We were right there!
20 of us, from Mumbai. One big group.
Just about one year back.
April 7-15, 2024. To be precise.
Travelling all those beautiful places.
Srinagar, Gulmarg, Sonmarg and…
Pahalgam! Yes, the same Pahalgam!
The same lush green large meadows where we had a wonderful time enjoying the beauty of Kashmir, taking so many fun pictures, drinking kahwa…
Coming back from that trip, I was feeling so good about Kashmir.
Having engaged at length with the drivers who were with us right through, spoken to the many other locals we got to meet, we could sense a certain return of positivity. About the return to normalisation of the region. The return of the tourists, the shops and hotels and restaurants doing good business again, the Dal Lake looking busy with shikaras all over again!
While the old wounds still showed up a little, the feeling was that if this tourism sustained and grew, if there was also some other industries opening up there, if the jobs returned back and along with it, a certain prosperity to the youth of the state, then slowly but surely, the thoughts and brainwashing around separatism will die down, and in a few years or maybe in a decade or two, Kashmir will become fully normalised like any other state in India.
The journey had started. The hope was alive.
And then this!!
Besides the sheer gruesome nature of the tragedy that it is, it puts back just so many years of hard and painstaking efforts to have got to this point!
If an enemy had a vision that with one attack, we put back the efforts of last 10 years and make it much harder for the region to fully integrate into India, they could have not thought of a better way to make that happen!
In the absolute calm and normalcy of a Kashmir vacation, in the middle of Pahalgam, a must-visit spot in a Kashmir vacation, if tourists get hit in this manner, it is enough to scare away anyone from travelling there! Which honeymooning couple wants to dare to go there now? Which group of 50-somethings want to make this place their annual vacation spot?
Heck, as I look back a year now, and remember the absolutely wonderful holiday we had there, I have one more footnote that comes to mind.. that we were lucky to have returned back safely!
Damn! We were on vacation. Not on some adventure trip. We shouldn’t be thinking that we were lucky to return back safely!
One incident.
To cripple an entire journey to normalcy.
Then again, that delicate vulnerability of the region was always there. Perhaps.
We only wished that nothing of the kind happens and many years go by, and there is full-fledged normalcy. But with the enemy being so close, with very thick forests and mountains that make it impossible to completely secure, and with so many traitors embedded inside already, the risks were always there.
Damn! Double damn!!
Yes, there should be action. To show unequivocally that we are not suckers, we will fight back, we will protect ourselves, our people, our land.
But the worst is already done, for Kashmir! It goes back to that “insecure” zone that keeps mainstream tourists away, that will now not see the return of industry and other jobs anytime soon.
Unfortunately.
Random Musings 