Bashir and Mr. Natwarlal (Mountain Tales - I)

I had followed the sun’s trajectory from my front seat that day, propped up beside Arshid, in a day long drive from Jammu to Srinagar. It stealthily rose behind our backs to its pinnacle, lacing the dark, misty hills in the clear warmth of day. Still green valleys, wrapped in smoke and silence, absorbed the sunshine like a numbed pair of hands against a courtyard fire on a winter night, to return to their usual life of birdsongs and blooming Tulips. Winds shook the mist curtains away and the sun at its beaming best, rained on us with its golden shower of light from a corner on the windscreen. And soon it started to fall in its journey. Like everything else in this universe that rises. This time ahead of us. Down an invisible celestial path to an infinity beyond the mountains. I watched the shadows drift and lengthen across the road. The distant peaks enswathed in the colours of dusk, looked like a fire raging in the sky. I laid back in my reclined seat, stretched out in exhaustion from the day long swivelling up the mountains en route Srinagar in a car and saw the night arrive in a charry darkness in the sky, settling over the city like a heavy shroud of smoke from those burning mountains at sunset, leaving the undulating terrain in shadowy heaps of a fallen day.

‘Badami Bagh Cantonment’, Arshid remarked slowing down behind a trail of vehicles and reaching out from behind the wheel to turn down the stereo. I turned to him. His bony face glowed red from tail lamps of cars halted ahead along the narrow two-way road cutting through the heart of the cantonment. A holographic print of Mecca on an oval disc, hung from the mirror on a beaded string. It swung to and fro as he plodded along the bumpy road, casting oscillating shadow across our faces, like a butterfly frisking in the dark.

Outside, high walls crowned with barbed wire fences, rolled along either side of the road, sheltering the settlements to thousands of army personnel deployed in the valley. Hideous watch towers that rose in the dark, had guards crouched behind sand bags, overlooking the valley from the tip of their Kalashnikovs. Combat jeeps, sand coloured and striped in green, sat by the massive iron gate entrances to the cantonment. And propped on their decks were armoured sentries, thick as an old banyan’s trunk, looking around from their position, like a human camera moving about its axis with a rifle strapped to its chest. Through the fine slit on the iron gates where they met in a close, I observed signs of life on the protected world beyond. Fuzzy dots of light scattered at windows and the occasional fading roar of heavy trucks as they meandered along their way through the cantonment acres. Lining the distant backdrop were shadows of mountains and the humming Deodars that bored the evening with a breezy nip, as the pedestrians trundling in their loose phirans, crossed their arms across the chest for warmth.

Arshid had then broken off from the bustling Jammu-Srinagar connector, pulling into an even busier by lane. Running parallel to the road were high, boulder stone pavements on either side, occupied sparsely by vendors seated beneath neon street lamps. Shawls, jackets and handicrafts stocked in heap across a tarpaulin sheet, as people stopped in their stroll to check the items and bargained till the convincing price was reached. Tall, broad men in their woollen phirans, gathered in huddles, smoked and chatted in Kashmiri. Their fair, bony faces elusive behind transcending sheets of smoke. A plump looking man in a velvet jacket walked down the gossiping street selling roasted peanuts. His wicker basket worn around his neck stayed balanced atop his protruding belly. A tiny kerosene lamp embedded in the mound of nuts, its sooty flamed trembled in the breeze. On one side, beyond the pavements, stood a colony of hotels and restaurants. Wide, colourful billboards lit across the façade in a welcoming, highlighted their respective amenities to make the guests feel home. Or even better. And on the other, across the road, reflecting the glittering Srinagar across its still waters, was the beautiful Dal lake. Hundreds of boat houses stationed closely upon the water looked like a wooden island. With stars dancing on its ripples and a half-moon with its coy sheen silvering the lake, like how a woman’s coquettish smile engulfs a man’s heart, it was there in Kashmir that I met the sky descend to earth, submitting in love and desires to the wonderment of mountains.

