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Magazine
Kashmir: back to Paradise
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The great, tranquil Dal, tall rustling trees, ancient houseboats. And then, beyond them all, the mountains. When there is Kashmir to come to, why go anywhere else, asks UMA MAHADEVAN-DASGUPTA.
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REUTERS
Enjoy a gentle ride on the Dal lake or just take in the splendour of the Himalayas at Pahalgam (below).
THE flight to Srinagar is delayed because of a sandstorm in Jammu. I am spending this time in Delhi airport, reading Sir Francis Younghusband's book on Kashmir. Younghusband quotes Bernier, the first European to enter Kashmir, writing in 1665: "In truth, the kingdom surpasses in beauty all that my warmest imagination had anticipated."
Younghusband himself came into Kashmir over two centuries after Bernier, taking the pony-road from Rawalpindi, 200 miles from Srinagar, along the Jhelum valley, through deodar forests, past snow-covered hillsides. And suddenly there it was before them: "the glorious valley itself — a valley on so extensive a scale as really to be a plain amidst the mountains" was disclosed; and faintly mingling with the cloudless azure of the sky, on the far side stretched the great range of snowy mountains which bound Kashmir on the north".
Another century later, as my flight is circling before landing at Srinagar airport, I close my copy of Younghusband's Kashmir and look out at the rugged, snow-covered mountainsides, the glittering streams that run down the slopes, the bright green of the fields. It is a full flight — honeymooners, families, tourists, with restless children on board. The woman next to me tells me that she is seeing home for the first time in 12 years. Her eyes fill up.
The magic of Kashmir begins with the trees. The huge, stately chinars, some of them hundreds of years old. Apple orchards, with gleaming green apples hanging from the branches. Walnuts, almonds, pears, cherries — truly Marvellian, a green thought in a green shade.
Then, suddenly, as we turn a corner, the lake: the great, tranquil Dal, stretching out into the distance, framed by tall rustling poplars. Long thin shikaras float slowly on the water; ancient houseboats stand still. And then, beyond them all, the mountains. I am already wondering — when there is Kashmir to come to, why go anywhere else?
I can sit and gaze at the mountains all day long. Before Younghusband, Walter Lawrence, who was Settlement Commissioner of Kashmir for six years, wrote of the beauty of these mountains: "In the early morning they are often a delicate semi-transparent violet. Later on, it is nearly all blue and lavender, with white snow peaks and ridges under a vertical sun, and as the afternoon wears on, these become richer violet and pale bronze, gradually changing to rose and pink with, yellow or orange snow, till the last rays of the sun have gone."
Even today, the beauty of Kashmir is beyond the imagination. Within Srinagar, one can spend all day at the great Mughal Gardens, Nishat, Shalimar, Chashmashahi, overlooking the lake, framed by the Zabarwan Hills. Jehangir, who built Shalimar, loved flowers, and had a different variety planted at each level of these carefully terraced gardens alongside the cool stone pavilions. No wonder, then, that he declared that Paradise was here, here, here and nowhere else. Huge dark chinars and smaller magnolias, with their large, fragrant loose-petalled flowers, stand alongside the paths.
On the lake itself is an entire floating world. Doctors, tailors, bakers, vegetable sellers, flower sellers — even the postman, evoked in Agha Shahid Ali's broodingly lovely poem "The Floating Post Office", where he says, "I've brought cash, a currency of paisleys/to buy the new stamps, rare already, blank,/no nation named on them." And then there are the floating gardens; and an island inside the lake, called the "Char-chenars", the Four Chenars.
The road to Gulmarg is lined first with willows and then deodars as we climb. Suddenly we are there: Gulmarg, the meadow of flowers, stretches out before us like the floral way to paradise.
At the Highlands Park, we are welcomed with tulips at the door, and inside, chai and pakoras around hot bukharas. The windows are misting up. Perhaps later, if it clears up, we might be able to see the snow peaks. Right now, everything is a pearly grey blur.
In the old days, the oldest retainer tells me, families would book cottages for months on end, getting their cars brought to Kashmir by plane, and the hotel had a two-year long waiting list. Now even "Bobby hut", where Rishi wooed Dimple in the film, is vacant.
