor from any buyer in the crowd.
Over the loudspeaker, the head priest of the shrine sounding serene, moderate and peaceful was exhorting the faithful to pray for peace in the future. I did not see any tension in the crowd, the kind of tension I would have imagined that all crowds in violence torn Kashmir would be exhibit. I did not see tension nor did I see any sign of boisterousness or excitement anywhere. People looked weary to me, minding their own business. They do not run after empty buses anymore, a sight I was more familiar with during my student days. There is no pushing and shoving and shouting and aggressiveness. I felt a certain serenity in the atmosphere. Nobody seemed to bother anybody else over anything serious or trivial.I milled among the crowd to feel a closeness with them. A closeness that I had not ever sought before, yet I remained an felt an alien in the midst of a very familiar people, I was no more than a curious glance to them. I thought to myself, ‘all I have to do is keep my mouth shut and I will cease to be of any harm to anybody – just like a terrorist seeking anonymity. I let A do all the talking for me as if I was a foreigner who did not know his way way around. I only passed the money and took pictures.
To be updated
Blue Notebook (Update 1)
Pages from my diary about my first visit to Kashmir after more than a decade in December 2000.
21/12/2000 Srinagar.
Hotel room.
Numb hands, fluttering heart, warmth on the face while rest of the body is cold. I am sitting in the dining room of this hotel........Yes I am home and feeling lonely, sad, vulnerable about who I am and how I feel. There's lot I have to put down on paper, it could take me all night. I am full of words but not sure if my words will be able to say it all.
It's only 7.30 in the evening and the city is deserted and dark. There is no electricity. The train from Delhi arrived Jammu at 7.45 am, by 8.15 am I was already on my way to Srinagar. One of my co-passengers, a Kashmiri bsinessman returning home for the Idd festival wanted to start a conversation with me in kashmiri, but I was not sure just yet about how open I could be with strangers on my first trip after so many years, so I pretended not to understand him. The taxi driver Gurmet, who only gave me his number and name after we had reached Srinagar, was however sure that I was a kashmiri returning home after many years. He could tell and I really was glad that atleast he knew my small secret for the day. He was a Sikh from Jawahar Nagar in Srinagar. With Gurmeet i felt we shared something in common, i could sense it very early (i was sitting in the front seat) but it was only much later after we had already stopped once for breakfast at a hindu hotel, that our Muslim co-passenger insisted that we stop at a Muslim restaurant further on because'he was dying to have 'nun chai'.
It was while waiting for our Muslim co-passengers to have their 'nun chay' that Gurmeet finally opened up with me, a bit hesitantly.
"you are a hindu?"
"Yes"
"you left in the militancy?"
"No, much before, in 1985 when I finished college."
At the earlier stop, just out of jammu he had told me that he recognised me from my association with radio kashmir." I was happy he had recognised me, but also not very sure what would happen should anybody else in the bus know.Throughout the journey, he took great care in expressing to me, in subtle and not so subtle ways his absolute antipathy towards his Muslim passengers, but he was not the only one. Throughout the journey, he treated the Muslim businessman with utter disdain whenever he had some peculiar request or demand. Emboldened I guess more by my sympathetic ear and by the actions of another passenger who had asked the businessman to shut up while he went yakking about how much money he had spent on the construction of his new house in Sopore. This other co-passenger was from Karnataka and on his way to re-join his work at the cement factory near Khrew.
At Jawahar Tunnel, the local police made all of us get down and walk through a check post, where they just stared at us not even attempting to body search us our see through our baggage. Passing through Jawahar Tunnel, i wondered whether at all it would be possible to take a travelling shot of the tunnel from inside as I would emerge into the valley when I would have to return a month later with my camera crew for the film. I was thinking of ways to hide the camera from the eyes of the security men standing on either side of the entry and exit of the tunnel. As we emerged from the tunnel, a Kashmiri cop wanted a lift up to Qazigund. Thankfully, the driver did not stop for him. I thought that was some courage.
