I'm a Grandmother!

May 28

Ayoub's wedding ceremonies continued on the next day. A big meal of course, and then everybody into cars and a school bus for a tour around the lake visiting shrines for the groom to pray for the success of the marriage. I dropped out and made my own way home as all the groomsmen headed off in a long cavalcade to pick up the bride at her families home and bring her back to her bridegrooms house. Auyoub was relaxed and loose during the first part of the day, despite the disaster of his heena night, but as zero hour approached and his family began to robe him for the event he had stiffened up into a wooden statue. Very involved proccess for the groom. Don't know what the bride does waiting for him to get there.

That blast of wind the night before turned out to be very destructive. It overturned shikaras all over the lake and lifted the roofs right off houses and ripped off brickwork from exposed upper stories. Many houses use the top floor of the houses for food storage for the winter and that floor is ofter left with large uncovered areas in the walls. The attic is basically just a steeply sloped roof perched on posts. The wind got underneath five of these structures just in the small area Ayoub lives in, including Ayoub's parents house and popped the roofs off and dropped them back down on the house. A real mess.

I'm getting ready to pull out of Shrinegar, packed up a bunch of extra clothing to mail home. I have two very large suitcases to shepherd to Delhi on the train so I don't want a whole bunch of little ones as well. I'm planning on taking a shakira ride over to see some of those floating gardens with something growing in them. I'm going to be flying out in ten more days.

THis is so annoying, I don't know why pictures sometimes come up with colours inverted. By the way, you can click on images and get a larger version.


May 18

Was supposed to go to a wedding party, a Heena Night for the groom before he goes over and claims his bride. I got out to the neighborhood shopping centre near his house, there are a couple of blocks you have to do on foot because the road bed hasn't been surfaced yet and I need a guide to get there. Anyway, while I am waiting for the ride to come, a strong wind blows up, lots of lightning, scatter of rain. I'm waiting and waiting, nobody shows so I phone again. The wind has blown the roof off the shelter where they were preparing food. Everybody is crying, everything is a mess. So I say it doesn't sound like a good time for guests. I'll just get a rickshaw back to Dallgate and try to hook up tomorrow. Branches of chinar trees down all over the road and many signs hanging by one nail. Nasty little gust.

Maybe some nice photos tomorrow.

By the way, I'm a grandmother now. My daughter had a big baby boy, no name yet but mother and babe home and doing well.

May 17th

I have only a voice to undo the folded lie.
The lie of authority whose buildings grope the sky
The lie of the sensual man in the street.
Hunger allows no choice to the citizen or police.
We must love one another or die.

In the days after 9/11 I searched for that scrap of Auden to comfort myself. In Srinagar I found myself reaching for that scrap of comfort again. People have been telling me about their experiences of living in Kashmir through 3 wars and a never ending guerrillas assaults by independent jihadic militants over the last 18 years. Pretty wrenching stuff.

I wrote a long post for Indiamike.com (Reflections on Kashmir, if anyone is interested.) India Mike is a forum for travelers in India. People responded that my views were one sided because I had only talked to one group in Kashmir. Actually human pain is pretty universal and no respecter of any person. I suspect those others I have not had the opportunity to speak to would tell me almost the same thing. A lot of pain here in Kashmir. A lot of war wounds.

As far as Kashmiris are concerned, militants and the army are equally bad news. To the army there's no way to tell the difference between Kashmiris and militants, and strong suspicions that all Kashmiris are militants. Most of the Hindu population got the hell out one way or another. They are mostly in Jammu.

So it's a pretty tough little town. The war that is going on is actually far more psychological than physical despite all the bullets rattling around. The soldiers want some sort of dominance, you can see it in their attitudes toward even tourists. It's been going on for eighteen year and the Kashmiris have not backed down an inch. They don't argue with men with guns but they don't necessarily respect a man just because he has the gun either.

I experienced a little of that fear everybody around here lives with. I walked into a friends shop for our evening ritual glass of tea and there was a whole patrol of soldiers on the stairs leading up to and in his shop. Just a happy little chat with the captain of the group charged with making sure that no incidents happened anywhere in the tourist zone. Showed me his scar too. This is the evening after I had posted on India Mike. Could actually feel beads of sweat break out on my forehead. These guys are fast or God bless Google. Anyway he spent some time trying to convince me what bad guys Pakistanis are and left when I didn't appear to be all that convinced. Have never been to Pakistan. Don't know anything about them.

