Party Yuh Hi Chaalegi!

I had reached Srinagar by air, but I decided that my return trip would be by land to Amritsar via Jammu and Pathankot. I had decided to travel overnight. The journey turned out to be more interesting and dangerous than I had bargained for!
When I reached the Tourist Center, from where all state run buses run to Jammu, I was dismayed to find they ran only during the day. But as somebody pointed out there were plenty of private vehicles that would take me to Jammu for half the fare. There were all sorts of vehicles from Srinagar to Jammu - Tata Sumo, taxis, SUVs - and Tempo Travellers (a cross between an SUV and a van). They ran on a share basis, which meant that you shared even the taxis with other fellow passengers.
I decided not to take the Sumo or taxi, which I felt would be very uncomfortable if jammed with passengers. Instead I decided to take a Tempo Traveller. It would leave in another half an hour at 7 pm, and reach Jammu at dawn said the young driver who was incessantly hollering "Jammu! Jammu!". And the fare was reasonable. I preferred the Tempo Traveller since it's impossible to cram it with more than 11 people and the seats were comfortable so that you could doze off at night with the vibrations minimal.
As soon as we got the mandated 11 people and I handed a couple of 500 rupee notes to the driver, we were off. I noticed that the Kashmiri driver was very young, who just seemed to have got his driver's license, but watching him navigate left me no doubt of his driving prowess. It soon got dark and outside it was pitch darkness. Among our passengers was a young Sardarji who wore a baseball cap over his patka. The Sardarji was a jovial type and he kept the rest of us passengers entertained and had us in splits with his offhand jokes. He even had a mock conversation with his girlfriend on his mobile and made a public parody of their love talk. There was a long conversation with her on the topic of mobile phones and prepaid cards. When he told her over the phone that he had always believed her father was a doctor, but not of the veterinary kind, he had all the  passengers laughing till they were literally ROFL.
The driver was playing Hindi and Urdu songs on the inbuilt music player for quite some time now. I recalled some of them from two decades back- played by Muslim paan thela wallahs in rural Maharashtra. The van picked up a few travelers en route, including some people who seemed to be apple merchants and the Traveller was properly packed to capacity.
The young driver picked up his first cigarette and was soon merrily puffing away and began chain smoking. Just a few hours later we were stopped by some army men. The driver was asked for his identification papers and driving license which he nervously handed over to the army man. A torch was shone into each of our faces through the driver window, and sensing trouble I too kept my identification papers ready. But I guessed some money changed hands and soon we were off. Since Srinagar was far behind us, I thought the rest of the travel would be untoward. How wrong I was!
After this adventure, the young Kashmiri driver, again chain smoking, had the music player back again at full blast. The Sardarji got restless and shouted to no one in particular to stop smoking. Sardarjis as a rule don't smoke and their abstinence has religious intonations. The driver paid no heed. It was my turn to complain. I asked the driver to lower the volume since the incessant music was blasting my eardrums. He lowered it for a few minutes but put it to full blast again. All of us passengers who were desperately trying to catch some sleep but were hapless.
At around two in the night I got up to find that the vehicle had stopped and the driver was having a heated conversation with somebody. It turned out that they were policemen who had stopped the vehicle. A long line of truck laded with goods were parked all along the road. The driver got restless and the conversation got more heated as I could hear the policeman cursing as he almost hit the driver. No good. The Tempo Traveller we were told, was not going anywhere till dawn.
We were informed that the local DGP of Police had put enacted a new decree that vehicles could move from Srinagar to Jammu only during day hours starting from 6 am. I got off the vehicle, since there was nothing else to do. I pulled out a cigarette and noted that one side of the road descended into a deep ravine and far far down I could see lights from a hydroelectric project in progress. It was then that I truly appreciated the driver's driving skills. One wrong move and we would be hurtling down that precipice and find mention in some news item as one more accident, that so often happens in Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarkhand. Particularly when the tar on the roads disintegrates into potholes around treacherous bends.
I was joined by a young Kashmiri co-traveler who also lit a cigarette and asked me whether I knew someone called Ram Singh. It seemed this Ram Singh had to be feared and respected and only an ignoramus would not have heard of Ram Singh. The young guy informed me that Ram Singh was the DGP, and what Ram Singh says is the rule. No vehicles to Jammu till morning! Police were the law here.
We walked toward the police check-post and found a huge log obstructing the road preventing vehicles from barging ahead.
The apple merchant was having an animated conversation with the young Kashmiri driver.
"You don't know how to deal with these people", he was admonishing the driver. If the driver couldn't deal with the police, he said he would. He was contemplating giving a bribe. The driver protested that he didn't have enough money to bribe off all these policemen. An hour later, a hundred rupees was collected from each passenger, seemingly a bribe was paid, yet the vehicle was not allowed to proceed!
I returned to the warmth of the Traveller since it was pretty cold outside and I was shivering in the near zero temperature in spite of my jacket.
An hour later, the driver returned to the Traveller, and said there was no option but to return to Srinagar and start off in the morning again. When we were halfway to Jammu! The passengers protested. One of the passengers said he knew an alternate route and they could give it a try. After some thought, the driver decided not to, reason being that road too was probably blocked. The driver talked to someone over his mobile and informed us that one of his friends who was updated on exactly which bases were covered by the police was on the same route, so they would wait it out for his advice. True to his words, soon a Tata Sumo joined the long queue of vehicles at the road block. Our driver had some quick words with the his driver friend and returned to his seat. He said there was an alternate route they could take where he bet that we would be let through.
So the Tempo Traveller followed the Sumo till we reached a road barrier, which was lifted after a friendly conversation with some plainclothes men and we were on our way to Jammu! We had been stuck up for nearly one hour!
The music was blaring again and the driver was heavily smoking again in-spite of protests from both me and the Sardarji. The driver told us half apologetically that he was just trying to ward off sleep and the music helped him stay awake.
One particular song was being played incessantly in a loop at full volume. From the song, I could catch the words of a a male baritone voice mouthing"Aunty Police Bulayeegi.. Party Yuh Hi Chaalegi!" I found the reference to "police" and "party" funny. The party seemed to be us rag-tag group of passengers!
In-spite of the din, I soon fell asleep.
It was dawn when we reached Jammu. The driver had indeed made up for lost time.
I noticed that Jammu was much warmer almost hot, even at that early hour. Seemed like India after all.
I could hardly see any of the Kashmiri types around - the ones in the long black cloaks or Muslim women in black. However there seemed to be plenty of Sardarjis and lots of North India types, some obviously on pilgrimage. Jammu seemed to be more modern with flyovers and was the standard concrete jungle that any Indian capital is.
Now I now had to locate a bus to Pathankot in Punjab. That was some journey! The party finally dispersed!

