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...