Ye Kashmir Hai…!

Having scathed through the staggering ordeal of First MBBS professionals, the battle scarred students of our batch had gained entry to the Honeymoon Semester, as it is known, at SMS Medical College. Its for the first time and probably also the last one in the professional life of a medical student when everything goes skylarking what with trendy, clothes, music, movies, drama, literature and body shaping sessions waiting for us to be sucked in. Suddenly the air is fizzier, the birds are chirpier and the teachers more palsy-walsy to the ‘honeymooners’ . ‘Lark is on the wing, the snail is on the thorn’, as they say.

So when the film Bemisaal was released in March, 1982 it was in absolute consonance with our gay spirits.

The batch of the ‘honeymooners’ went crooning ‘Kitni khoobsoorat ye tasveer hai!‘ with Amitabh and Vinod Mehra in the salubrious Kashmir. Kashmir, as it had been pictured in this song, never looked more pristine. Clarion calls of ‘Chalo Kashmir!’ rent through the picture hall. The fire had been stoked in our bosoms to visit the pleasure gardens of jannat-e-Kashmir.!

Anything which had even a distant northernly relation would leave me thrilled. Come September and a team had to be announced for the upcoming All-India Inter-Medical Hockey tournament at Amritsar.My sporting instincts got themselves riveted from cricket to hockey as the ‘players’ practiced feverishly for the tourney. Finally, an excited contingent of around seven established hockey players with five sportspersons of other discipline, coach , manager, commentator and accompaniments like Kapil cobbled up for the excursion to Amritsar and Kashmir yonder.

Kapil and I had been friends from the eggs. When I got measles, he got it from me. When he got typhoid I got it from him. Each was helping the other.. The friendship had blossomed as we had ripened over the years.

Whoopee, we went, as I construed all the machinations to receive the ‘go ahead’ for the trip from my parents. It involved no less than a threatened fast unto the ..........permission! The detailed planning was laid out with king sized hold alls and heavy sweaters stuffed in large suitcase for the presumably harsh winters of Kashmir. Kapil belongs to a straight-laced family of hard working and honest individuals. While my packings lay strewn in an ungainly mass on the railway platform, his was a picture of a person in perfect command of the situation. His clothes were stacked neatly, and catalogued meticulously in separate suitcases and bags. I must say, I was much relieved as here was a conscientious friend to tide me over the tribulations of the busy itinerary of hockey and adventures thereafter.

The train ordeal

The train, responsible to transport our team of players and administrators, glided off the Jaipur station at late even fall. The players and friends oiled their way to occupy the vacant seats; if there were any available. Ruckus prevailed as our reservations had not worked out. Our coach cum manager was a senior of many attempts and years. Round- faced, bespectacled, donning an off-white safari suit, he managed to impart some semblance of respect to our rowdy bunch. Not a person to flaunt his weight around, he meekly pigeon-holed himself into the luxury of some space near the lavatory.

Swarming all over with people in different moods of elation and dejection, the coupe smelt of drunks and disorderlies as is usually the case in such settings. The air was soaked in boisterous back slapping sessions and seemingly serious singing competitions till drowsiness stole over us, the tired eyelids closed and we slumbered off to our dreamland.

Dreamless sleep it must have been, for we got up to a noisy scrimmage enacted around us in the dim lights of a cold night.Our commentator, Dr Rajeev Gupta, was up against his tormentors.

Plumpish for a student, the commentator had bright eyes, straddling his sharp nose on an otherwise usual angular facies with a flourish of centrally parting hair. A man with remarkable linguistic proficiency, he carried himself with an air of medical pride and arrogance. Any endeavour to challenge his authority would be thwarted summarily. And at this moment a new passenger had arrived, and dared to disturb him .

The passenger, apparently from a bucolic origin, had been much ruffled as he had rushed to board the train at that late hour.

‘ Bhai saheb,’ he spoke hesitantly as he tapped gently on Dr Gupta’s shoulder.

The plea failed to evoke any response as Dr Gupta snored away gloriously.

‘Bhai saheb’ he repeated, with a tone, this time, meant to be more result oriented.

And it was surely effective as it induced Dr Gupta to wriggle out of his supine position and sit up with great effort.

‘Aapki kya help kar sakta hoon?’ Dr Gupta offered politely almost with a tenderness of a bride.