Of course that big army, a lot more men than the Americans have in Iraq, is not there to deal with the handful of raggedy assed Afghanis looking for somewhere to punch their ticket to paradise. They are there to deal with that armoured column that Pakistan may send down the pike someday. Meanwhile India has the same problem that Rome always had. Where do you park an army when you are not using it? Well in Gaul or Spain of course. What else can India do, put them in Anantapur to chase Naxelites? Back in Dehradun for more combat training? Not many Indian cities would want that lot on their doorstep. Why not in Kashmir? India owns it now after all..

Anyway, that's what I've been up to lately. Read a great book Ghosts of Kashmir by Shanka Vedantam.

Gulmarg

April 22

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!

I woke up this morning in serious pain. Went for a day trip on Sunday up to Gulmarg, the local ski resort and forgot my sunblock. Got the worst sunburn I have had for years all across my forehead, nose and cheeks. Even the place where my hair parts on my scalp hurts. The cool mountain air was very deceptive, should have brought my umbrella.

We had another misty day to be going up to another hight in the hills above Kashmir. However it was clear enough as we wound our way higher and higher up the mountain's base slopes to see that the ridges surrounding the valley on three sides are the smaller petals of the rose. Beyond them great snowcapped peaks rear impossibly high into the blue distances, with just a tantalizing glimpse through blue haze every now and then of a splash of sunlight reflecting off a distant slope.

The entire mountainside is forest preserve, with many soldier guarded check stops. You can see as you drive up that the tall straight pines and spruces have been very carefully logged, between the trees are the stumps of other trees individually harvested one by one. All the slopes we saw were fully covered with healthy looking trees, no clearcut slopes anywhere. The under story is very clean and grassy. We saw groups of women carrying out bundles of branches and the odd dead fall log segment balanced on their heads, a few cows balancing on steeply angled pasturage and a large flock pf sheep with many young lambs grazing under the forest canopy. There is almost no dead fall at all on the whole mountainside the road switchbacks up. It was almost uncanny, a whole mountainside groomed like a zen garden.

The resort is built on a high saddle about 6000 meters above the floor of the vale of Kashmir directly below a snow covered mountain ridge. It's off season now, the snow is gone except for a few patches underneath the trees. But there were hoards of Indian youngsters gleefully rolling about in them. We got there early in the morning which was a good idea, because by noon the parking lots were filling up with tour buses and private cars and taxis. Hundreds of Indian families were taking advantage of that intoxicating combination of warm sunshine and cool mountain air to have pick nicks on the new grass of the run out areas of the bunny and beginner slopes and going off for trail rides on the hundreds of Kashmir mountain ponies gathered for that employment.

There is a chairlift that continues up past the brushed out ski run all the way up to the snow covered top of the ridge. We didn't want to go up because it was rather expensive, about $20 to get all the way to the top, but I would sure like to get up there some day when visibility is a little better and take some photos. It's still spring here and melting snow on the upper slopes means there is almost always a blue mist in the air. Maybe before I leave we will get some clearer days.

The ponies were the best part of the experience for me. Hardy little beasts, they are left out to forage for themselves in winter. Some looked like they could have used a little better feeding during the winter. They were thin and boney and still shaggy. They hadn't been able to shed their winter coat due to poor condition. Many however were in top shape, muscular and glossy with good health. This local breed is a beautiful dainty animal with fine boned legs and hooves, lovely shapely heads and a very spirited disposition. They are quiet and obedient enough when being led along with large heavily garbed tourists aboard, but I saw a lot of curveting and horseplay with their handlers as they cantered back to the starting place.

New house, new neighbourhood

We have moved into new accomadations, a little guest house in the warren of tiny streets behind Dall Market. I'm a bit of a curiosity to the women of the house, especially since I have spent most of the last three days processing photos and catching up with my blog. They want to know a lot of stuff about the west, centering as usual on the eternal Indian question, why are you not at home with your children?

Remi told one Kashmiri man that meeting Kashmiri women was the best part of the trip for him. The guy looked a little sceptical but I know what Remi meant. Most of the ladies we have met have been well educated, open, friendly and very straightforward and forthright. They speak their minds quite openly and eloquently.

The guys are cool too, the familiar Kashmiri charm. I'd love to import a little of that to sell some of my goods. These are photos of a couple of merchants down at our favorite internet corner.

John's house

One of the first things I did when we reached Srinagar was phone up the contact number a friend of mine in Puttaparthi had given me to reach his relatives. After a few frustrating conversations with people who only knew enough English to tell me they did not understand English, I finally go a hold of John, still sweltering in Puttaparthi and told him what was happening. Later that evening his brother and the guy who works in his store, Ayoub came over and took us out to the far end of town to introduce us around John and Ayoub's extended family. I took some photos from the function room on the top floor of the house.That is John's brother with the deer in the headlights look..

