– Just outside Ganpatyar.
Stray
School Excursion to Shalimar Bagh
Every Friday Open.
Original Mughal Garden Plan didn’t include an Iron gate. Stupidly enough, nobody thought of it at that time. And these Royals were supposed to be master builders of gardens. The iron gate stands right over the stream making exit from the garden.
Queued. As Master and Madam confer. Children are all ear. Almost all of them.
We are in. It’s a Picnic.
Watch me make a splash! Don’t wet my shoes!
The kid just put his face right in front of my face, smiled and went, ‘‘Asalawalekum!’ The right thing to say is – Walaykumsalam.
As stood on the ancient terrace, a little girl walked unto the place where I stood, confident, she went, ‘Execuseme!’. I realized I was blocking the entry to the monument. The right thing to do is – walk aside.
The humble-almost embarrassed – source of all water in the great garden.
Alternate entry point. No entry fee. And it is fun. Again, stupidly enough, it was not included in the original garden plan by the great Mughals.
Swimming, Fun and Frolic at Nehru Park
Nehru Park in Dal Lake
Boys fishing and swimming at Nehru Park
Splash
The boy kept pushing his friends into the water. Finally, they all ganged up on him, caught hold of his legs and arms and swinging his body in air, prepared to throw him into the water. The boy started screaming, ‘I don’t know how to swim! I will die! I will die!’ His friends got tired of his drama. They let him be. Some minutes later, one of his friend talked him into going into the water. He agreed. Once in water, he almost drowned his friend by riding onto his head. ‘What’s wrong with you! You want us to get killed. Nothing will happen! I won’t let you go’. The boy wasn’t so sure, he kept repeating, ‘I don’t know. A boy drowned at this very spot a couple of days ago. Swear on your mother you won’t let go of my hand. I will die. Die’ The boy was a genuine dramabaaz, anybody could tell. There was also a slight chance that he even knew swimming. A couple of minutes later he was (while still holding onto his friend’s neck) splashing his legs wildly in water, exclaiming, ‘I can swim! I can swim!’. His other friend, standing at shore, threw a brick (deliberately mis-directed) at him. Of course, it missed and hit the water, creating a big sploosh. The boy looking genuinely offended told them, ‘Swear on mother, you won’t do that again. You want to see dead!’ All the boy were in their late teens. If you witness a scene like this anywhere else in this part of the world, boys having fun like this, there is a good chance that they will also be rhyming insults at each other’s mother and sister – it’s almost a way of showing endearment among males. It seems Kashmir (at least most of it) is still too idyllic to move in that direction. Pleasures are simple. Friends are friends. Mothers are mothers. Swimming is swimming.
Remaining Pandits of Kashmir
“Waliyu, waliyu (come, come).” Little Aadesh welcomes this writer at his house on the edges of the forlorn village Haal, about 30 km south of Srinagar.
It is a typical home with a wooden door in this village of 3,000 people and their burnt-out, collapsing brick-and-timber structures, once inhabited by 150 Kashmiri pandit families.
Adeesh’s family is the last.
The three-year-old is the grandson of Omkar Nath Bhat, 72, the only Kashmiri pandit to have decided to stay back in this once-vibrant village of friendly people and views of snow-clad mountains and forests.
The other pandits, Kashmiri Hindus, of Haal left in the winter of 1989, the year militancy exploded across the valley.
– A piece on ‘Remaining Pandits of Kashmir’ by Arun Joshi for Hindustan Times (September 14, 2009)
It’s not ‘Waliyu, waliyu’. It’s ‘Wal’yuur, Wal’yuur‘.
Rural Houses
A Rural House.
Work under way.
Transformer
Airtel
A New Rural House
A beautiful little house in rural area.Somewhere on the way back from Gulmarg.triply
Three heads
Along with TV
[Cross posted at my other blog]
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“The hiss of TV static denotes remnant radiation that still lingers from the big bang 14.5 billion years ago.”
– National Geographic, February 2003September 2009 marks the 50th year of dear old national broadcaster Doordarshan.
Yeah, it’s kind of hard to believe, I told my Uncle about it and he didn’t believe it. He thought Doordarshan must have started in 1960s, it should only be around 40 years old.
According to wiki:
Doordarshan had a modest beginning with the experimental telecast starting in Delhi in September 1959 with a small transmitter and a makeshift studio. The regular daily transmission started in 1965 as a part of All India Radio. The television service was extended to Bombay and Amritsar in 1972. Till 1975, seven Indian cities had television service and Doordarshan remained the only television channel in India. Television services were separated from radio in 1976. […]
In my own state, J&K, the broadcast started only as late as 1973 with an experimental broadcast. In the beginning you could only catch it in Chief Minister’s cabin on his private television. In 1973, the famous (I find it kind of ugly) Tv tower atop Shankaracharya Hill cropped up, by November it was fully functional. Also by then, in 1973, Doordarshan had already got its famous signature tune.