The Guide

My initial desire was to describe my North Indian jaunt in a sequence, especially the Kashmir part. But I find that some incidents are noteworthy than the rest and hence demand attention.
I got up late in the afternoon that day. The hotel had Kashimiri pulao and Kashmiri rice on the menu. Since both were Kashmiri, I guessed they would be cheaper, so I ordered them both, with gravy. The rice turned out to be soggy, short grained and looked overcooked,  but on eating I found that it actually tasted good. The pulao was nothing out of the ordinary, but nonetheless eatable, but oily. I had wondered how rice grew on the rocky, snow covered, cold terrain of Kashmir, but later found that this variety of rice grows on low lying areas surrounding Dal Lake, that lies in the middle of Srinagar.
After brunch, I asked the elderly gentleman who ran the lodge how I could make it to Gulmarg- "The path of Roses (in Kashmiri)" where I planned to take a gondola ride and if luck permitted, experience snow for the first time. He explained that if I planned to take public transport (run down private vans) I would have to change vehicles thrice, which didn't look too appealing.

It was Deepavali, which the whole nation was at that moment celebrating with gusto, but Srinagar was shut down at the behest of some local leaders who were protesting the meager aid provided to Kashmir by the Center, post-flooding of the Jhelum that ran through the center of Srinagar. The streets were empty and all you saw was gun toting army-men, armored vehicles and a few locals on bikes and a few cars, and the aforesaid rickety vans crammed with ill dressed people. Even the J&K Bank ATMs that were usually reliable, were out of cash and everything was plunged in deep gloom literally, after the day-night power blackout.

