Kashmir Diary: It’s a predictable and picturesque picture. Like a painting created in a dream. Yes, as always, full of lovely surprises. An image I have seen before but hiding more stories than it can tell at first glance.
In the first instance, the wide-angle image, seen countless times in the fabulous romantic songs of old Bombay movies with shooting in Kashmir, is incredibly beautiful. So beautiful that it has become a cliché, a comfortable cliché, something which would come in your sleepless nights and put you to deep sleep.
(So, whatever happened to those wonderful movies shot in Kashmir – remember Kashmir ki Kali with Sharmila Tagore and Shammi Kapoor, or, Jab Jab Phool Khile with Nanda and Shashi Kapoor? Remember those eternally immortal songs? So, why are they not making films in this cinematic backdrop other than crass propaganda like Kashmir File?)
Sleep comes deep. Outside, the cool nocturnal wind flows serenely and enters your soul like a forbidden story in a demonised landscape, healing the wounds of the day. Deep wounds, often invisible, often simmering, often hurting, like memories buried and impossible to eliminate, lingering in sunshine, as stark remembrances of things past. And future.
However, the night wind brings sleep, heals your wounds, tells you a childhood story, and writes a new footnote in your travel notebook.
Soaking in the Silence
As the evening sets, the valley unfolds in the distance, a few lights twinkling in the foothills across mountains, surrounded by apple orchards and willow trees, the water on the ground shimmering like a silver lake. The mountain stream flows eternal, gurgling, rippling, moving in an endless streak of zigzag melody, its sound like bangles tinkling on a silent, full moon night. Yes, it will be a full moon night in this quaint little remote village in the paradise of Kashmir.
The village is quiet this evening. Stone and wood. Walls full of huge windows lined with simple brown of the trees in the forest nearby. Huge walnut trees in the background, willow trees with which they make the best cricket bats, apple trees, juicy apricot trees which the ‘dangerous’ brown bear high up in the alpine forests love to eat; and of course the majestic Deodar, their long green hands holding the sky and the wind inside their leafy branches, standing tall, like custodians of the journey to the unseen mysteries of Greater Himalaya.
I sit on the stone steps, surrounded by silence. I wait for the evening to unfold.
Then the little one comes.
She is wearing a purple salwar kameez, and a purple chunni on her head. She is still like frozen wind. She is standing on the side, a few minutes away, looking at me with her big eyes, not speaking a word. I don’t turn my head. I can sense her presence out there, a little Kashmiri girl, curious about this ‘outsider’, who seems slightly lost and forlorn, sitting quietly by himself, on the back-steps of her own house.
After what seems like an eternity, she disappears.
The spring below is gurgling, and I want to drink its water coming from the many glaciers across the forests, the valley, and the hills high up in the sky, now descending into slow summer darkness. Beyond the Deodar trees, the mountains are in dense shadows, so dominant and yet so fragile, beyond my reach, impossible to reach this night, beyond which, I am told, lie vast meadows of unimaginable beauty.
Who lives there? Are they another nomadic civilization with their cows, sheep and goats, lighting a fire in the open, smoking their hukkahs, the delicious smell of the tobacco lingering in the cold, like a breath held back in the face of incredible beauty.
The Little Girl
So where has the little girl gone?
There, she is back, coming from the back of the house, from under the shadow of the walnut trees, as silent as a rabbit. She stands there in subdued silence, a little distant, across the stone steps. I know she is looking at me, her eyes are steadfast.
So, I decide to end the hide and seek on this sublime evening in a sublime mountain village of Kashmir with yellow mustard flowers flowering at my feet. Do I still look lost and forlorn, perhaps a little bit steeped in sadness, surrounded by such sudden, spontaneous serenity?
I said, “come, sit here”. She came. She is a quiet girl. Her aura is in her silence. Her poise and dignity so transparent, that she seems almost aloof and detached. I bring out a couple of toffees from my cargo trousers’ pockets. She does not refuse. She refuses to smile. The twilight birds are singing their farewell goodbyes.
Then starts a conversation, interspersed with silences, which continues for a long time.
She studies in Class 4 of a good school. Her sentences are not halting, they are lucid, like the spring flowing below. She learns Taekwondo. She loves it. She plays football. Her favourite subject (like most girls in village primary schools I spoke to in my travels) is English.
She asks me the distance from Srinagar to Delhi, and how many hours it takes on train, and on a flight. She says will visit Delhi with her father next time he goes there on his winter sojourn to sell pherans, shawls and other exquisitely crafted Kashmiri products. “First, I will go alone. Then, with my brothers. And then with my entire family.”
Her dream sequence is as detached as her elegance and dignity.
She is obviously a very serious girl, and a serious student. Her name is….
I ask her the meaning of her name. She thinks. She is thinking. Her light eyes move into the distance, scanning the valley. And then turn inwards. She is thinking.
“The meaning of my name is a forest bird,” she says.
Like the landscape and the wildflowers and the spring gurgling below her home.
Now she wants to show me her English lessons. An interesting question paper, integrated with the local geography and way of life. I point out a couple of possible mistakes. She says, “You are right. We have corrected these mistakes.”
She has scored 99 out of 100 in English. 100 out of 100 in social studies. She comes second in class. She has 10 girls and 3 boys in her class. She is one of the three group leaders who also does revision for the other students. Clearly, she likes her lessons and she loves teaching.
Her school papers are organised in neat stacks in her room. She loves her school. I am thirsty. She runs across the trees and comes back with a bottle of cold, delicious spring water, which is so refreshing that your thirst is never quenched. I go and get chocolates for her and her brothers from the little village shop nearby.
Here Comes the Sun
I stop across a short bridge with another spring gurgling by, the mountains now becoming more majestic in their mysterious, magical distance. I want to know what is beyond, across the vast meadows of sunshine magnificence, the grass adorned with wild white, pink, red, purple flowers.
Next morning, here comes the sun, like that lovely Beatles song. She is dressed up to go to school in the school bus. I can sense, she wants to stay back today. She wants to tell me more stories, share the silences, eat the Rs 5 chocolates from the village shop.
But school beckons. I tell her I will leave today. A shadow crosses her face. She packs her tiffin as I write this column.
So, she comes and watches me write, and I write fast. She is as detached as ever. She says she will come back by 4pm in the evening. I tell her that I will be around.
She does not smile. Just pulls her rucksack on her shoulders, ready to go to school. I say bye-bye. She turns around, and smiles.
A smile so faint, so invisible, so pristine that you can miss it if you don’t pay attention.
Another day begins for a little, brilliant schoolgirl, in a little beautiful village in the paradise of Kashmir.
(This article was originally published in Lokmarg.com)
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