‘Welcome to Cashmere?’ (Kashmir) Bashir greeted shaking my hand, as I descended from the car. His deep, baritone voice was a reliable reassurance we all tend to reach out to on a strange land away from our homes. Tufts of smoke wandering out through his thin lips.  

‘Thank you’ I smiled back, feeling my hand vanish in his massive grip. Thick, knobby fingers calloused at the touch, with the ridges on his palm hardened into thick corns - hardworking pair of hands of a labouring man, I wondered.

We stood there until Arhsid had brought down all the baggage from the rooftop carrier of his car, untangling them from the coil of nylon rope and then followed Bashir down the embankment towards the ghats. He walked ahead of us. A tall, looming stature with his head slightly ducked, leading us on with his small but heavy steps. A young boy in a red jacket walked past him carrying most of our bags. Having arrived at Ghat 7, I cautiously took the wet steps down towards the lake with Bashir. Two Shikaras closely moored, awaited our arrival. The young boy lent me a hand as I stepped onto the prow. It dipped and wobbled as I walked up to the seat in quick steps to reclaim my equilibrium. Bashir leapt onto another boat behind us and waved the man to move. I saw the boy bend across the prow and pick the oar from the sunken belly of the Shikara. His long hair fell over his face like a lustrous veil. He then straightened up and pushing his manes across his cheek, plunged the oar into the glittering water. Ripples raced towards the shore and the boat started to glide. Bashir stood firm on the boat behind us, like an ATC tower that directed flights across the sky to their destinations. In less than two minutes, the young man with his long, powerful strides of the oar had crossed us over, stopping at the de-boarding platform of our chosen houseboat - Duke Well. I had then seen him move across to our boat, his heavy frame pushing the boat into the water for a moment and had lofted himself quickly on the platform, holding the boat close to the steps with his left hand as we ascended. It was there beneath the yellow light of chandelier at the foyer of Duke Well, that I saw Bashir’s face for the first time.

He seemed to be in his sixties, sternly defying time, wearing his unruly, silvered hair short with slightly longer tufts swept back from the front. Broad, tall and strong. He had a milky complexion and his wide forehead was always creased in three dipping lines at the centre. Smokey grey eyes, seated in two hollow caves under his brows, bore an even penetrating gaze. Like every other Kashmiri past the first half of their lives, his eyes too were surrounded by radiating lines, like streams erupting out of mountain chests. His neck was a loose sheath of skin clung to his Adams apple that shook under his heavy, baritone voice. And his beard was a narrow strip of powdery white hair, rounded perfectly at his chin, reflected the razor works of a veteran barber. He wore a striped woollen shirt, its collar worn and softened over the years barely stood around his neck, draped over which was visible the neckline of a dull brown sweater and topping it all off was the traditional phiran. Thick grey in colour with its huge fan like collars thrown over his shoulder, running all the way down to his ankles. A coppery zipper, half pulled, kept the billowing cloak in place.

Having freshened up, we all sat together on the floor of the carpeted foyer. Elegant looking couches sat by the pine wood walls and low stools, shining from the varnish, held fine flower vases. An artificial stack of coloured leaves and petals heaved out of their narrow necks. From the intricately carved low roof, hung antique lanterns in a soft golden glow, that threw around us small round shadows of our gathered existence. Bashir walked in through the door, taking out a smoking fire basket from under his phiran and kept it between us.

‘This is called Kangri in Kashmiri.’ I watched him lower his massive torso gently onto the floor, reclining slightly by the edge of a couch. His phiran oozing a dry scent of weed smoke. ‘In severe cold, everyone here carries it under their phiran to warm their hands.’ He held his hard palm out over the basket, feeling the heat on his fingers. The pot was filled with hot embers, sprinkled over with a sheet of saw dust, burning slowly underneath and emanating a smothering heat that warmed our strained, tired bodies. Over a low glass top table, I saw the young man who had rowed us over, pour tea into porcelain cups from a samovar. Fumes poured from its curvy nozzle, as the cups filled with a gurgling sound, leaving a trail of bubbles on the surface.