National telecasts were introduced in 1982. In the same year, colour TV was introduced in the Indian market with the live telecast of the Independence Day speech by then prime minister Indira Gandhi on 15 August 1982, followed by the 1982 Asian Games being held in Delhi.
Another big TV event of the decade was year 1984 nationally televised (in color) funeral of Indira Gandhi; people had documentaries and Bhajans playing all day long. In 1985, Doordarshan accepted commercial advertising for the first time. Hum Log became a rage. Still television was something that needed to be turned off. When there was no signal, there was static noise. People decorated their television sets with television covers. Some sets came with shutters no less. A couple of years later, in 1990, February 13th to be exact, Lassa Kaul, Station Director of Doordarshan Srinagar was shot dead by militants right outside his house in Srinagar. Still, listening to News on Doordarshan, you couldn’t tell Srinagar from Modinagar. Everything was normal. These were days like any other. For news people turned to BBC radio. People said there were some strange signals coming from PTV. But it wasn’t easy to catch PTV in the valley. I learn’t a technique – drive two nails, inch apart, into the wall just over the television set, attach two wires to the nails and use the nails as antenna. We tried. It didn’t work. I was learning to love Mile Sur Mera Tumhara. My folks were packing the bags. We left. TV came along with us. But the bigger one, a Philips B&W with wooden cabinet, had to be left at the relatives for some years, we had no space for it. Space was never enough ever since. In Jammu, I finally caught up with PTV.They were playing Jaws. I remember the night, we were sleeping under the dark open sky on mats spread on still warm cemented rooftop. It was fun. But the blue light of Tv attracted moths and other strange insects. I hadn’t seen such insects in the valley. Tv wouldn’t burn the moth. Still they came. Still more came. From the rooftop, I could see the bright electric lights of distant Trikuta hillform a deformed inverted V.
On 26 November 2008, late at night, when all the other news channels were on the frontier of information war front, I found classical music playing on Doordarshan. It was just another day. It made sense. Back in my state, in the afternoon of 27th, people must have picked up national dailies, front page (fixed hurriedly late in the morning ) was right, it had the right big news but inside, people got to read international news dated 25th – they read about things that happened on some part of earth on 24th. I don’t think you can now see the inverted V that clearly from the city now.
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Gulmarg in Summer
Gulmarg in Summer.June, 2008.Palladium
Remains of Palladium Cinema Hall, Lal Chowk, Srinagar. June, 2008. Burnt down in 1992.
I couldn’t put my eye to the viewfinder. I didn’t want to draw attention. I didn’t want anyone to know that I was taking a picture. I was afraid. It seems stupid.
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She came back from school that day and ran straight to her mother who was in the kitchen at the time, sitting next to a reluctantly burning stove. Mother was decongesting stove’s snooty nozzle using one of those half-blackened-needle-tipped tools. There, it was fine now. Burning with that right gushing sound. It was quite a sight, but this didn’t make Mother happy. It never did, even though it was a dangerous thing to do, even though Mother was good at doing this thing. She knew what would make Mother happy. The news. The good news. She was now bursting with excitement. It was just too good. One look at her, and Mother knew her daughter had something to say. So. She told Mother the news, in single breath, she told her what she saw that afternoon on her way back (it wasn’t there in the morning) from the school: Poster of Rajesh Khanna’s Roti on Palladium’s hoarding wall. Finally it was here. They had heard the songs together on radio, they had hummed the songs – Naach Meri Bulbul Paisa Mile Ga, Gore Rang Pe Na Itna Gumaan Kar, Yeh Jo Public Hai Sab Jaanti Hai. And now the film was here. Mother walked into the hall, looked at the wall clock- they had time. They definitely had time. Mother offered her the afternoon meal, a plateful of hot rice, a thick Dal and some fried potatoes ( a treat just for her). ‘Finish all of it.’ While she ate, her mother got into a Sari. They were going to see the film, they were going to see Roti. There was no doubt about it from the beginning. She knew it would turn out this way, it always did. And as usual her big brothers won’t get to come along. What fun! They were still at School. They would be there for another hour or so. When they come back and find the lock on the front door, as always, to get the key, they would go to aunt’s house down the street. Boys didn’t seem to mind it at all, ever. After all, they did get to see the films later with gang of friends and cousins. And Mother paid for it all. So it was fine. Till: They all made it back to the house by the time Father got back from office in the evening. It was their little secret. Something on the side. They always had time on their side. So, the mother-daughter duo saw Roti that afternoon at Palladium cinema.
Later at night, after dinner, Father, as usual, did ask them, “So, How was the film?” And he got the answer, in one voice, “Rajesh Khanna, Mumtaz, Song, Dance, Pahalgam. How do you think it could have been?”
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