Of Kashmir & Its Kings

I'm weilding the pen after a long hiatus. Thanks to a rejuvenating vacation in the misty mountains of Kashmir!A holiday does wonders to one's mundane & rountine life. A break is needed in a year to relax, de-stress & spend quality time with your family.

I don't have to wax eloquent on Kashmir as we all know that it is one of the most beautiful places on earth. A paradise in a nutshell with it's snow-capped, towering mountains, flowing rivers, assorted Cedar (deodar) & Pine trees, dense vegetation, winding roads, bountiful flora, lovely lakes & it's stunning landscape. I was most excited about seeing & feeling rivers Sindh & Jhelum. What joy it is to experience the things we grew up learning; and both these rivers have always been an integral part of India's geography & history.

Hospitality & kindness of Kashmiri's is another thing that fascinated me. Everyone from the drivers, guides to hotel staff went out of their way to make us feel at home. Hearing it straight from a corporate's mouth - it is excellent customer service & boundaryless behaviour. However, it would be unjust to measure their genuine feelings & emotions towards us in pure coporate terms. So kind was one of our guides, he says " if we don't serve you well, God will deal with us later on".After living in a metro & experiencing an out-an-out corporate life, such words are like honey. A corporate life is seeped only in numbers, struggles, saving one's own backs, being discreet, politics, planning, agenda, targets/goals. God & such kindness go out of the window. I have been talking corporate as I'm it's employee. But this stands true in all walks of life : state government, central government, teaching, education, media and so on. We all know that there is barely any kindness left on earth & we give a damn. So I was smitten completely by their compassion & innocence.

Thinking of innocence makes me want to talk about the more teething issues plaguing Kashmir. This international, unresolved bone of contention stands in stark contrast to it's localites.While there are parties trying to overthrow each other to lay hands on power,there are innocent people who derive their livelihood from tourisim in the valley. And every sort of battle in this place hits their bread & butter immensely. We were one of the very first batches who dared to hit the valley after 4 months of turbulent predicament in Kashmir. The pain of having no livelihood for months evinced in their eyes. Having said that, they have no hope that things will get any better there irrespective of an Omar Abudullah or a Barack Obama who will soon be visiting Kashmir to resolve the issue.

The central goverment cannot let go of CRPF (Central Reserved Police Force ) to guard this sensitive & terrorist prone area. And the locals loathe the latter because they apparently misuse power. One of our own guides have narrated incidents where the CRPF has misused power & persecuted the locals. In our heydays (college life), us girls had the hots for Omar Abdullah as he was the proverbial foreign returned, handsome, smart & enterprising youth ready to govern Kashmir. But in between the lines, there is a twist in the tale. Both the CM's of Kashmir Omar & his father Farooq Abdullah being the rulers, have been away from Kashmir most of the time. Apparently one of the locals was telling me that Omar Abdullah cannot even speak Kashmiri. Can you like beat that? And the moment you take the CM's names, the former wear disgruntled looks on their faces. So when the CM does this to one's state,it does become spoilt.

I couldn't even empathise but felt very bad for them. I'm only hoping, wishing & praying good luck & justice to Kashmir & it's people.

Grievances Galore

Things are turning awful and awry for the people of Hyderabad, with frequent power cuts, the Bolakpur contaminated water deaths, Fire at Secretariat and so on. As it is, Congress is accused of umpteen fallacies and is meted out destructive criticism and the spawning of the above events only made matters worse.

Who is to be blamed? Is it right to blame the government or the concerned authorities of the respective departments who are showing slack in fixing things faster? I’m averse to power cuts because that means waste of time for me. No Power cut, No productivity. A person is left with nothing to do absolutely. I wonder how people lived in days when electricity was not invented. I can’t work because my Laptop will be running out of battery, the same with T.V, Cell phone and PC. I don’t mind climbing 5 floors to my apartment as I’m a fitness freak. But definitely not when I just return from work at 10 pm and have the 3kg Laptop to carry. Last Monday I had to wait for an hour downstairs until the power was on. The newspapers and TV read that it’s because the underground cable has been soiled and need to be fixed; and people have to put up with it for about a week. It’s a day more than week and the power cuts are still frequent. The hours are odd and random and range between 4 to 6 hours a day. I wonder how long it takes to fix it. People smugly acquiesce the fact that government bodies are slack and take it in their stride but it’s high time the government must ask these authorities to beef up their ‘speed-of-fixing’ things. I wonder if it really takes a week to fix it.

The recent contaminated water deaths in Bolakpur found its place under the genre of tragedy. I cannot even quote the numbers because neither the government nor the press is willing to give the precise numbers. It’s a strategy the government and press use to report things. They always cut off a ‘zero’ is what my mam told us when we were studying civics in intermediate. A noted local newspaper pegged the death toll at ‘6’ when there were about 20 to 30 who died and around 300 who were injured. It’s only after a certain number of deaths, do the authorities wake up to it. This is sheer delinquency on the respective authority’s part. The histrionics and drama of experts from water and nutrition department unravel now, very much after the deaths. And as ever, it’s always the poor who are hit tremendously. Apparently they can’t demand accountability from the government because of their illiteracy and poverty. One can comprehend their plight, when they drink water despite its foul smell and change in the colour from colorless to tones of orange and red. The laxity of the authorities: the drinking water pipe got concocted with the sewage pipe.

A fire broke out in secretariat last Wednesday. Instead of rationalizing the reasons that led to it, the opposition parties say it is the conspiracy of congress to gut some files and save their asses. The fire actually broke out on account of a short circuit in a computer cable. The next day, the newspaper reads no attempts to gut the files. What rot? Can somebody elucidate what’s happening?

The grievances of the commoner just seem to be perpetual; from power cuts, to open manholes, to grave deaths that can be averted by driving down delinquency, to badly constructed fly overs that leads to its eventual collapse and so on. Instead, of correcting these defects, the government and all parties are in haste to cash in only votes, votes and votes!