‘Bhai sahab, uth jayen. Ye hamari seat hai.’

The audacity suddenly flipped off Dr Gupta’s lid.

‘What the heck!. How dare you? I am the commentator of this team,’ said he authoritatively. The caprice left the onlookers surprised.

Though he had realised that his extortionist was not alone, the passenger still persisted boldly, ‘Par bhai saheb hamara reservation hai.’

‘Should you not be aware that I have been reserved as the commentator of this team? Off with you!’ Dr Gupta ‘s voice, this time, had the steeliness of an assassin. The slugfest was turning into a bilingual one. Ferocious statements were passed in English while Hindi contended with requests and reasoning. The compartment buzzed with unexpected noisy activity.

The brawl had appeared as some distant unintelligible event to the manager, lying in the far end near the lavatory. Not long , the rising decibels of the squabble had compelled his sleepy mind to take a note of the proceedings. Limbering up his limbs, he navigated across the sleeping humanity to reach the source of commotion. Once there, the feverishness of the moment forced his dormant sense of duty to rise to the occasion. Without any further delay, he raised his voice above the cacophony and bleated like a highly unstrung sheep ,

‘I am the coach of this team!’

Haggled by the defiant rantings of the team members and torn between the belligerent commentator and the bleating manager, the passenger eventually compromised to share his berth with the commentator. They slept with the mutual expression of goodwill spread across their faces. The sudden hates which had flared up died down like a straw fire.

Next morning ,when the train left New Delhi, it had also left Dr Gupta behind. Emotionally exhausted, he realised that he had had enough and decided to dematerialise himself. With their make-do breakfasts ingested, the remaining members occupied themselves in various ways. Some regaled at the thought of inaugural march past of the previous years giving salacious accounts of its leader one Miss Sofie Walia, while others exchanged jocular banters. Kapil and myself evoked envious enthusiasm about our upcoming Kashmir adventure.

A large chunk of the brigade had settled down in the aisle for an absorbing game of cards, showering choicest invectives on anybody snaking one’s way through their gaming area. The morning was filled with carefree gaieties.

Only that Dr Ghanshyam would have none of it. Wrapped in his customary gloom he sulked as he watched his fellow team mates involved in shallow, senseless activities. A lanky, swarthy Marwari with juvenile waistline and prominent cauliflower ears, he was a Calcutta born and bred senior with no nonsense deportment. As any other Marwari on any other day, he was travelling heavy with a widespread menu of eatables.

Given to his leanings of an all-embracing senior, he decided to take us under his wings. Stretching himself that extra bit to get hold of a packet under his seat, he asked vaguely

‘ Kapil, you know what is this?’

A few scales had come off the packet as he hurriedly tried to shove it away from the keen eyes of his other friends. Looking intently at Ghansyam’s possession, Kapil was obviously perplexed at the sitter posed to him.

‘Kapil, this is pineapple, you know!’ Ghanshyam enlightened sanctimoniously, taking the two of us in a corner, ‘The fruit of the aristocrats!’

The conversation led to a healthy, lengthy discourse on the nutritional assets of pineapple. For hours Ghanshyam had been yearning for sympathetic ears into which he could decant his pearls of wisdom. In the end, our malleable and receptive pupildom was appropriately rewarded with liberal slices of the fruit from Heaven!

The common breakfast and the pineapple did little to smother our insatiable appetite. Throwing in a subtle wile, which would have made any self-respecting snake in the grass crawl rapidly away in the opposite direction, Kapil pocketed his snacks and winked towards me to join him near the footboard of the train.

We settled down, far from the maddening crowd, near the gate of the speeding train and sure enough enjoyed the fresh air swishing deep into our lungs. Nothing gladdens a criminal’s heart more than him pulling a fast one on the police. Not many times in our lives have we,the criminals, enjoyed our unshared namkeen, like we did on that forenoon. Tears of joy and derision trickled down our innocent cheeks as we doubled up rolling in suppressed guffaws. And then the gale of mirth was suddenly interrupted by a stentorian ‘Hoy!’ from Ghanshyam passing by to the other side. Our hearts nipped and got entangled in the front teeth. Caught in the melee of joy and shame, we fumbled and one of Kapil’s slippers slipped off embolising into the rapidly receding fields. His face was despondent like the bird in the poem who had lost his gazelle. The merriments vanished and was immediately replaced by a thick pall of gloom. This was the second loss in our trip, more significant than Dr Gupta’s. Our gizzards froze as we thought of God’s retribution and its portentous implications.