As we drank hot ginger tea, Bashir in his heavy voice enlightened us with glimpses of his life. A savouring look back at his life in the mountains. He shared with us his experience of Amitabh Bacchan and Rekha arriving at the Duke Well, which according to him was only a small, humble lodging back in the late seventies to shoot for Mr. Natwarlal. A black and white polaroid in a mahogany frame had Bashir along with Amitabh and the director Rakesh Kumar, hanging from the wall. A hint of pride gleamed in his deep eyes, like a splinter in Kangri, as he talked of how through his hard work he managed to get his sons educated from abroad and then raised his hand to point at the young man in red jacket standing in a corner with the samovar in his hand.

‘He mastered in Hospitality Management from Durban, South Africa.’

I stopped with the sip in my mouth and turned to him.

‘I came back here to help my father with this business.’ He paused. ‘More tea?’

He asked with a smile and leaning forward, peered down my empty cup. I hesitantly held it out and he refilled it with warm, sweet tea.

I was enamoured off him. A deep sense of gratitude hung heavy over me and suddenly, on an impulse, I wanted to get up and serve him a cup of tea from the samovar. While the world on the other side was drowning in self-indulgence, digging their own ways to the grave striving for power and influence and the prevailing pseudo elitism, that like a termite infestation was silently and gradually hollowing up the universe of its courtesy; here was another man in the cold heart of Kashmir in India, returned from abroad, lifting baggage and rowing boats in a humility, mocking the standards of dignity at its face and reforming, resetting the legacies of selflessness at a whole new level.

Dinner was a small but a filling spread composed of spicy lamb curry and naan brought in from Shamyana, a popular eatery in Srinagar around the Dal lake channel. We savoured the meal till the very last bit and getting up from the table absolutely stuffed, headed straight to our rooms. Wrapped in electronically heated quilts, sleep stole me away as soon as my tired head sank into the pillow.

Late into the night, it was the sound of rain drumming on the pine wood windows that woke me up. I left the bed and putting on my slippers went out of the room. Passing through the warmly lit aisle and into the foyer, I heard the thud of my footsteps on the hard wooden surface beneath the carpet. With an effort I slid opened the entrance and emerged on to the rectangular veranda overlooking the Dal lake. Leaned over the balustrade, I watched an amorphous rain fall in silence, coating the landscape in a liquid shine. Fine granules of cool rain dotted the still surface of Dal making it look like a sieve. Reflection of street lamps trembled across the water, like Kashmir struck by a low Richter earthquake. A cool, crisp wind swept down the mountains, hurling in my face the soft drizzle and I smiled back at the drenched darkness, exhaling a sigh of relief.    

Bashir and his son sat on a bench playing cards. In one hand he held the cards spread, analysing his next hand and on the other burnt a chillum – a strip of rag fastened around it where his fingers held the fuming pipe. He raised it to his lips, the heel of his palm covering his mouth and chin and puffed. The coal made a whirling sound, as the tip of the chillum brightened to a flaming red and then lowering his hand, played a thoughtful card from between his fingers. Somewhere a gun was fired. The sound hung in an echo in the heavy mountain air. I look at him. Brown curls of smoke covered his face as he breathed, pouring in through his mouth and nostrils. He nodded back with a smile. His thick, calloused hand raised in a ‘Do not worry’ at me and I sat back relaxed, facing the windy lake and the looming circle of mountains in rain.

‘Come, I will show you a magic’ Bashir’s son said shuffling the deck on his palm with a smile plastered to his face.

I sat across him wondering which among the two was more magical – the hideous play of cards or that I was sitting there in the dark watching the rain drench the mountains, as the golden leaves of Chinar danced in the pre-dawn light.  

By - Sobhan Pramanik     

To read Part 2 CLICK HERE