I do not know how I felt emerging into the valley after such a long time away - From darkness of the tunnel to light...there was Kashmir before me as if I had never been away. I wondered a bit that at this time of the year there was no snow to be seen anywhere close though the trees were more leaf less and life less than I remembered having seen anywhere or was it just my imagination - seeing desolation where I expected it to be. My eyes searched vainly for a view of Verinag spring below...I knew it was somewhere down there from my early schoolboy memories of a few b&w stills of the highway taken from verinag point of view. Finally my view of the valley of kashmir stretched out below me and extending far to the horizon dissolved in the strong 3 o'clock glare of winter day. I could make out that Gurmeet (our driver) glanced at me furtively as I sat grim, lips pursed thinking of coming home. I was perhaps tense but not out of fear as I had expected to be but just from the thought of coming back home. I was dissapointed a bit too. What did I expect to see? The valley could'nt have changed. I was here to see how the people may have changed and been affected. I was dissapointed because I tealised that maybe this film I wanted to do can not be done. NOTHING has changed in the interval between now and when I was here last. Nothing.
Crossing Qazigund / Khanbal / Anantnah / Bijbehara / Awantipore I saw - People are the same, The pace of life is unchanged, they walk and talk the same way and still wear 'firn'the same way as they always used to.......but I have not seen 'kangri' yet...
As I write this Mr Mogambo from Mr. India speaks on the cable in this dining hall
"Naa samajh aur jaahil hindustaniyon ne apni history se aaj tak kuch nahin seekha..."
Waiter to an Indian Looking guy.
"So how was Gulmarg?"
"Heaven, jannat.' he replies.
Waiter, "yet being so near...we people cant go there."
SILENCE. END OF CONVERSATION.
...Yes, I had my first view of a small group (about 4 or 5) of renegade militants walk along with a posse of securitymen on the Khannabal crossing. I had only read about them or seen their pictures on TV before. I saw securitymen in two's standing by the road at regular intervals all along the highway from Jawahar Tunnel upto Pantha Chowk, where the highway had been closed to all traffic. But the stone carver in his corner space who I had been seeing eversince I remember seeing was still there where he ought to be but maybe it was not the same person - His son or grandson or neighbour perhaps, but all the same something familiar I met here. The Border Security cantonment atop the small hill overlooking the Pantha Chowk crossing has now grown up into a mini township. I wonder if at all any local Kashmiri would be allowed in here now.
At Pantha Chowk, because of the closed Highway our taxi took the Bye Pass into Srinagar. I realised that now we may pass by my home in sanatnagar, which can be seen from the bye pass. I had planned to go to my home only on the last day of my shoot and now what, if this is divine intervention - it's just not plain luck or mere co-incidence - I will be able to see my home on the first day of my visit to Kashmir. Here I am taravelling from Mumbai to kashmir and I am literally forced to catch sight of my home, my colony, as this is the only route open into Srinagar today. In the taxi I was near bursting, wanting to tell anyone that that is my home you see behind those trees, this is the road leading to my home, this is the Rawalpora crossing where I used to catch my bus to college everyday ...but because I had not talked to any of my co-passengers about about who I was, so I was perforce obliged to just keep quiet while my insides were all bursting to announce to an entire world that I had come home after so many years.
Ultimately i was not able to keep my feelings inside me anymore. i had to say it. i had to tell it to someone, so I turned to Gurmeet and whispered to him in Punjabi so low that I was not sure he heard.
"We are going to pass my home by the highway."
"Where?" He asked.
Just than the kashmiri businessman sitting behind me asked.
"Where are you getting down?"
"Exchange Road." I answered him.
At the point where Rawalpora main road intersects the Bye Pass road, Gurmeet kindly slowed down behind my home to let me have a proper look at the present condition of our house. I had much earlier seen picturs of it. Nothing had been left behind except the bare structrure. I could not locate our home for quiet some time as it was hidden behind a house that had recently come up afresh behind ours. Part of probably built on our backyard. And than I saw it...And I was happy. I dont remember what exactly I felt but I remember thinking about my parents. And as I write this, I remember my nephew and neice who were just a year old when we all had to leave. I believe, they and my parents will come back to it.
