Under the Magnolia Tree

[This is the last post in this series. Hope ya’ll have enjoyed reading it as much as I have liked writing it.]

When I thought of writing this piece, I was under a Magnolia tree. Now, I am sitting in the Delhi Airport waiting for a flight back home. A day has passed in the interim. I have been unable to marshal my thoughts adequately enough to coherently express what is in my mind. I am a child of the mid 1990’s and early 2000’s. I have been witness to the escalating conflict in the Kashmir valley, albeit from a distance and arguably from an un-breachable one. Even though tourism never completely stopped in the valley barring brief interruptions when the violence could not be negotiated around, I had never seriously contemplated visiting the valley for an actual vacation. The extreme state of unrest in the valley in 2010 had almost sealed the decision. However, here I was in 2014, on my way to the valley for a much needed vacation. Excitement interspersed with apprehension scoured through my veins while I was waiting for my flight to Srinagar. And now at almost the fag end of my vacation, I think I can safely say that the Kashmir experience has been like no other experience I have ever had.

In my previous posts, I have time and again tried to juxtapose the breath taking beauty of the valley with the tragedy of epic proportions that it has been forced to endure. Kashmir is not the only region in India that has been plagued with unrest. Much of the North-East and large tracts of central India have been dealing with insurgency and naxalism respectively since quite some time now. I have visited the North-East in the past and happen to hail from a naxal-affected state. What, then, makes my perception of Kashmir different from all the other kinds of violence I have been privy to?

I am yet to come up with a convincing answer to this question, a question that has plagued me throughout the entire duration of this trip. Is it the stark contrast between the bewitching beauty of the valley and the rundown shabby houses that break the magnificent scenery? Or is it the fact that a state that has a population of almost 1 Crore 25 Lakhs has more security personnel visible than civilians? Or is it the palpable restlessness evident from my interactions with the local population coupled with an almost intriguing sense of surface-level normalcy that pervades the valley? Is there more to the valley than what meets the eye or is all of this a figment of my over active imagination? I seem to have left the valley with questions galore but answers to none.