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The jaundiced face of Srinagar
Imtiyaz
Bakhshi
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A
jawan guards Dal lake that hrabours most of the tourists.
Express photo
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It
was like Rip Van Winklesque waking up after a long slumber.
Srinagar city, his hometown, to which he had returned after
twenty years, had a changed face. Horse-driven tongas had
given way to hordes of mini buses and matadors and trusted
Ambassadors and Fiat cars to speeding Marutis, Zens and Gypsies,
Sumos and Safaris. The curious soul wanted to know how the
green Boulevard Road along the picturesque Dal Lake had been
lined with a concrete stretch of hotels and restaurants; he
was told the multi-storeyed structures were the gift of tourism
boom in the eighties.
He
also sought to inquire what were these countless white, tin-boxes
of Gypsies zooming in all directions and feared their rifle
nozzles jetting out of two small window apertures; he was
told they were carrying cops on patrol duty after almost a
decade of militancy.
Helmeted,
AK-47-wielding para-military jawans after every 20 metres
confirmed that the once-quiet, incident-free Srinagar city
had been subjected to the worst kind of gunfire between the
troops and armed insurgents. Other signs of battle fought
or perhaps still raging: Army bunkers with netting, public
transport also with netting, frisking of the people, burnt
houses and gutted shopping arcades and `Martyrs' Graveyards'
at Eidgah (2000 graves), Khanyar, Abi Guzar, Soura, Nishat
and many downtown areas.
Tension
In Air
Gone,
he thought, was the refreshing smile on every youthful face
of the happy-go-lucky Kashmiris. Instead, he saw tension writ
large on their faces; trauma of the bloody turmoil years,
loss of kith and kin in crossfire, bomb blasts and grenade
throws. While the unemployed roam the streets aimlessly, those
having job have no salary to take home. All this when a popularly
elected government is in the saddle. A measure of the `so-called'
normalcy is that Srinagar streets, where evening hussle and
bussle would stretch well into the night, now present a deserted
look after 8 pm and anybody trotting the roads is either a
helmeted jawan, a tin Gypsy or a member of the canine family.
People became socially withdrawn and self-centred.
Migrations
The
sparsely populated Srinagar city added numbers as a direct
consequence of internal migrations from downtown areas to
the uptown, triggered by the onslaught of militants and troops
alike. The city also opened its arms to largescale migrations
from far-flung villages, with both the troops and insurgents
finding the rural areas favourite hunting grounds. And when
relatives' houses displayed signboards of ``No Vacancy'',
the gutted empty Kashmiri Pandit houses after every two to
three Muslim houses were the obvious choice. The cityscape
presented the look of a garden in bloom with intermittent
patches of withered flowers.
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A
deserted Srinagar street on a strike day. Express
photo
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Abandoned
for long, some Kashmiri Pandit houses served as garbage dumping
points, with even trees growing out of the roofless tops.
The
sudden vacuum created by the mass exodus of the entire Kashmiri
Pandit community left the education system orphaned. Parents
paid hefty donations for medical or engineering seats for
their wards outside the state. Mass copying and use of help
books ensured almost cent per cent results in Board and University
exams. "Literacy rate doubled and efficiency halved"
in a city of mushrooming private schools and technical institutions.
Anti-copying crackdown by the government, however, set the
disparity right: 10 to 15 per cent pass results.
Face
Jaundiced
Disfiguring
the face of the city during the turmoil years were land-grabbers,
shopkeepers and numerous security force bunkers.
Boatmen
living on the Dal and Jhelum tributaries Tsoont Kol and Kuti
Kol gobbled up the river banks in the downtown. Encroachers
had a field day as the Municipality and the Srinagar Development
Authority (SDA) watched mutely. `Save Dal' campaign had to
be launched when the famous lake has shrunk drastically. Congestion
in the three-km radius around Lal Chowk, Hari Singh High Street,
Jehangir Chowk and Exhibition Crossing, housing most of the
government offices and commercial establishments, continued.
Multi-storeyed
Plaza, upmarket restaurants and fast food joints, beauty parlours
and communication revolution may just be Srinagar's facial
make-up.
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