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