April 4

We went up to a shrine on the top of hill that rises from the shores of Dall Lake. Remi calls it Solomon's Tomb, the locals have a different story. You can see the geography of the area very clearly. Legend has it that Shrinegar was once a lake, I can believe it. It lies perfectly flat on the floor of a large valley, threaded by waterways, some of which look like big meandering oxbows some are the die straight rulers of canals. It was an overcast day so it was hard to get good photos. I'll go up again on a clearer day and try again.

The most entertaining part of the trip were the guards. The whole mountain is in the Indian Forestry Preserve so the entrance is guarded by a sand banked machine gun emplacement and sentries to check your id. Big signs at the entrance saying no inflammables such as cigarette lighters so I offered the guy at the bottom mine to hold until I got back down, he waved it off. At the top just before the steps up to the shrine, more soldiers and machine gun and a ladies check room. You cannot take a camera up there. The army ladies fondled my tits, crotch and butt, searched my purse, camera bag and pockets and confiscated my camera, cigarettes, lighter and extra camera chip. When I got back down from the shrine there were only four cigarettes left in my almost full package.

Hmmm! Interesting. So the gals in the Indian Army are cigarette smoking dykes. Guess sex with the guys might be a little dangerous. Or it might have been my clothing. I was wearing khaki coloured cargo pants, a tan coloured bush shirt, a dark burgundy long sleeved man's shirt, carrying a black trench coat and wearing my cheap as dirt Amritsar machine woven shawl. Maybe they were trying to figure out if I was a man or a woman.

Remi's entertainment for the afternoon was arguing with the rickshaw driver. We had used this guy before, he had overcharged me for a run across town and back to deliver Manzoor's package so I would not have hired him again, but Remi called him over. He agreed to take us up and back down the mountain for 150 rs, our hotel keeper had said that 100rs was the standard. When we got back down we gave him 200rs but he demanded 400rs. Followed us right into a restaurant and cried the blues to the restaurant staff, had a waiter coming over to the table to tell us we should give him 50rs more. Very loud and embarrassing event. Remi loves this tussle with rickshaw drivers everywhere he goes.

April 3
New Shrinegar is a stone city. We went to visit the family workshop of one of the merchants Remi knows from Puttaparthi. He recognized him on the street. Remi is much happier today. Mustafa's family lives in an area of the city where every house and yard is surrounded by a high stone fence. Block after block of gray stone bordering seriously potholed lanes. Only the cemeteries have low walls you can see over. There are a lot of them.

The young merchant from Puttaparthi gave us tea and cookies and told us about all the work involved in creating a fine shawl. His brother takes almost a day to weave a cloud soft pashm wool on a hand loom, then his father, a master embroiderer spends three months painstakingly embroidering the delicate all over patterns that has been drawn on the fabric by another craftsman. I have seen these shawls selling for 10,000 rs in Puttaparthi, that's about $275 Canadian. He showed us one masterpiece of solid embroidery that looked like it should really be in a museum. Three years work The family also owns machine looms,100 shawls a day, any thickness or quality of wool you care to specify on about about eight or so looms that look like they came from eighteenth century Manchester. This is what I came to Kashmir to see.

I even held in my very own hands a shantoosh shawl, the queen of wool. They start at $1000 American before embroidery. I would never buy one though even if I had that kind of money. They are made from the belly and neck hair of a wild mountain antelope. People used to just collect the fiber that pulled off the animal on bushes during the shedding season in the spring. It is priced in grams. But there is so much money in the wool that greedy people are shooting the animal and driving it over the brink into extinction. I'll stick with wool. Now if I can only find people willing to pay more than twenty dollars for a piece of weavers art back home.

April 2

We went for a shakira ride today and I saw why the TourPolice were so hard nosed about us getting accommodation on a houseboat. These floating dwellings do not have roadway connections to the land. The only way off one of them is by a set of stairs going down to the water to board a shakira, and the owner controls which shakira approaches. They comprise a virtual tourist ghetto. All the landing spots on the shore for shakira are guarded by men with rifles. It's a very effective way of keeping possibly disruptive foreign elements away from the metropolis proper. Very neat. I was glad we had managed to avoid that particular box. Probably would have been pretty boring too, it's very early days for the tourist season, hardly any of them looked occupied yet.

