Blogging after ages, at one fifty eight AM , i do not want to be typically negative. I have a presentation tomorrow and I stole ideas from it from my recent trip to Kashmir. I have to promote a state as a tourist destination. Using all my photographs to make pretty slides, I am trivializing , hiding reality because my aim is to promote. I am not mentioning how the military man posted to sand with a gun on a certain spot near the Dal lake, all day , everyday, said 'There is no such thing as safety in Srinagar. Anyone may shoot anytime. I've learnt to accept I may die any moment.' I am not saying how there were attacks on th Mughal gardens when I was there or that we cold count the number of tourists with our fingers as groups of shikaras floated, lonely on the Dal lake. That the people think the conflict is manufactured by politicians, fueled by the media and they are merely caught in between , only wanting to make a living driving taxis, rowing shikaras for tourists who are rare now. They only want peace in their homeland, to be able to trust people again. I cannot say that while a military men is friendly to me and we chat for almost half an hour, he suddenly says that I might have a gun in my pocket and he does not trust me .I am not mentioning that a friend was molested in Gulmarg when she was skiing on the higher slopes. She was told not to complain to the 'Indian girls'.
I am saying some truths like that Kashmir is so incredibly beautiful . I am not saying how much it troubled me to be there in a bubble, as a tourist who takes and leaves. It makes me think that this is the type of journalism I don't want to do.
I am typing badly I know will do grammar check tom. Because I am typing in a dark room ok so forgive.
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4 comments:
its a hard hitting post, kashmir is indeed a sad situation and mostly because of our dear politicians, have u read Temptations of the West bye Pankaj Kapur. there is a chapter in that on kashmir, very nicely written read that and it tells u many truths
as Monika said..hard hitting to say the least..takes some caliber to sta y there..
It'd be interesting to learn more about it. Why don't you recollect and write a more descriptive post on this? I say this for the same reason that you mention here, that tourists to kashmir are few and people visiting it and writing their experience are fewer still.
That picture is lovely.
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