Idylls Of Memory

I first went to Kashmir in May '89. Then, I was a blissfully ignorant backpacker, vaguely aware of simmering discontent in the Valley. Mostly I was looking to recover from six hard weeks of travelling in Pakistan during Ramazan. Nothing that couldn't be cured by a spell on the Laila Majnoon houseboat on the Dal, run by Amir and his brother Pervaiz. For $10 a day, they provided ornate carved wooden beds, steaming Kashmiri tea, succulent chickens, impossibly rich omelettes, luscious lotus roots, and various other emoluments for the soul. I engaged a small shikara boy to paddle to town every few hours and fetch chilled beer bottles from a liquor shop. In many visits since then, always as a working journalist, I've never failed to mourn the passing of those days. It's true there was discontent then with the hugely discredited government of Dr Farooq Abdullah. Amir and Pervaiz talked of nothing else as we sat around puffing at the water pipe on the back porch of the Laila Majnoon. Violence was just beginning though, and it began on a slightly comical note as if to bely the coming ferocity. Militants, it seems, were looking for a government target to attack. But they weren't yet fully confident and were reluctant to risk attacking the Secretariat or a police station. So they blew up a public convenience on the Boulevard, very close to my liquor shop. It was quite a shock to the local beer drinkers, I'm told, especially those on their way to and from the urinal. So much sadness, misery and human suffering layers those days that it seems almost blasphemous to have fond or amusing memories. But like the Kashmiris, I can't seem to forget happier times.