After Gurmeet dropped me at Jehangir Chowk, a short distance from my actual stop.( The policemen would'nt let us cross Badshah bridge for some security reasons) I went up to a Auto Rickshaw and spoke to its driver in Kashmiri. When i got down at my destination, I asked the rickshawala aboiut his fare. He said, 'pay what you wish.' I was surprised at the way he seemed nice to me. I took out a 10 rupee note and I expected him to haggle a bit though I knew that I was paying him fair. He accepted it graciously and I was really very surprised. This had never ever happened to me in Srinagar. I had always been pestered for more. Did he perhaps know that I had come home. Do I look like a stranger to other's here? Do I look like a 'bata?'
BS (My Dad's ex-colleague), who was a steno at the time my dad had to leave but is now the boss, was very warm and cordial and welcoming. I told him my actual reason for coming home after so many years. He offered all help. We talked about the 'situation'. 'Not too good' I felt, though he did not use too many words to say it. I came to know that the ramazan Ceasefire has been extended by another month. A grenade attack had taken place in Lal Chowk, just a few hours earlier though the grenade had not burst. Sitting in his office this late evening BS was eager to get home before it got dark, but he had to wait (He had to file the news report) as the response of the Hurriet leaders to the Vajpayee's ceasefire extension call had not yet come in. It was dark already by the time Hurriet's reactions to the ceasefire extension call came in, but BS could not have waited.
The entire city was in darkness. This is Srinagar every evening eversince I remember. No electricity in winter months. W came in for his late night shift. He offered to take me to the nearby hotel. Walking to the hotel in pitch darkness on my first night in Srinagar has been a nrve shaking experience. Did I expect a bomb to burst at the next street corner? Did I suspect that dark figure huddled infront of a closed shop front to be a gun weilding militant? Yes>>>> was I afraid? I was alone and I felt very vulnerable here on my first night. The crowds have all vanished from the streets within 30 minutes since darkness descended.Walking to the hotel, A shadow huddled infront the Pan Shop below the Greenway hotel whistles softly. W walks upto him, leaving me all alone a few metres ahead. I am perspiring in December coldness. W has a hurried whispered conversation with him and than comes back to me with the information that the guy is offering a room for 100 rupees. No way I say and plodd on ahead to finally heave a sigh of relief at a hotel charging 450 for the night.
I speak to the receptionist at the hotel in Kashmiri. He does not care much for it and puts up the hotel register before me to formalise my check-in. In the column 'Nationality' above mine the guest in room 201 has written 'Kashmiri'. I write 'Indian'. I walk up to a table where one place is vacant.
'If you don't mind, can I have a cigrette?
"yes" 'where are you from?'
'Mumbai'
'where are you working? Businessman?'
'No, I make films.'
'What's your name?'
'Ajay ....Raina'
(A CHANCE MEETING WITH Mr. S, MY DAD's JOURNALIST FRIEND - I have explained this meeting in detail in GOING HOME)
The staff of this hotel though aware that I am talking to them in Kashmiri always talk back to me in typically pidgin Kashmiri Hindi / Urdu. Is it just that they are expected to (or are used to) speak to every outsider in Hindi or is it just me who thinks that they do not wish to acknowledge to themselves or to me that 'I am back'.
While walking from office to the Hotel here, W had talked to me very briefly about the circumstances in which my Father left. He said, " A few of them barged into the office one day and demanded to meet RAINA SAAB. But Raina saab was not in office. Only S, the office boy (From Kerala) was in office at that time. So they left a message with S for Raina Saab. 'Move out gracefully' (My father left after many such warnings from JKLF in form of telephone calls at office and at home and letters threatening dire consequences for the family. He finally left after a friend urged him to leave by this evening)
To be updated...
21/12/2000 Srinagar.
Hotel room.