I happened to find a tourist agency near Dal Lake, where I could hire a chauffeured car to Gulmarg for a couple of thousand rupees, which happened to be less since it was off-season.
Soon the driver with a bushy beard and shaved mustache wearing the traditional black winter cloak that looked more like a blanket wrapped around him, was driving me all the way to Gulmarg on scenic roads. He occasionally withdrew his hands from the sleeves letting them loosely hand around his shoulder giving him a ghost like look which unnerved me. He was in a mood talkative mood and seemed to be at ease with outsiders. I thought he was trying to probe my religious tendencies when he asked me whether I had been to the Shankaracharya Mutt temple on the banks of the Jhelum. He said he had luckily parked his car below the temple, and his vehicle was saved from the ravages of the flood since the Mutt was at a higher altitude. He went on to describe how many and how badly vehicles were damaged due to the Jhelum floods, leaving almost nothing untouched in it's wake.
I told him I was not a Hindu.
"Then, are you a Muslim?", he asked, surprised a bit.
"Neither",said I, "I am a Christian."
Taking this in his stride, he then told me that then I must definitely visit the antique Church on the foothills of Gulmarg, which had been built during the British times.
The driver en route, stopped to have a hookah and when he spoke with locals in Kashmiri, it felt more like Arabic or Persian to me than Urdu, but in fact Kashmiri is more of a mixture of Urdu, Pharisee, Arabic and English and is usually written in the Urdu script. English is part of Kashmiri today, the driver told me with a grin, when I inquired inquisitively.
What happened next after that was the usual tourist thing, up the gondola ,the horse ride to Gulmarg Phase I; Phase II being closed due to heavy snow and windy weather, and the trip back to our waiting taxi.
One more person had joined us before the trip to Gulmarg, a young man in his thirties who was a government recognized guide, mandatory for the trip up, I was told. I noted his piercing, shifty eyes, rugged features, and his quiet demeanor, who seemed to be bored with the guide routine. There was a sense of  foreboding about him that seemed to give him a troubled look, so it seemed.
The guide seemed to be familiar with a locals and many of them waved to him in greeting which he acknowledged with a few gruff words. When we reached the taxi park, back from the climb up the snow clad mountain, we found that our driver had not yet returned from his namaz, which he had said he would be performing at the Jama Mazjid nearby, as was his practice on all his trips to Gulmarg. As I was hungry I decided to have vegetable noodles at a small shack with tea, while the guide preferred to have just biscuits.
Leaning towards me on the table where we sat he said. "You know Kashmir is a mistake. When the British partitioned United India, they made Hindustan and Pakistan. But they forgot Kashmir. Kashmir neither part of India, nor of Pakistan, was left out. They forgot Kashmir. And that is where all the trouble lies and where all the mess started."
I nodded, not knowing what to say.
"You see", he said, "I have taken many Western tourists on this route many a thousand times and I have asked them the same very thing, and you know what they say? The West just does business. They don't care or bother if it is India or Pakistan. They sell deadly weapons to both parties and make money. That's how they work."
He went on. "When Raja Hari Singh pleaded India to save Kashmir from the marauding Pakistani troops, Gandhiji sent the Indian army. The army came and they never went back. Why? Why did this happen to Kashmir?", he repeated softly. There was deep feeling in his voice. It was as if he was talking of an unwanted orphan. Not an object of desire for two warring nations.
He leaned towards me conspiratorially. "Do you know there are more army-men in Kashmir than Kashmiris? And how many Kashmiris have been killed since?" I did not venture to reply,

I had seen the many Indian army-men stationed all over Srinagar including Lal Chowk where I had put up. I had actually seen them randomly stopping cars and bike riders, and letting them go after a cursory body-search and identification check. It was as if every Kashimiri was a suspect.
I had also seen a random group of young Kashmiri gathered near a defunct ATM, men smelling of expensive perfume, chanting slogans to the affect of "Louto! Louto!" meaning "Go back!" obviously to the long men in the queue at the ATM, but could be a message for the army as well. At Lal Chowk there was a sudden flurry of activity as a group of young men rushed to an old rickety building for some reasons know only to them, followed by clueless unorderly gun toting army militia. I has seen banners of Arafat and Khomenei all over Srinagar. Spray painted slogans saying "Death to Israel!" just as I had seen "Leave Tibet!" slogans in Dharamshala. This seemed to be another part of the world. Kashmiri youth, I felt, were more politically aware than any Indian state I know except perhaps Kerala.

I thought over and reminded the guide that it was not Gandhiji, but Menon, at the behest of Nehru and Patel who had sent the army. He acknowledged this with some thought.
"Raja Hari Singh was a traitor", he reiterated. "Hari Singh sold Kashmir and his countrymen."
To him, it seemed, Kashmir or Kashmiris had not yet assimilated into India after all those years of protests, strife, army presence and international notoriety at the behest of Pakistan amid the continuing low key war all along the Kashmir border with Pakistan. There was still a long way to go before men like him would be convinced that Kashmir had a part to play in the planned scheme of things. At that point I told him as a matter of fact that Hari Singh wanted an independent Kashmir which was not practical since Kashmir did not have any natural resources such as minerals or any other noteworthy source of  natural wealth, except for its scenic beauty. The guide paused and considered this. I was glad that my bookish knowledge was at least pushing this one sided conversation forward.
I didn't dare another opinion, so the guide continued "I have been to the forbidden land - POK- Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. I have relatives there and I went to visit them", he explained.
"The people in POK are twenty years behind us", he informed me."Uncivilized nomadic tribal shepherds who live in shanty huts."
At that point of time our driver returned from his namaz and the talk turned to currency - whether it was Indian or Pakistani currency that was stronger. As it turned out, they used a wrong yardstick to measure this - the equivalence to the dollar. The driver was of the opinion that the Indian rupee was stronger since you got more dollars for a rupee than a Pakistani rupee. But the guide disagreed.
On the way back, the driver continued with another of his lengthy talks and told me "You have visited Kashmir in the winter. But anyone who visits Kashmir returns three more times - once for each season. You have to come back again in Summer, Spring and Winter to be bewitched by its natural beauty, now that you have visited it in Autumn!"
I doubted this very much, noting how Kashimir had become a cesspool of political and civil violence and unrest.