Arrival and Accommodation

Living in Kashmir 1979-80: A Year of People, Places and Memories

Arrival and all that followed

In late March 1979 we left Australia to spend a year in Kashmir. We were not travelling light, even if we tried to be practical. On our stopover in Singapore, we purchased two folding push-bikes, sensible things for navigating whatever streets awaited us, and had them sent ahead to meet us on arrival. It was the kind of optimistic planning that belongs to the beginning of adventures.

We touched down in Karachi after midnight, many hours after leaving Singapore. What followed was six long hours marooned on hard plastic chairs while armed personnel kept a steady, unsmiling watch. This was not a happy landing. Fortunately, we were befriended by two American men passing through. Their presence was reassuring. 

Early in the morning we flew onward to Rawalpindi where the United Nations Military Observer Group (UNMOGIP) was headquartered through the winter months. I was accompanying my husband. He would serve as one of Australia’s peacekeepers along the Line of Control.(1)

Compilation map of disputed territories - Wikimedia Commons
Green - Pakistan, Purple India, Yellow -China

The general practice, we quickly learnt, was that incoming military personnel were despatched to a field station along the Line of Control on their fourth day, gone for an initial six weeks before a five-day respite. Accompanying spouses remained in situ. This made me realise how necessary it would become to rely on the other wives and the UN observers as they rotated through postings. A welcome party the night of our arrival gave us a chance to meet other personnel and their wives.

Astor Field station

Accommodation and its quirks

Our initial accommodation was in Flashmans Hotel in Rawalpindi, where I would stay for the six weeks before headquarters transferred across to Srinagar on the Indian side in early May. It was comfortable enough, but comfort is relative, and events were about to make even a hotel room feel precarious.

We had arrived near the end of March and it was just 10 days later that an event that would have far reaching consequences took place.

The Indian Express, published on April 5, 1979 reported it thus:

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, 51, was hanged and buried this morning (April 4). The deposed prime minister was hanged in the Rawalpindi Central jail at 2 am, flown by a Pakistan Air Force plane to southern Pakistan and buried about 10.30 am in the family graveyard at Naudero (in Sind), the interior ministry announced.

The security guard outside the headquarters of the UN military observers’ team in Srinagar fired to disperse angry mourners for Bhutto. (2)

In Rawalpindi, I was confined to my room at Flashmans. Tensions were high. My husband, out on field station, tried repeatedly to reach me. Communication from those remote postings was unreliable at best, a crackling line, a wrong connection, silence. When he finally got through to what he hoped was Flashmans Hotel and asked, cautiously,
“Is that Flashmans Hotel?” the voice at the other end said simply, “Yes” and hung up. He tried again and again. When we finally managed to speak, I could at last assure him that I was safe and being looked after, and was not, despite appearances, in the midst of a revolution.

Srinigar with some hazards

In early May, headquarters moved across to Srinagar and we settled into an older, established house in the Raj Bagh neighbourhood, a spacious ground-floor apartment with the owners living quietly above us. It felt like the beginning of something more settled.

It was not.

House at Raj Bagh, Srinagar - water damaged photo, AI restored 

It is a sad fact that there are always those who will take advantage of others. One night while my husband was away on field station, I awoke to a noise in the second bedroom where all our clothes were stored. Two young men were helping themselves to our goods. My very loud screaming was enough to make them run away and bring the owners to my door. Later, in the bazaars, I always kept a lookout for any of our missing clothes. My pale pink skinny jeans, were never seen again. 

We moved. 

Our next accommodation was in a newer building, closer to UN headquarters, upstairs on the first floor, an elevation that felt, after recent events, like a reasonable precaution. One might think that misfortune followed. The bed had a wooden headboard and high baseboard, neither of which had been designed with a six-foot-two Australian in mind. My husband, when in from field station, slept curled like a letter C. 

More dramatically, the bedroom ceiling had been decorated with an ambitious arrangement of multi-coloured broken ceramic tiles, a mosaic of sorts, secured by whatever optimism had prevailed at the time of installation. Yes, a disaster waiting to happen. One day while out, whatever was securing those pieces of tile to the ceiling, failed. We returned home to find the ceiling on the bed. Luckily, we were not in it.

Later in the year we moved into Inglenook, the headquarters house within the UN compound itself. It was, by any measure, considerably more comfortable than the life lived on the houseboats moored along the water’s edge. When the water retreated along the Jhelum river, the muddy banks were exposed leaving the residents a slippery trek across that wasteland.

1979 -Houseboats at low tide, muddy banks

1. Australian peacekeepers in Kashmir from 1950 to 1985 https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/wars-and-missions/peacekeeping/summaries/kashmir-1950-1985 

2. The Indian Express, April 5, 1979, Forty Years Ago 

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