In Kashmir

As the airplane tyres touch the tarmac and I break the rules by turning on my mobile phone while the announcer is still saying, “Please do not turn on your mobile phones until the plane has come to a halt…” It takes a few seconds and then the signal comes up, immediately followed by an sms saying that I have a missed call. Just at that moment a pretty airhostess comes by and gives me a dirty look. “Sir…” she says disapprovingly.

I grin, apologise, and pocket the phone. For the first time I shall have a phone connection while travelling in the Valley. Mobile phones were banned in Kashmir until, after great resistance, the government finally gave permission. (The argument that clinched the deal, I am told, is that somebody argued that it would be a better way to monitor conversations.) Still those with pre-paid SIMs from mainland India, as I used to have, found themselves disconnected in the state (the same is true of Assam and other parts of the North-East.) It would have been a minor irritant in most places, but Kashmir is its own reality with its own risks.

The Price of a Call

Five years ago, when I was visiting Srinagar, I was rudely pulled out of a phone booth just as I was about to place a call. I had waited in line for a good twenty minutes and was pretty angry until I realised that everybody was running. The owner of the shop did not look to see if I owed him money, just pushed me out and slammed down the shutters as quickly as he could. Other people were rushing away as I made my way out the alley and it was only then that I started to pick out the distinct cracks of rifle fire and the occasional crump of grenades. A group of Lashkar-e-Toiba militants were attacking a bunker around the corner, just on Dal Lake.

I hate running, and since my little hotel was only twenty feet away, I leisurely strolled over, watching how the people on the street scattered. The Dalgate area, just as you turn the corner from the city to the beautiful lake, is always a crowded marketplace. It emptied within seconds. Even the heavily armed J&K policemen that had been joking around in the shop were gone, disappearing into their pickets, or towards where the firing still continued. The hotel manager looked up at me when I came up the stairs, and exclaimed, “Dekho Hindustan hum pe kitna zulm karta hai! (Look at how cruelly India treats us!)” It was a line I had heard him say numerous times over the last few days, whether talking about how a corrupt (Kashmiri) politician had pocketed the money for a road and built it in the opposite direction, or when the electricity went out. I mentioned that it looked like the LeT were the ones doing the attacking. “They are just attacking the military,” he said, dismissing my intervention, “the army will shoot all over the place.”

This was not an argument I was going to win, so I retired to my room. Once there I realised that the wall full of windows that I had so liked seemed rather unattractive when there was firing happening down the street. The only place that was cemented was the bathroom. I could always hide there. But what if a bullet ricocheted in through the bathroom door, how would I explain being shot in the loo? The potential for embarrassment was far too great. I opened up “The Brothers Karamazov” and started reading. An hour or so later, while the firing still continued in a sporadic manner, I had fallen asleep.

Changing Times

The times had changed since 2005. Or so I had been told. I was not so sure. While the central government had made a number of good noises removing bunkers and some small number of troops, the Amarnath agitation in 2008 and the Shopian case in 2009 had led to massive negative campaigns. Worst of all the dual peace process, between India-Pakistan, and New Delhi-Srinagar seemed to have come to a standstill. In a violence hit area like Kashmir there are only two ways for things to go: they either improve or they go bad. There is no such thing as maintaining status quo, and with the issue on the backburner it looked like things were not going well.

A young Kashmiri politician, one of the more dynamic and intelligent men in the Valley, had said to me a few months ago, “Two years back, I would have told you that militancy is finished. Now I know of militants finding shelter just out of Srinagar.” To compound all of that, in recent protests a number of young men had been badly injured by tear gas shells, some of them killed. One of them was in the hospital as I arrived, fighting for his life after a tear gas canister had hit him in the head.

Irony on Earth

I snapped out of my reverie as the airplane came to a stop, and in the true disciplined style of South Asian air passengers, we fell all over each other. It was worth it when we got out. Coming from the 40C plus heat of Delhi to the 20C of Sringar was a balm to the soul.

Outside the airport a driver was waiting with my name spelled incorrectly among a huge number of people looking hopefully touting names scrawled on pieces of paper, the smarter ones with little boards. One of them had a handwritten sign which said, “Welcome to heaven on earth” in permanent marker. I wonder if he was being hopeful, or ironic. Probably he was doing neither, just using Shahjahan’s favourite quote as it has always been used: as a sales pitch.