The waterborne salesmen were out, though probably not as many now as there will be when it gets warmer, peddling jewelry, shawls and eatables on the waterway. All the houseboats look pretty worn, no new varnish on the elaborate carved walnut friezes for quite some time, though I am sure they are quite magnificent inside.
Remi was in crybaby mode the whole trip. He was cold, he was leaving almost immediately, he wasn't going to adapt again to a new environment, he was going to Dharmashala where at least he knew where to buy toilet paper. As far as I was concerned, he could leave anytime he wanted, just quit telling me about it and do it. I was reveling in the sounds and smells of springtime freshness, relishing the delicious warmth of the sun after the chill of the night. The temperature was just about what it is at the beginning of April on the coast, with less rain. The fruit trees are in bloom everywhere and birds are singing their hearts out. I just love it here right now.

The food is great too, wonderful cooks these munghals.
I had a small delivery to make for a friend from Goa which took us on a long rickshaw ride across the city away from the tourist section into a neighborhood of small twisty alleyways. On the way I saw that there are many many channels traversing the whole city. No part of Shrinegar is very far from water. I want to hire a shakira to take me for a ride through some of those old canals in the heart of the old city. Old Shrinegar is a wooden city, two and thee story buildings with steeply pitched roofs of weather worn wood raise straight up from the water. It made me think of some of the sets of Ghormangast. I want to do a little more prowling off the beaten path and take some photos.

April 1

Srinegar
Both Remi and I were fairly groggy from lack of sleep when we dove down into the mountains and landed at Srinegar. We were not ready for the Tourist Police. They were charming but very determined to put us on a houseboat. They even found some houseboat owners who were willing to rent for the 200 rupees a night we were willing to pay. They surrounded us on the bus and ushered us into the Tourist Police Station in town. One guy was very hard nosed about it, but I just kept telling them there was no way I was going on a boat, I was afraid of water, I wanted solid earth underneath me. We insisted on a hotel. Finally after many hard stares the guy gave up and one of his men escorted us to a land based lodge. Pretty basic accommodation, no central heating or hot water, but at least we had the freedom of the city. I had been warned by Kashmiri's to stay away from those houseboat owners, they even scare Kashmiri's they are so rapacious, and there are stories about houseboat owners refusing to let tourists off the boats until they accede to whatever demands the owners want to make. I don't like that kind of situation.

March 30-31

Delhi
If the trip to Goa and my stay there was stress free and uneventful the trip to Delhi certainly balanced it in the other direction. For starters the plane took off half an hour late, so my friend who had been waiting for me at the airport had already taken off by the time I got out of the departure area. I had to get some money from a Citi Bank ATM machine so I took off in a rickshaw to find one. Just outside of the airport the driver made me transfer to a cab. I guess a way to get past licensing arrangements at the airport. I wanted to get my money and find a 400 rupee room, I've found them before at Paragangi down by the railroad but he talked me into trying a hotel five minutes from the airport that he claimed cost 1200 rupees. By this time we had been through so many twisting Delhi streets I was getting seriously paranoid and just wanted out of this vehicle. Turns out the hotel will not rent anything for less than 2800 rs, and the taxi driver wants 1500 rs. Got the hotel bill down by 800 by simply not registering or getting a receipt, it was pretty late and got a few bucks off the taxi by showing him I didn't have any more money in my purse. Still cost me almost a hundred dollars for the night. Meanwhile my friend has gone over to the departure terminal and checked into a 500 rs retiring room I didn't know anything about. My Internet connection worked in the hotel so I left him an email saying I would meet him on the plane in the morning.

When I got there in the morning I learned my flight to Srinagar had been canceled. I got a new reservation for the next day and decided to just settle in for a twenty hour wait at the airport, I certainly couldn't afford another hundred dollar night in Delhi. It was not a comfortable wait. Delhi Domestic terminals do not have an air conditioned public concourse like Canadian airports. Once off the sidewalk and inside you are in a security area and cannot leave the building again. No smoking inside of course so I just settled down to wait in whatever shade I could find outside. It was hot, but not as hot as Puttaparthi and dry so at least I could dry out every now and then, unlike Goa. All day long I hung about outside until as evening approached the security people began to ask what I was doing. Waiting for a plane I told them. The airport manager decided to fire up the scanning machine and run my bags through that and let me stay inside for the night. Just then Remi shows up. He had left his luggage in the retiring room and headed off into town to do some sightseeing and was just returning. So we spent a restless couple of hours inside being eaten by mosquitoes. I managed to talk the guards at the door outside to let me out and back in again for the odd cigarette. There were as many people flaked out on the concourse waiting for flights as there were stretched out on the benches inside.

It was very interesting watching the daily operation of this airport. It's not a large terminal, something you might find in a small Canadian city like Abbotsford, but it pumps more people through in an hour than Abbotsford would see in a month. Very efficient. The last flights leave about 1:30 am and start departing again about 3:00 am. I looked out on to the loading area behind the building, it was like a parking lot for planes, hundreds of them sitting wingtip to wingtip as far as a person could see.