Numb hands, fluttering heart, warmth on the face while rest of the body is cold. I am sitting in the dining room of this hotel........Yes I am home and feeling lonely, sad, vulnerable about who I am and how I feel. There's lot I have to put down on paper, it could take me all night. I am full of words but not sure if my words will be able to say it all.
It's only 7.30 in the evening and the city is deserted and dark. There is no electricity. The train from Delhi arrived Jammu at 7.45 am, by 8.15 am I was already on my way to Srinagar. One of my co-passengers, a Kashmiri bsinessman returning home for the Idd festival wanted to start a conversation with me in kashmiri, but I was not sure just yet about how open I could be with strangers on my first trip after so many years, so I pretended not to understand him. The taxi driver Gurmet, who only gave me his number and name after we had reached Srinagar, was however sure that I was a kashmiri returning home after many years. He could tell and I really was glad that atleast he knew my small secret for the day. He was a Sikh from Jawahar Nagar in Srinagar. With Gurmeet i felt we shared something in common, i could sense it very early (i was sitting in the front seat) but it was only much later after we had already stopped once for breakfast at a hindu hotel, that our Muslim co-passenger insisted that we stop at a Muslim restaurant further on because'he was dying to have 'nun chai'.
It was while waiting for our Muslim co-passengers to have their 'nun chay' that Gurmeet finally opened up with me, a bit hesitantly.
"you are a hindu?"
"Yes"
"you left in the militancy?"
"No, much before, in 1985 when I finished college."
At the earlier stop, just out of jammu he had told me that he recognised me from my association with radio kashmir." I was happy he had recognised me, but also not very sure what would happen should anybody else in the bus know.Throughout the journey, he took great care in expressing to me, in subtle and not so subtle ways his absolute antipathy towards his Muslim passengers, but he was not the only one. Throughout the journey, he treated the Muslim businessman with utter disdain whenever he had some peculiar request or demand. Emboldened I guess more by my sympathetic ear and by the actions of another passenger who had asked the businessman to shut up while he went yakking about how much money he had spent on the construction of his new house in Sopore. This other co-passenger was from Karnataka and on his way to re-join his work at the cement factory near Khrew.
At Jawahar Tunnel, the local police made all of us get down and walk through a check post, where they just stared at us not even attempting to body search us our see through our baggage. Passing through Jawahar Tunnel, i wondered whether at all it would be possible to take a travelling shot of the tunnel from inside as I would emerge into the valley when I would have to return a month later with my camera crew for the film. I was thinking of ways to hide the camera from the eyes of the security men standing on either side of the entry and exit of the tunnel. As we emerged from the tunnel, a Kashmiri cop wanted a lift up to Qazigund. Thankfully, the driver did not stop for him. I thought that was some courage.
I do not know how I felt emerging into the valley after such a long time away - From darkness of the tunnel to light...there was Kashmir before me as if I had never been away. I wondered a bit that at this time of the year there was no snow to be seen anywhere close though the trees were more leaf less and life less than I remembered having seen anywhere or was it just my imagination - seeing desolation where I expected it to be. My eyes searched vainly for a view of Verinag spring below...I knew it was somewhere down there from my early schoolboy memories of a few b&w stills of the highway taken from verinag point of view. Finally my view of the valley of kashmir stretched out below me and extending far to the horizon dissolved in the strong 3 o'clock glare of winter day. I could make out that Gurmeet (our driver) glanced at me furtively as I sat grim, lips pursed thinking of coming home. I was perhaps tense but not out of fear as I had expected to be but just from the thought of coming back home. I was dissapointed a bit too. What did I expect to see? The valley could'nt have changed. I was here to see how the people may have changed and been affected. I was dissapointed because I tealised that maybe this film I wanted to do can not be done. NOTHING has changed in the interval between now and when I was here last. Nothing.
Crossing Qazigund / Khanbal / Anantnah / Bijbehara / Awantipore I saw - People are the same, The pace of life is unchanged, they walk and talk the same way and still wear 'firn'the same way as they always used to.......but I have not seen 'kangri' yet...
