Khayaal-e-Kashmir

Its 11.30 in the night. I'm walking on a dark lonely road. This is one of the militancy hit places in the country. I can't think of anything more adventurous to do than take this late night walk. The clear night sky looks beautiful. There are twinkling stars strewn around- some randomly and some in constellations. And then there are some hiding behind the tall mountains, black in the night. And then there are those handful of houses on these mountains, their lights forming a pattern not different from the stars in the sky. Given the height of these mountains, it takes a while to differentiate between the stars and the light-bulbs. The river, blue-green in the morning, black-silver and mirror-like in the night, flows by silently. The cold wind caresses my hair, stings my face making me numb on the nose and the cheeks.

And then, for a moment, the lights go off. In the silence that pervades the night, I suddenly hear Aamir Khusro's words-

Agar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast,
Hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast.

Welcome to Jammu & Kashmir.

My long awaited tour to Baglihar got over yesterday. There are some sights of J & K that words cannot do justice to.... for eg., the 15 minutes before the flight lands in Srinagar, the first sight of Chenab, standing quietly at Patnitop, the trek up Vaishno Devi....

For an outsider, it can be quite scary. You see army convoys everywhere. And you see bearded civilians in pathani suits everywhere. No offence meant to the followers of any religion, but it can be scary.

I spoke to quite a lot of locals there. They are very warm and cordial. They express surprise when a Keralite quotes Urdu couplets ("Thats India for you my friend"- a thought I did not verbalise)

A muezzin I met there best summed up the feelings- "Chayn se nahi jeene dete- na yeh na woh". I'd been warned by friends to not talk of the Indo-Pak issues with the locals. I could not resist the temptation. I asked the gentleman, "Hindustan se kya problem hai aapko". He replied "kya saab", smiled sarcastically, looked up towards the sky. I did not press further.

A Kashmiri Pandit, now at Baglihar, said, "Sab saale aurangzeb ki galti hai. Aur ab humaari sarkar bhi toh napunsak hai. Hum sab ko ghar se nikaal diya saab".

I'll probably not go deeper on this issue here.

As I drove back to the airport, I had memories aplenty to carry back. As I reflected back on the ironies of the day, Rumis' gem played in my ears- strangely, made popular in the modern times by Pandit Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah who jointly quoted this at Lal Bagh in Srinagar-

Mun tu shudam tu mun shudi,mun tun shudam tu jaan shudi
Taakas na guyaad baad azeen, mun deegaram tu deegari

(I've become you and you me,I am the body and you the soul
Now no one can say from now on,that you're someone and me someone else)


Afterthought: My good friend tells me that this post would be incomplete without this song that I quote often- "ye kaun chitrakaar hai" ... this i learnt from a very a special friend and senior.

For this good friend, and for you...here go the lyrix
http://www.musicindiaonline.com/lr/17/1139/