Then they started loading up and taking off. They must have been leaving that runway every thirty seconds or so. There was about ten minutes to get on the plane before it was rolling into the takeoff queue. The pilot announced that there were 27 planes ahead of us. It didn't matter to me. There were no mosquitoes in the plane. I was sound asleep.

Layover in Goa

We had to shut the windows of the car as we drove out of Puttaparthi to Bangalore. The wind coming in was so hot it was like a blast furnace. I left behind a town that was already three quarters shuttered down. Baba was rumoured to be leaving in just two days so all the Kasmiri merchants in particular were champing at the bit to race off to Kashmir despite numerous phone calls from home telling them that the massive late season snow dump of the week before had people paddling boats in the streets of Shrinegar.

Bangalore was much cooler, my little thermometer only got up to 30 while I was there. I had to go in on the Friday to get the crowns installed on my back molars, so that left me with nothing to do after I found a post office and mailed a parcel but lounge in my large, comfortably airy and cool hotel room reading "The Last Mohgul" by William Darymple for most of Saturday and Sunday. First time I have ever actually had a relaxing visit to Bangalore. Stayed at the Race View Hotel, my favorite Kashmiri shopkeeper sugested it. Great value for 600 rupees, butI woke up too late both days to see the horses excercising in the morning.

Anyways, did a very short flight to Goa, arrived early evening as the sea breeze was banishing the heat of the day. Ah what a delight. Lots of people still enjoying the balmy evening air, shops and restaurants and even computer shops open till 11 oclock. Felt like a grown up again after Puttaparthi's 9pm lock down. That place is getting more cultish and treating people more like children every year.

I spent a lot of time talking to Kashmiris while I was in P. They have a very nervous existance in town. The local Telagu speaking Hindus who run the small convience, home furnishing and repair shops and man pushcarts out on the streets are pretty hostile to the mutton and chicken eating Muslim shop owners who occupy the prime real estate directly outside the Ashram walls and sell expensive luxury goods like clothing and jewelry. Muslim merchants go directly from their shops to home, no walking around on the streets alone after dark for them. The Kashmiris like to stay up late and eat and watch television till after midnight. The Hindus like to be asleep by 9 and start singing bajans at 4 am. The Baba devotees from all over the world are getting more and more insistant that the whole town, not just the Ashram toe the line in matters ranging from diet; pressure from the Sai Trust got rid of the only two non-veg restaurants in town and decorum; the police told one shopkeeper to get out of town because a German lady accused him of fooling around with some Russian women. As I said, it's all getting pretty cultish. Too bad it's a so much more economical place for a lengthy stay than Goa.

The Darymple book was interesting in that it described very much the same sort of differences in daily routines between the Mughal courtiers in the Red Fort and the Hindu merchants in Delhi at the turn of the century. And there again you had a third group, Christian Britishers taking administrative control with a totally different time table and agenda again. In Puttaparthi the foreigners are not quite so overwhelminly British, but there is a very strong Northern European presence and public morality emerging. Interesting to see that these dynamics are not new in India. The Russians don't seem to be toeing the line though. My friend Manzoor in Calangute tells me that some Russians have just arrived in Goa complaining about their stay in P. Wonder if they are the same bunch rumoured to be caught in naughty activities with the Kashmiri who was told to get out of town?

Three billion people and small town politics can still cross the width of the continent at the speed of an airliner.

I'm heading up to Delhi on Friday, suposed to meet my friend Remi there and continue on to Shrinegar the next day. He invited himself on my Kashmir trip last year and insisted on when we had to go this year. (I would have prefered to hang out another week or two in Goa to let the late winter early spring stuff blow itself out, but he had to get out of P before Baba, didn't want the expense of a layover in Goa and Delhi is also sweltering right now, so he doesn't want to stay there any longer than necessary). Now he tells me that he may not be able to make it to Delhi because there was a bad derailment on the mainline from Bangalore to Delhi that he is suposed to take in two days. I think the stories of people boating in flooded Shrinegar are spooking him.

I don't care, I have my winter boots and coat from my January arrival from Canada. Arrived in Canada during the last of the winter downpour in BC this time last year, by the last week in April it was beautiful, so I'm not worried about a little early spring mountain weather in Kashmir. I may indeed be going up there alone after all. That's ok. Got an invitation to a wedding in May and recomendations of good cheap guest houses rather than houseboats so I'm looking forward to the experience alone or with company. Meanwhile Goa is beautiful, a little bit hot during the middle part of the day, but beautifully cool and fresh morning and evening, especially out on the beach. And the food, as always, absolutely wonderful. Those Goans sure know how to cook.