KAMAL NARANG
But we see tourists at the Gulmarg Gondola, a cable car ride. Beneath us, the grass-covered, flat-roofed huts of Gujjar shepherds, the flocks of woolly sheep, the sturdy ponies and their handlers all headed to Kongdori. Before us, at Kongdori, is great Apparwat, its snowline just a climb away, and we can see children sledding in the snow at some distance.
This is a land of poets and poetry. I read from Lal Ded, affectionately known as Lalla, the 14th Century metaphysical woman poet of Kashmir, translated by Coleman Barks: "I didn't trust it for a moment,/but I drank it anyway,/the wine of my own poetry", She celebrates the loveliness of her homeland: Look at this glowing day! What clothes/could be so beautiful, or/more sacred?"
There is water everywhere in this valley of lakes and canals — everywhere, bridges, reflections, water flowing under the bridges, carrying so many memories. The Jhelum, the Nagin, the Dal, they are everywhere as we turn along the narrow lanes of the old city. The floating gardens of the Dal have, over the decades, gradually merged with the shore; ancient houseboats, their frames made of firm and sturdy deodar, fringe the borders of the lake.
So much beauty, such sadness. I am reading Agha Shahid Ali, that wistful fin-de-siecle poet of this fractured paradise. In "Kashmir Without a Post Office", he writes: "Someone soaks the wicks of clay lamps/in mustard oil, each night climbs its steps/to read messages scratched on planets".
But for now, the sun is shining in the valley. What should I take back with me, along with memories of this Kashmir summer? Even shopping is a special pleasure, for everything — from the delicate papier-mache boxes with chinar and vine motifs on them, to the polished boxes and trays of walnut wood, everything has that gentle beauty of craftsmanship that comes from centuries of tradition. I pick up an akhroot tray shaped like a chinar leaf; an unpainted walnut bell; a papier-mache bangle box painted with vine motifs.
Around Hazratbal, we shop for wicker baskets: one for picnics, one for our kitten, one because it's so pretty. I also pick up two kangris, clay lamps that Kashmiris fill with glowing charcoals and hold against their bodies, inside their feyrans, in the cold of winter. I shall do something far more mundane with mine: moneyplants, I suppose, or some other climbers. Still, they will remind me of this lovely green valley.
I admire the Kashmiri shawls greatly, but I do not buy them this time: in Mumbai's humid heat, they will only have to lie mothballed in the winter chest. Embroidered amli or woven kani, light pashminas and intricate jamavars, they are truly beautiful.
Perhaps another time. Carpets, too: lovely, but I will not buy these either, not this time. With a dog and a kitten back home, and moist sea-facing floors, I will not risk a Kashmiri carpet to this fate. In Kashmir, the art of the hand-knotted carpet — the more the knots, the better the quality — attained perfection in the 16th and 17th Centuries under the Mughals.
Ways of life, in Kashmir, like the shikaras that cut slow swathes through the lake water, are gracious and elegant. Arabesques and paisleys turn and whirl on the fabrics, while chinar leaves adorn the wooden and papier-mache work. On the ceiling of the banquet hall at the Highlands Park, I saw the intricate khattam-bandh, woodwork so fine, so meticulously knotted together, that it looks as if it has been etched on.
At mealtime, our hosts are hospitable in the legendary Kashmiri way. Being vegetarian, I stay away from the rogan josh, tabak maz, yakhni and gushtaba, but their spicy fragrance wafts across to the vegetarian side of the buffet too. It is later in the day, when we are sipping saffron kehwa on the mountain slopes, that I indulge. I take a second and then a third cup of this aromatic honey-coloured drink flavoured with cardamom, cinnamon and strands of saffron. Saffron, legendary in Kashmir, is yet another example of the extravagant hospitality of this land. The world's most expensive spice, 70,000 crocus sativus flowers have to be harvested to extract the more than 200,000 stigmas needed for one pound of saffron. I sip my kehwa, and it fills me with warmth.
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