As I write this Mr Mogambo from Mr. India speaks on the cable in this dining hall
"Naa samajh aur jaahil hindustaniyon ne apni history se aaj tak kuch nahin seekha..."
Waiter to an Indian Looking guy.
"So how was Gulmarg?"
"Heaven, jannat.' he replies.
Waiter, "yet being so near...we people cant go there."
SILENCE. END OF CONVERSATION.
...Yes, I had my first view of a small group (about 4 or 5) of renegade militants walk along with a posse of securitymen on the Khannabal crossing. I had only read about them or seen their pictures on TV before. I saw securitymen in two's standing by the road at regular intervals all along the highway from Jawahar Tunnel upto Pantha Chowk, where the highway had been closed to all traffic. But the stone carver in his corner space who I had been seeing eversince I remember seeing was still there where he ought to be but maybe it was not the same person - His son or grandson or neighbour perhaps, but all the same something familiar I met here. The Border Security cantonment atop the small hill overlooking the Pantha Chowk crossing has now grown up into a mini township. I wonder if at all any local Kashmiri would be allowed in here now.
At Pantha Chowk, because of the closed Highway our taxi took the Bye Pass into Srinagar. I realised that now we may pass by my home in sanatnagar, which can be seen from the bye pass. I had planned to go to my home only on the last day of my shoot and now what, if this is divine intervention - it's just not plain luck or mere co-incidence - I will be able to see my home on the first day of my visit to Kashmir. Here I am taravelling from Mumbai to kashmir and I am literally forced to catch sight of my home, my colony, as this is the only route open into Srinagar today. In the taxi I was near bursting, wanting to tell anyone that that is my home you see behind those trees, this is the road leading to my home, this is the Rawalpora crossing where I used to catch my bus to college everyday ...but because I had not talked to any of my co-passengers about about who I was, so I was perforce obliged to just keep quiet while my insides were all bursting to announce to an entire world that I had come home after so many years.
Ultimately i was not able to keep my feelings inside me anymore. i had to say it. i had to tell it to someone, so I turned to Gurmeet and whispered to him in Punjabi so low that I was not sure he heard.
"We are going to pass my home by the highway."
"Where?" He asked.
Just than the kashmiri businessman sitting behind me asked.
"Where are you getting down?"
"Exchange Road." I answered him.
At the point where Rawalpora main road intersects the Bye Pass road, Gurmeet kindly slowed down behind my home to let me have a proper look at the present condition of our house. I had much earlier seen picturs of it. Nothing had been left behind except the bare structrure. I could not locate our home for quiet some time as it was hidden behind a house that had recently come up afresh behind ours. Part of probably built on our backyard. And than I saw it...And I was happy. I dont remember what exactly I felt but I remember thinking about my parents. And as I write this, I remember my nephew and neice who were just a year old when we all had to leave. I believe, they and my parents will come back to it.
After Gurmeet dropped me at Jehangir Chowk, a short distance from my actual stop.( The policemen would'nt let us cross Badshah bridge for some security reasons) I went up to a Auto Rickshaw and spoke to its driver in Kashmiri. When i got down at my destination, I asked the rickshawala aboiut his fare. He said, 'pay what you wish.' I was surprised at the way he seemed nice to me. I took out a 10 rupee note and I expected him to haggle a bit though I knew that I was paying him fair. He accepted it graciously and I was really very surprised. This had never ever happened to me in Srinagar. I had always been pestered for more. Did he perhaps know that I had come home. Do I look like a stranger to other's here? Do I look like a 'bata?'
BS (My Dad's ex-colleague), who was a steno at the time my dad had to leave but is now the boss, was very warm and cordial and welcoming. I told him my actual reason for coming home after so many years. He offered all help. We talked about the 'situation'. 'Not too good' I felt, though he did not use too many words to say it. I came to know that the ramazan Ceasefire has been extended by another month. A grenade attack had taken place in Lal Chowk, just a few hours earlier though the grenade had not burst. Sitting in his office this late evening BS was eager to get home before it got dark, but he had to wait (He had to file the news report) as the response of the Hurriet leaders to the Vajpayee's ceasefire extension call had not yet come in. It was dark already by the time Hurriet's reactions to the ceasefire extension call came in, but BS could not have waited.