Hockey and Amritsar

Assigned to the luxury of dormitories at the Amritsar Medical College campus, we let our hair down and proceeded for a late lunch, which had a toothsome menu of rajma, chawal, dahi and parantha. As the evening descended, temperatures came down. We shivered while we were in different stages of getting ready for the evening round of the city, when I was alarmed by ‘Oh....oh’ dying out

on Kapil’s lips as I turned towards him. Now this ‘Oh’ and ‘So’ are pregnant with numerous possibilities and are things which it’s never easy to find the right answer to! Bereft of self-confidence, soaked in disbelief and boneless, Kapil quivered like a tuning fork as he announced, ‘The catalogue of my clothings is there alright, but all the trousers seem to have been forgotten in Jaipur.!’ The sordid saga of deletions had continued!!

Amritsar amazed me by its people, who were tangled in its medieval and modern history. As I steered through its narrow by-lanes, I could imagine people surging through them to the grounds near Golden temple on the day of Baisakhi, 1919, only to be mowed down by imperial forces later on.

The unusual sight which had caught the attention of an uninitiated mind like mine was of Sikhs pulling rickshaws and billboards of Sikh band masters leading a marriage procession, unheard and unseen in our state.

More bad news awaited us on the morning of the tournament. Digvijay Singh, our goal keeper of choice, gave Amritsar a wide berth and directly reached Jammu, his home town. The news hit the captain’s base of skull like a buffet with a sock of wet sand. This was a moment for the sharp minds to deliver and to take swift decisions. Inam, senior to us by one year and our captain, in consultation with the management, entrusted the responsibility to Shyoji Lal for keeping the goal. A pleasing stocky sportsman,given to rustic humour, Shyoji was the salt of the earth. He had had a sprinkling of an experience in facing the marauders during practice sessions at Jaipur alongside Digvijay.

Packing up all his previous troubles in the kitbag, Inam declared the war against the opponents to the knife. Even a lion could have his correspondence course on that day as Inam implored his players to go for the kill. The expectant air did little to lift Shyoji’s spirits as he donned his protective gear sans the helmet.

The tie got off to a peppy start with each of our players playing to his position and marking the opponents man-to-man . Few minutes into the game, Sandeep Sehgal (Sandy) our forward , bucked the line from half way mark to the opponents’ penalty circle in a jiffy. As he neared his destination, he struggled with the last remnants of energy left in him only to loose his control on the ball and without much ostentation, out he ejected himself with the ball beyond the goal line. Once out of the orbit , he detached himself completely from the action. The team mates whistle, the captain gesticulated subtly, but to no avail as Sandy chose to ignore any invitation, whatsoever.

Tarun, nicknamed ‘Sexy,’ who had a slim, svelte and younger look to his advantage sneaked in to step the breach.

Few minutes and a couple of strokes later, the referee smelt the subterfuge.

Mopping up his moist brows, he confronted the captain,

‘Mr Captain,’ he started as he caught up with his breath, ‘...do you think you need to explain the absence of your player without my permission?’

‘You mean Sandy?’ Inam asked innocently. ‘I think..’

‘And how the hell another player has joined without my knowledge?’

Being cornered, Inam seemed to be trying to swallow his Adam’s apple.

‘’That’s Sexy, Sir...’’, he proffered an explanation but was interrupted again as if hit on his mouth by a wet towel.

Tangled in the affairs of Sexy-Sandy axis, the referee shook his head in exasperation.

‘Oh my God! You will drive me mad!’

He rushed and whistled hard to resume the game.

The crowds cheered us up for the initial twenty minutes or so as it was turning out to be a thrilling encounter. And then, throwing all the plannings to the wind, the Jaipurites launched a blitzkrieg spearheaded by its forwards with the moral backing of its own defenders around the opponents’ goal post. The attack was aborted soon as the opponents snatched the ball away and in a counter offensive , took our goalkeeper by surprise, all alone. Huffing and puffing, our players made a desperate attempt to come back from the far end to help Shyoji, but the damage had been done.The sequence kept reiterating itself dangerously. A flurry of targeted moves left the defenceless Shyoji an embittered person.

