Wintering Over

Living in Kashmir: A Year of People, Places and Memories

Winter in Srinagar

Winter in Srinagar that year was remembered for its sharp cold and deep snow, when the city and surrounding valley slowed under freezing nights through the long, hard stretch of those months. Power came and went without ceremony, and frozen pipes were a persistent, cheerless companion to the season.

We lived in Inglenook the UN HQ house in Srinagar through the winter months while the headquarters of UNMOGIP migrated south to Rawalpindi for the winter, as it did each year. The absence of colleagues left a quiet gap, yet there was consolation: my husband was no longer pulled away to distant field stations, and was simply home.

 
The weather was cold and bleak most of the time but there were days when the skies were clear, the mountain air sharp. Tourists had largely deserted the valley. But one steadfast figure remained: an elderly English gentleman who had been living in Srinagar since the days of the Raj. Stanley was a living thread back to another era, and we were glad of his company over shared meals. We listened as he remembered his younger days in a city that had changed beyond all recognition and yet, in certain lights, had not changed at all.

Winter view - Looking outward over the wall of the UN compound

Guards keeping watch when disturbance threatened

The Kashmiri people had their own answer to the cold. Beneath their pherans, the long, loose woollen cloaks that fell to the knee, they carried a kangri (1): an earthenware pot cradled in a wicker basket, glowing within with embers and charcoal. It was a personal hearth, carried close to the body through the long cold hours. These three chaps on the side of the road are crouched over their kangris.

Keeping warm by the roadside

Winter wanderings in the bazaar

Bazaars were treasure houses in their own right. Merchants displayed trays of precious and semi-precious stones that caught what light there was and gave it back in colours far too vivid for such a grey season. We filled many of our quieter hours wandering those stalls, turning stones over in our fingers, learning their names and their characters.

Roshangar was the respected silver merchant. Many had bought traditional silver tea and coffee pot sets from him, we were drawn instead to jewellery. Silver was the natural setting for stones, and one could browse unhurriedly, then choose or commission exactly the piece one wished made.

I came home with three matching sets of bracelet, ring and earrings: garnets, amethysts, and moonstones, each mounted in silver. I also acquired a silver bangle which is a favourite I continue to wear. We also collected gemstones in various shapes, colours and sizes: a small, glittering archive of those bazaar afternoons, of colour and quiet pleasure.

A Game for fair Weather

On milder days I made my way to the golf club, where Gulam was a most agreeable coach and caddy. His charges were modest, his patience considerable, and over those hours I developed a modest competence with a club. One afternoon the sleet began to fall in earnest so I gathered my things and headed back to the warmth of Inglenook. It was definitely not a day to stay out on the course.

In the middle of those winter months came a welcome interlude: our trip to Delhi for the Republic Day Parade, which offered a breath of warmer air and the particular thrill of ceremony and colour after weeks of grey cold.

Spring came slowly to the valley, tentative at first, then more confident, the skies brightening by degrees. With it came the knowledge that our return to Australia was drawing near. We would not miss the cold, but take with us the memories made, and Stanley’s stories of a Srinagar long past.

It was time to plan our homeward journey.

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1. Kangri the dilemma of the Kashmiri portable heater: https://garlandmag.com/article/kangri-the-dilemma-of-the-kashmiri-portable-heater/

This post first appeared on earlieryears.blogspot.com by CRGalvin

The VW and Cricket

Living in Kashmir: A Year of People, Places and Memories

A Cricket Match in Srinagar

The Australian cricket team toured the subcontinent twice in the year we lived in Kashmir, and fortune or perhaps the cricket gods, arranged that the very first game of their Indian tour would be played in Srinagar itself. It was tabled for the 1st to 3rd September 1979, and the city hummed with anticipation.

The team had spent a week in Madras before travelling north, and some players were already suffering the unhappy consequences of subcontinent hospitality. Yet for all that, there was great excitement in Srinagar. A three-day match was a rare thing, and the tickets had sold well.

Threats had been made against the players by the Pakistan-based Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, and dozens of armed police had met the Australians at the airport. In spite of all this, the players themselves remained upbeat, the sort of cheerful stoicism that seems bred into the cricketing character.

The match was sold out, an examination of the pitch revealed a paddock suited to the spinners. They had scored well on the first day but eventually the match was a draw, perhaps fitting, given the charged atmosphere in which it was played.

