Srinagar Diary

Poetry of loss

In spite of the election action, there is a terrible melancholy floating about over Srinagar after the September floods. A curious, dusty haze has settled over the city. So many houses have collapsed, so many roads have disintegrated under the flood waters. Many houses collapsed after days of soaking in flood waters, with people inside them screaming to be rescued. The buildings that remain stand on walls still water-marked to the third-floor level. Among the houses lost in the floods is that of the late Agha Shahid Ali, a poet who wrote lyrically and touchingly of Kashmir’s tragedy. In the past, I’d been invited to dine there by his very charming father Agha Ashraf, who had turned the elegant two-storied house into a literary retreat and maintained his son’s library. All that drowned this September. Agha Ashraf had to be rescued by boat from an attic window above the second floor. Where the house once stood, a family retainer has pitched a tent and lives there through sub-zero temperatures. He tries to dry out books, lovingly find a memory, any memento at all. Walking through the debris, I remembered a trip to the Valley years ago, when I had bought a copy of Agha Shahid Ali’s collection of poems on Kashmir, The Country Without a Post Office. This time too I found a great memory for myself, words that touched me. Propped against a ruined wall were these words of the poet, framed possibly by his father: What I gave, I have/ What I spent, I had/ What I saved, I lost.

Room to spare

Delhi journalists visiting Srinagar usually stay at Broadway Hotel or Ahdoos. Broadway Hotel is yet to open after the floods. At Ahdoos, the ground floor is destroyed but they have some rooms running. So that’s where we were, and we are grateful for the care in an establishment that’s still struggling to get back on its feet. We are also fortunate to have tied up with Bablu, a driver and guide who knows the homes of every political leader of worth in Kashmir. He also knows every lane, bylane and checkpost in town and has a repertoire of tactics to avoid being halted by the security forces for checking. During dinner at Ahdoos, I discovered that locals don’t like Vishal Bhardwaj’s film Haider for depicting Kashmiris as “treacherous”. The best film on Kashmir, they say, is Sanjay Kak’s documentary Jashn-e-Azadi.

Politics is the medium

Zafar Meraj, a former Outlook correspondent with whom I did some of my first assignments in Kashmir, has turned politician. Many years ago, Zafar was shot at. But he recovered and went on to run his own newspaper The Kashmir Monitor. Known to be close to Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, he is now the PDP candidate from the Habakadal assembly segment in Srinagar, a seat known for massive election boycotts. The BJP fancies it has chances here because there are some 16,000 postal votes, largely of Kashmiri Pundits. Also in the fray is Sanjay Saraf, a Pundit who hasn’t left the Valley and is the LJP candidate. He is bitter the BJP did not leave the seat to the LJP with which it has a national alliance and instead fielded a candidate who lives in Mumbai But Saraf himself could turn out to be the right man in the wrong party. For old times’ sake, my non-existent vote goes to Zafarbhai.

In Lone’s land

Violence is forever around in Kashmir; militants have struck again, killing soldiers in a suicide run. The first time I met Sajjad Lone was at his house, days after his father, Hurriyat leader Abdul Ghani Lone was shot dead at a rally in 2002 by militants who turned up wearing police uniforms. Lone senior, unlike the Geelani-led faction of the Hurriyat, supported the election process. Sajjad had accused the ISI of killing his father. Twelve years on, after Sajjad’s meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it’s being said he’s a stooge of the BJP or working on behalf of Indian agencies. I feel Sajjad is not trusted fully by either the Indian or the Pakistani agencies; he’s far too blunt and does not play the overt-covert game properly. I suspect he met the PM in order to enhance his relevance and neutralise the security agencies working against him in his seat, Handwara, in the Kupwara district, which has the highest military presence in the Valley. If he’s supported by the agencies, they’ve certainly kept him on a tight leash: he’s not got the passport he applied for two years ago. His wife, daughter of jklf founder Amanullah Khan, is a Pakistani passport holder. Denied an Indian visa, she was stranded in Pakistan from 2006 to 2008. Their children now study at a school in Gurgaon. So where does Sajjad belong? Every time I think of him, I remember Sadat Hasan Manto’s Toba Tek Singh.

Legacy of Pain

A famous shop in Srinagar is called Suffering Moses. I thought it was an apt name for a shop in a city that knows the fury of both man and nature.

Outlook’s political editor Saba Naqvi is the author of In Good Faith, published by Rupa Raintree; E-mail your diarist: saba [AT] outlookindia [DOT} com

A version of this article appears in print.