Travel from airport towards Dal Lake side made me remember the days I spent in Pune in the early 80’s when I was UGC’s Teacher fellow doing Ph.D. in Gokhale Institute, Pune, the Academic city of India. Kashmir looks like a typical village unspoiled or urban capitalistic civilization. The serenity and virginity of this valley was just bemusing and blindfolding. While remaining in the lap of Himalayas for six days, I felt sad that the roads leading to different tourist destinations were not that good although they were not bad. I do fully understand given the topography of the mountainous region and the resultant landslide due to heavy rains and melting of snow, it is not that easy for any responsible government to-do the maintenance on an yearly basis and yet Kashmir being the jewel of India cannot be allowed to accumulate dust. The entire Kashmir region looks like a lovely village, a typical under-developed village, something like a rururban area.
In a span of six days stay at Srinagar we stayed for four nights in the boat house and that was the most precious moment in my life. We felt very chill during night; as if we were experiencing typical winter. We were extremely lucky that sun did really show his full real face on all those days excepting when there was some rain in evening.
Dal Lake is a vast expanse of water and it is a world of its own. One day we went around the lake enjoying its infinite colour and its shopping complexes floating on the lake. There was also a separate world of vegetation beneath performing some purifying act to keep the water clean. Again, I should mention hear that in many places there were many machines at work draining the accumulated debris from the lake.
On the very first day when I landed, I didn’t fall into any kind of love with this region or for that matter at lake. Definitely, it was not a love at first sight but as the days passed and moved around the valley extending the stay in the boat house, the love affair of Kashmir intensify and god the necessary stream for a sustained sentimental relationship with a entire region for many years to come.
As an adolescent boy starts liking a girl of his choice by seeing her again and again and get intoxicated eventually with her infinite variety of colour and texture, fun and adventure and of course her shapely curves and pleasant smells and sounds of the body, the old man at 60+, the black man from South having a youthful heart and romantic fantasy stemming from his discipline which of course is not literature, became madly infatuated with the Dal Lake and other valleys that he visited in subsequent days. Our boat house was positioned in a pleasant ambience overlooking the mountain carpeted with tall green trees and the top layer of the mountain was covered with snow glittering in the sun like silver. I do not find words to describe its beauty. Dal Lake was virtually savored and relished in the early morning, during sunshine, while black clouds were encircling the green mountains and also at midnight.
This summer is something special for Kashmir, I was told by the boatmen. For nearly two months before our arrival there, it had rained very heavily and at one stage, the region was threatened with flood signal. Never in the history of Kashmir in the last 36 years, this kind of change of season during summer, experiencing abundant rain had occurred. To me it appears as if all over the world the seasons and climate might undergo a see-saw change under the impact of global warming and the melting of the snow in the years to come.
Kashmir two will have its own peculiar and erratic climate, defying the season and upsetting the apple cart of daily life of poor people who are dependent upon tourist. Is nature playing like a truant God in doing more mischief as the authorities here and elsewhere are indifferent and negligent in the duties in protecting the environment. Shall we start from Kashmir valley one of the trouble regions in the sub-continent crying for peaceful existence from terror both from militants and states. It is time all the stakeholders in the Kashmir valley, the lively and the lovely Kashmir valley handled the region in a more respectable and affectionate manner befitting of its special and differential status, not in the political sense but in the environmental and economic sense, because, it is the heavenly kingdom of God.
In a span of six days stay at Srinagar we stayed for four nights in the boat house and that was the most precious moment in my life. We felt very chill during night; as if we were experiencing typical winter. We were extremely lucky that sun did really show his full real face on all those days excepting when there was some rain in evening.
Dal Lake is a vast expanse of water and it is a world of its own. One day we went around the lake enjoying its infinite colour and its shopping complexes floating on the lake. There was also a separate world of vegetation beneath performing some purifying act to keep the water clean. Again, I should mention hear that in many places there were many machines at work draining the accumulated debris from the lake.
On the very first day when I landed, I didn’t fall into any kind of love with this region or for that matter at lake. Definitely, it was not a love at first sight but as the days passed and moved around the valley extending the stay in the boat house, the love affair of Kashmir intensify and god the necessary stream for a sustained sentimental relationship with a entire region for many years to come.
As an adolescent boy starts liking a girl of his choice by seeing her again and again and get intoxicated eventually with her infinite variety of colour and texture, fun and adventure and of course her shapely curves and pleasant smells and sounds of the body, the old man at 60+, the black man from South having a youthful heart and romantic fantasy stemming from his discipline which of course is not literature, became madly infatuated with the Dal Lake and other valleys that he visited in subsequent days. Our boat house was positioned in a pleasant ambience overlooking the mountain carpeted with tall green trees and the top layer of the mountain was covered with snow glittering in the sun like silver. I do not find words to describe its beauty. Dal Lake was virtually savored and relished in the early morning, during sunshine, while black clouds were encircling the green mountains and also at midnight.
This summer is something special for Kashmir, I was told by the boatmen. For nearly two months before our arrival there, it had rained very heavily and at one stage, the region was threatened with flood signal. Never in the history of Kashmir in the last 36 years, this kind of change of season during summer, experiencing abundant rain had occurred. To me it appears as if all over the world the seasons and climate might undergo a see-saw change under the impact of global warming and the melting of the snow in the years to come.
Kashmir two will have its own peculiar and erratic climate, defying the season and upsetting the apple cart of daily life of poor people who are dependent upon tourist. Is nature playing like a truant God in doing more mischief as the authorities here and elsewhere are indifferent and negligent in the duties in protecting the environment. Shall we start from Kashmir valley one of the trouble regions in the sub-continent crying for peaceful existence from terror both from militants and states. It is time all the stakeholders in the Kashmir valley, the lively and the lovely Kashmir valley handled the region in a more respectable and affectionate manner befitting of its special and differential status, not in the political sense but in the environmental and economic sense, because, it is the heavenly kingdom of God.
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