‘Koi to aaoon saalon. Yahan top ke gole chal rahen hain!’

His repeated calls for help got lost in the blast of cannonballs slotted past him. It soon turned out to be a war of attrition and exhaustion for our team.

The same discredited strategy would be employed in match after match with not much change in the final lopsided tally. The crowds got thinner as the tournament proceeded and would leave once they discovered that Jaipur was involved in any match. The ongoing humiliation would leave us sullen, devastated and cold.

Not to be undone was Inam, our captain, a man of blood and iron, impervious to weaker emotions. His demeanour was a perfect combination of a devil-may-care and never-say-die sportsmanship. So, when the editor of the tournament newsletter approached Inam for comments regarding his team’s prospects, he was at his pluckiest best,

‘फोड़ देंगे!’. ‘The opponents shall be vanquished ,’ came the retort courteous, bemusing the editor and us simultaneously.

Having lost its face in the tournament, our group plonked into the depths of sloth and insipid languor as we contemplated our misfortune. Our room was in shambles. It’s landscape lay strewn with used up shorts, T-shirts, stinky socks, empty glasses of tea and hockey sticks. We tried hard to seek comfort in the warmth of our beddings.

And then our coach, accompanied by Satyanarain(Sattu boss), Duleep and Tarun(Sexy) entered the scene of destruction. Sattu was a senior with tall and wiry frame sporting a squarish speck on his round face with a pugnacious mandible. He moved around in long, lazy strides, much like a camel, matching the longish drawl in his speech.

Sattu’s gang

Having passed a liberal snootful of liquor down their parched throats, the quartet gradually broke into an amiable bonhomie. Singing aloud to the tune of garish Bollywood numbers and supported by Duleep’s desultory rattle on a tin box, Sattu took to his adagio dancing. Throwing himself out on the makeshift dance floor, he appeared to be a dancer who would never let his left hip know what his right hip was doing and vice versa. Soon the music and booze would cast a heady spell of injudicious joviality in the air. Sattu ramped up his performance by executing ‘spirited’ pirouettes, wielding a hockey all the time, like ‘sudarshan Chakra’ out to conquer the world. The spectators ducked and gasped in horror as the gyrations of the ‘hockey dance’ hastened and its swings widened. Unable to handle the deafening pitch of the revelry, Duleep finally fumbled and the tin box slipped off, silencing the clatter and bringing Sattu’s dance to a juddering halt, like a mechanical toy which had unwound itself completely. Vapid listlessness engulfing the dorm had melted away but the spectre left our bones turned to water.

The night on the tiles had left most of us dazed and drained out. We got up to a sleepy and slow start the next morning. The dorm looked more disorganised than what it was the previous evening, thanks to the anarchism unleashed overnight.

An early riser, our senior Chandrashekhar had gone out for his morning cup of freshening tea. Underestimating the October cold of Amritsar he had dared to step out in his half way unbuttoned shirt. And now he was caught shivering. Not before he had entered the room than he darted across to his bedding.

And lo and behold! his blanket was missing. He rummaged through the clutter frantically with the zest of a short tempered wolf-hound sniffing for the bone taken away from it. He fretted. He frowned as he fretted. He clenched his fist as he frowned. The commotion was enough to wake Duleep up.

Realising what the whole confusion was all about, Duleep shoved his oar in,

‘ Are tumhara blanket to Manager saheb aur Sexy le gaye hain. Vaishno Devi jaane ke liye kah rahe the. Tumhen inform karne ke liye kaha tha!’

Chandra shekhar buttoned up his shirt and just looked towards Heavens to thank Him for the friends he had.

‘Selfish, mannerless , uncouth, imbecile ....!’ he muttered endlessly painting the most penetrative word-portrait ever made.

We proceeded to pack ourselves.

The Kashmir Connection

The sinuous road to the Kashmir Valley was a tedious stretch of drudgery. Kapil’s long legs had to take the fluid quality of an octopus’s tentacles to be bunged into our seats at the rear end of the decrepit J&K roadways bus. The vehicle rattled, screeched and gasped as it manoeuvred the hair-pin bends on the highway. My derrière would be sore as a gumboil, couching for hours in that endless sojourn. Our aching bodies would decompress just at the thought of stopovers which were painfully brief. The entertaining road signs by Border Roads Organisation and the ambrosial pleasure of partaking hot tea at Ramban would now and then cheer us up in an otherwise drab affair. So at the end of the treacherous day our hearts curvetted at the sight of snow-capped peaks of Anantnag, our first destination in Kashmir.