1979 'CRICKET AUSTRALIANS MAKE 363',
The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995),
2 September, p. 23. 

1979 'Australians draw in India',
The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995),
 4 September, p. 18.

The VW moment

After the match came the moment I treasure most. We loaded a group of players into the VW Kombi, no seatbelts in the back section, which meant we managed quite a few, eight if I recall correctly. With one of the Australian observers driving, and Christine and I, the two young Australian wives, providing local commentary, we took them on a tour of the streets of Srinagar. 

Their comments were often hilarious, some rather less than complimentary about what they encountered. The more senior players tended towards measured enquiry. It was one of those remarkable afternoons, such fun.

AI generated in NotebookLM

A Second Encounter in Rawalpindi

A few months on, the Australian cricket team opened their 1980 tour of Pakistan in Rawalpindi on the 22nd of February, playing against the President's Eleven.

The usual health warnings had been dutifully issued: do not drink the local water; keep your mouth firmly closed in the shower; clean your teeth with bottled mineral water. These were all practices my husband and I had adopted from our very first day in Kashmir.

An Australian doctor travelled with the team, advising on which foods could be trusted not to cause distress. The players were also invited to a reception given by President Zia-ul-Haq. It was a dry affair and at least one member of the team confessed to us, with some amusement, that he had added a little something to his can of Coke before attending.

We were at the match itself, a small knot of Australians adrift in a sea of thousands of Pakistani supporters, who were in full voice. At one point during play, a decision clearly failed to meet with the crowd's approval, and chairs were flung from the stands onto the ground. It was, to put it mildly, a vivid afternoon.

The three-day match was played at the 'Pindi Club Ground. It ended, as the Srinagar match had, in a draw.

Different teams but some things, it seemed, remained constant across the borders.

This post first appeared on earlieryears.blogspot.com by CRGalvin

The Unexpected

Living in Kashmir: A Year of People, Places and Memories

A Snowy Heart-Stopper

We did not expect to clasp hands and say goodbye to each other as the pilot of the HS748 hauled the plane out of its final approach to Srinagar Airport. 

It was mid-winter, and perhaps communications had been poor, or delayed, or simply overwhelmed by the particular chaos that descends upon mountain airports when snow falls. Perhaps it was just human error. My husband, a military pilot, had flown in the Antarctic just a couple of years earlier, and he understood what hazardous conditions looked like and what it truly meant to abort a landing on late finals. His hand tightened around mine. It was barely two months since an Air New Zealand flight had crashed into Mt Erebus in the Antarctic. 

Here, we were surrounded by snow covered mountains. The plane rallied and roared its way aloft.

The story we were eventually told was both extraordinary and, in its way, entirely of its place and time. The runway was blanketed in snow, and lacking any appropriate working machinery to clear it, the airport authorities had sent out dozens of workers with brooms to sweep it by hand. 

Dozens of men, sweeping a runway, whilst an aircraft circled above.

Needless to say, we landed safely, and we are here to tell the tale, though the memory of that flight has stayed with us.

Poverty

The scenes of poverty were expected, in the way that one prepares oneself intellectually for something one has read about and seen on television. That preparation was wholly insufficient when confronted with the reality.

No amount of foreknowledge softened the sight of a man whose limbs were so completely twisted that his hands and feet met the ground whilst his body faced the sky. He was a figure of such suffering that it cannot be forgotten.

The maimed children seated at the roadsides, small hands outstretched, were a sight that settled somewhere in my mind, and that sight has not left.

Alcohol and the Art of Concealment

Murree beer, served quite openly in the Intercontinental Hotel in Rawalpindi, was unexpected, and not a little incongruous, in a Muslim country.  In 1977, Prime Minister Bhutto  had imposed alcohol prohibition across Pakistan. The law was later amended under President Zia-ul-Haq to permit non-Muslims to consume alcohol. 

More memorable still was a small restaurant tucked somewhere in the winding streets of 'Pindi, where an empty teapot arrived at the table alongside the meal. We were quietly advised that this was the vessel of concealment, that any alcohol would be poured discreetly within it, so that to any passing eye, every table in the room appeared to hold nothing more suspicious than a pot of tea.

An elaborate, good-humoured method for finding a way, even under prohibition, to raise a quiet cup to life.

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1. Murree Beer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murree_beer 

2. Murree brewery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murree_Brewery

This post first appeared on earlieryears.blogspot.com by CRGalvin