The entire city was in darkness. This is Srinagar every evening eversince I remember. No electricity in winter months. W came in for his late night shift. He offered to take me to the nearby hotel. Walking to the hotel in pitch darkness on my first night in Srinagar has been a nrve shaking experience. Did I expect a bomb to burst at the next street corner? Did I suspect that dark figure huddled infront of a closed shop front to be a gun weilding militant? Yes>>>> was I afraid? I was alone and I felt very vulnerable here on my first night. The crowds have all vanished from the streets within 30 minutes since darkness descended.Walking to the hotel, A shadow huddled infront the Pan Shop below the Greenway hotel whistles softly. W walks upto him, leaving me all alone a few metres ahead. I am perspiring in December coldness. W has a hurried whispered conversation with him and than comes back to me with the information that the guy is offering a room for 100 rupees. No way I say and plodd on ahead to finally heave a sigh of relief at a hotel charging 450 for the night.
I speak to the receptionist at the hotel in Kashmiri. He does not care much for it and puts up the hotel register before me to formalise my check-in. In the column 'Nationality' above mine the guest in room 201 has written 'Kashmiri'. I write 'Indian'. I walk up to a table where one place is vacant.
'If you don't mind, can I have a cigrette?
"yes" 'where are you from?'
'Mumbai'
'where are you working? Businessman?'
'No, I make films.'
'What's your name?'
'Ajay ....Raina'
(A CHANCE MEETING WITH Mr. S, MY DAD's JOURNALIST FRIEND - I have explained this meeting in detail in GOING HOME)
The staff of this hotel though aware that I am talking to them in Kashmiri always talk back to me in typically pidgin Kashmiri Hindi / Urdu. Is it just that they are expected to (or are used to) speak to every outsider in Hindi or is it just me who thinks that they do not wish to acknowledge to themselves or to me that 'I am back'.
While walking from office to the Hotel here, W had talked to me very briefly about the circumstances in which my Father left. He said, " A few of them barged into the office one day and demanded to meet RAINA SAAB. But Raina saab was not in office. Only S, the office boy (From Kerala) was in office at that time. So they left a message with S for Raina Saab. 'Move out gracefully' (My father left after many such warnings from JKLF in form of telephone calls at office and at home and letters threatening dire consequences for the family. He finally left after a friend urged him to leave by this evening)
To be updated...
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Blue Notebook
I found this blue notebook lying around. It is a diary i kept about my first visit to Kashmir after more than a decade in December 2000. Last time I was in Srinagar was in November first week (I guess) in 1989 when I had gone to visit my family from Pune where I was a student then. In November 1989, I had no inkling that this would be my last visit to a safe and peaceful Kashmir. One could hear a few stray bomb blasts in the night even than, I remember my brother casually referinng to one such bomb blast at dinner time as 'just a routine matter these days'. Next day I was to learn that some old building on The Bund near Amira Kadal bridge had been blasted. But that was then, now consigned to backlanes of memory.
Here, I will be posting the pages from my diary 'The Blue Notebook', which I will keep updating from time to time.
(UNDATED)
there's a war out there
and people are fighting
and dying for things they
believe
there are victims
and there are perpetrators
(DATED - 29/01/2001)
It could have been you dead or fighting
EMPATHY is the word - listen
you may hear stories that well may
be about you.
17/12/2000
Discussion at S's place tonight about Bangala immigrants, Periyer's anti-Brahmin movement in Tamil Nadu. Thoughts about my first Tamil friend Ganesh Iyer. M's comment (A Tamil Brahmin long settled in Delhi) "We deserved it."