Anantnag, a staggering huddle of red roofs and white walls, was a rejuvenating experience. Khurshid,

one year senior to us, bore the brunt of our hospitality here. His craggy lineament was a mirror to his softer emotions. In fact, the entire family rolled out the red carpet for his juniors from Jaipur. They would feed us to the gills and left us groping for digestives to adjust the extra burden of nourishment that we were provided with.

Neighbouring Pahalgam etched our mental retina forever. The single narrow road lined with numerous studios proudly displaying pictures of stars from movies like Arzoo, Junglee, Jaanwar...,the famous Bobby Cottage, the huge expanse of meadows dotted with ponies and the soothing experience of ambling along the pristine Lidder river- clutter the pleasant memories of our tryst with the jannat -e-Kashmir. Perched gingerly, like limpets, on slippery boulders across Lidder,

Kapil and myself posed for the most acrobatic pictures ever taken at that romantic vintage point!’

Srinagar was to bring about the most enterprising facet of our personality. Sameer, one of our classmates from Kashmir, had offered us to be his guests. As luck would have it, he got stuck at Jaipur and we reeled in an unforeseen predicament. His house, a sprawling complex, was inhabited solely by his mother. Our patience and professional ingenuity transformed her from a reticent host into a picture of warmth, affection and unbridled geniality towards her unexpected guests. The imbroglio got further complicated as she would speak only Kashmiri. The evenings would be spent discussing the dinner strategy.

‘Khana khaoge ‘she would invariably ask.

‘Nahi khayenge.’

‘Nahi khaya na.’

‘Nahi, kha liya.’ The conversation would look like a series of distorted echoes across the valley.

‘Nahi khaya.’ She would try to clothe her thoughts in words.

‘Kha liya’

‘Ok, khaoge !’ would usually be the conclusion of the confused exchange.

We would be shovelled with heaps of rice and local delicacies laced with all the affection of a caring host.

Fed, contented, with a spright in our gait and snatch of a gay song on our lips Kapil and I set out to explore the city. Birds chirped, bees buzzed and butterflies fluttered in the heavenly environs of Mughal gardens inundated with fountains, blooming flowers and gaggles of girls. A waft of soft romance drifted across the Dal lake where we sauntered lazily. The cold winds sweeping across the pristine lake froze our temples forcing them to be covered by monkey caps.

‘Saheb aap dono ki jodi maalik salamat rakhe. Bilkul Shammi Kapoor aur Rajender nath lag rahe ho!’ quipped the photographer taking our picture.

Much to our relief, he failed to specify who between the two of us was Rajender!

The setting being just right for a freaky night out, we had moved into a houseboat in the darya-e-Jhelum streaming across the city. A little breeze played and laughed among the roses on its deck. The breeze would whip the water up and turn the stream into a lagoon of jewels in the moon. We sank ourselves in its ambience.

The owner crooned pious and tender ghazals and the whole family laid it self out to take care. The elixir of their kindness filled us to the brim and we could hear it sloshing about inside. Their young daughter nipped around the boat, running errands. Her face was one of the most attractive seen in the history of the entire trip.

Delicately chiselled , that snub nose, that breadth of cheek bone and the squareness of that chin with the sweetest smile made her the most ravishing entity. Dripping with pleasure we would always spare a glance or two whenever she appeared on the scene. The oomph and espieglerie of hers sent us into a trance of day dreaming for the whole night long.

The next morning came with the end of that lively reverie as we packed for the departure. Her thought did no more than to pop out of our subconsciousness and back again in an instant. Its lightning entrance and exit had tarnished the morning sunshine and taken at least sixty percent off the entertainment value of the blue sky.

The separation was to leave a bitter taste. Into us had crept a temporary antipathy to the beastly expanse of the vivid blue; just as we had temporary fondness for tombs and hurricanes and sleet and earthquakes.

Gloomily, we took a last, lingering look at the houseboat, a brief glance at the girl and gasped, coming away unhappy, to move through our lives bemused, like men kissed by goodness in dreams!