To see real irony you have to get further ahead. The airport was attacked by the LeT some years ago so there is a now a security gate about a kilometre away from the airport from where the checking starts. And here, on a large billboard, the quote is reproduced, “If there is heaven on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here.” It is not ascribed to the Mughal Emperor, instead you have the name of the Central Reserve Police Force.

If this is our strategy to win hearts and minds, no wonder we are failing.

Within the town, where the heavily armed police and paramilitary are either on the street, or behind barbed wire enclosed bunkers, you find the same ham-handed attitude. On the bunker is scrawled something along the lines of: Aap ke suraksha, humari pratibadhiyata (Your protection, our determination). Somebody obviously thought it sounded snazzy; except it is written only in Hindi, and in no other language, not even Urdu, the state language of J&K. And who uses words like ‘pratibadhiyata’? Even a fairly proficient Hindi speaker would stumble over such a word. It is obviously not a message for the Kashmiri population, and it is also contradicted forcefully by the reality. If you are hiding in a bunker behind barbed wire, the only person you are protecting is yourself, not the people outside reading your graffiti.

CCD

Not all things Indian are so thought out, or so badly received. The new ‘happening’ place in Srinagar is CCD which opened a few months back. That may be Café Coffee Day to the unlettered, but for those in the know it is only referred to by its initials. Of course in Kashmir it has its own bizarre touch. Most people sit in the garden attached to it, and the space allows you to order both from CCD and the barbeque at “Solomon’s”. The trout is most excellent, and the company includes foreigners lounging to see the World Cup on TV, media people and politicians, both mainstream and separatist. The JKLF was planning a Gandhian ‘jail bharo’ campaign, and a friend suggested that I should join. “It’ll be perfect for you. Look at how many great writers have spent a little time in jail.”

I suggested that I might not be made for greatness, and excused myself. What really interested me was the train.

To Qazigund

The fabled Kashmir train project is supposed to link the Valley to the rest of the country. Currently it only runs 120 kms within the Valley starting from Qazigund, just 30 odd kms from the Banihal tunnel that marks the division between Jammu district and Kashmir district, to Baramulla in the north, 60 kms from the LoC. Manmohan Singh flagged off the latest bit in October 2009, and I keep hearing contradictory reports about it: it’s a failure, it’s a success. The fact that militants have targeted it twice proves nothing here or there, militants being militants, they have their own agenda.

It takes me half an hour to go from the centre of town to the Srinagar train station. There are no feeder buses, but autos and shared taxis are freely available. The patdown and security drill is familiar, but nowhere near as heavyhanded as at the Secretariat which features four metal detectors and five pat downs before you are allowed to say who you want to meet. Maybe this is because everybody at the station looks like an average person. The ‘important’ people travel by cars, usually bulletproof cars. If you are Omar Abdullah you travel in a ten-vehicle convoy with your bulletproof Tata Safari in the middle, with its flashy Sanawar sticker on the back window, and ordinary people being swept aside for you as you claim the road. No sir, if you are important, sir, you are not at the train station, sir.

The price of the tickets also reflects this reality. The most expensive ones, from Qazigund to Baramulla, cost all of 22 rupees. My ticket to Qazigund from Srinagar costs 13. A train journey is not likely to pinch your pocket. But it is not the cheapness of the ticket that is the big surprise, but what I find in the train.

Thodi Si Azaadi

Each cabin has about 90 seats, and there is standing room only. The only security people are Railway Security Force personnel armed with submachine guns that stand in the space between cabins. This is the one place where I have seen such a large group of Kashmiris who do not have police/paramilitary/military personnel looking over their shoulders. The ease, laughter, and lightness is new and surprising. The boisterousness subsides slightly when the Ticket Inspector arrives and the Railway Security Force man peeps in. But as soon as the door closes, the high spirits resume peppered with jokes even, or maybe especially, at the expense of the Ticket Inspector as he goes about his business, half-joking himself.

Most of the passengers disembark in Anantnag and I have room to breathe, and relax. The train tracks curve up towards Qazigund, the snow covered peaks not too distant, and I am struck again by this train. For once in this stupid conflict, at great expense and probably for many ulterior motives, the government has done some good directly for the people. Who would have thought it?

The next day a boy in the hospital dies, protests and killings resume, and I am left to wonder why good things are so very difficult to come by in this lovely place.