18/12/2000 Delhi
On 16th when i left mumbai there was no mention of Kashmir in any of the major Newspapers. same thing yesterday. No news about kashmir. today - major headlines on front pages of all dailies scream. 'Hurriet leaders are positive about ceasefire', 'Hurriet leaders want ceasefire to lead to talks. (This was the Ramazan ceasefire announced by Atal Bihari Vajpayee)
The camera Equipment guy i went to for hiring his camera said he won't let me take it 'beacuse Kashmir is not safe. Our guy was beaten up somewhere in Anantnag a few months back.' So from now on, I am very hesitant about telling equipment guys here in Delhi that I am going to Kashmir, atleast will not volunteer that bit of information.
20/12/2000 Delhi.
Shalimar Express AS1-64, There will be things I'll notice anew when I am there. Thing's I did'nt know to look for..the particular colour and throw of the light, the quality of coldness and whether it has any impress on the character of the people...the colours of winter, the material and tangible evidence of fear of death or of hope in the gestures and eyes of the people.
When people in Delhi (strangers in hotels and restaurants) ask mw where I am going, I tell them ' mumbai'. I am still not very at ease with relling people that I am going to Kashmir after 1989, how many years? 11...
BS has offered that I could stay in his office (My Dad's office till he had to leave) for the duration of my stay in Kashmir. I'll go and find out. If it's too cold there I may have to decide to stay in some hotel.
'going home to stay in a hotel', the very idea seems mocking.
I have stayed in this office once in 1982 (June, around the time when India won the Cricket World cup trophy, as i remember this event too well) I think I was preparing for my 4th or 6th semester exam at the REC. This time when i'll go to REC or to my school or SP College, I'll find it empty. This is winter vacations there now.
To be updated...
Here, I will be posting the pages from my diary 'The Blue Notebook', which I will keep updating from time to time.
(UNDATED)
there's a war out there
and people are fighting
and dying for things they
believe
there are victims
and there are perpetrators
(DATED - 29/01/2001)
It could have been you dead or fighting
EMPATHY is the word - listen
you may hear stories that well may
be about you.
17/12/2000
Discussion at S's place tonight about Bangala immigrants, Periyer's anti-Brahmin movement in Tamil Nadu. Thoughts about my first Tamil friend Ganesh Iyer. M's comment (A Tamil Brahmin long settled in Delhi) "We deserved it."
18/12/2000 Delhi
On 16th when i left mumbai there was no mention of Kashmir in any of the major Newspapers. same thing yesterday. No news about kashmir. today - major headlines on front pages of all dailies scream. 'Hurriet leaders are positive about ceasefire', 'Hurriet leaders want ceasefire to lead to talks. (This was the Ramazan ceasefire announced by Atal Bihari Vajpayee)
The camera Equipment guy i went to for hiring his camera said he won't let me take it 'beacuse Kashmir is not safe. Our guy was beaten up somewhere in Anantnag a few months back.' So from now on, I am very hesitant about telling equipment guys here in Delhi that I am going to Kashmir, atleast will not volunteer that bit of information.
20/12/2000 Delhi.
Shalimar Express AS1-64, There will be things I'll notice anew when I am there. Thing's I did'nt know to look for..the particular colour and throw of the light, the quality of coldness and whether it has any impress on the character of the people...the colours of winter, the material and tangible evidence of fear of death or of hope in the gestures and eyes of the people.
When people in Delhi (strangers in hotels and restaurants) ask mw where I am going, I tell them ' mumbai'. I am still not very at ease with relling people that I am going to Kashmir after 1989, how many years? 11...
BS has offered that I could stay in his office (My Dad's office till he had to leave) for the duration of my stay in Kashmir. I'll go and find out. If it's too cold there I may have to decide to stay in some hotel.
'going home to stay in a hotel', the very idea seems mocking.
I have stayed in this office once in 1982 (June, around the time when India won the Cricket World cup trophy, as i remember this event too well) I think I was preparing for my 4th or 6th semester exam at the REC. This time when i'll go to REC or to my school or SP College, I'll find it empty. This is winter vacations there now.
To be updated...
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