Hell, in Heaven
A Travel Story
It is hot in Mumbai, with temperatures veering between 38 and 40 degrees C. We go for our walks in the Park, at 8 in the morning, and return, sapped of all energy, bathed in sweat, thirsting for tender coconut water. Then we come home and sit around silently, staring into space, waiting to feel better. That takes an hour or so.
So one day the man I live with, staring rapt, into the TV, suddenly spied a news item about the Tulip Festival. In Kashmir.
“We shall,” he pronounced, in lordly accent, “go there. It will be cool.”
“Yes, my Lord,” I agreed, or words to that effect, “But don’t you think…”
“Silence,” he bellowed, or something like that, but was seized by a dreadful fit of coughing.
I waited for it to pass, saying nothing.
He didn’t like that either. He likes to hear me argue, so he can shout me down. It makes him happy.
I smiled at him. He glowered, but said nothing. He knows I have words in me that don’t require to be shouted.
I waited. He walked.
So we packed one suitcase between us, and a backpack. Total weight: 11 kgs.
We hate baggage.
So.
It is holiday season in India, and a time that the hordes descend, like the Assyrian coming down ‘like a wolf on the fold.’
We dislike crowds. Like Mathew Arnold’s Scholar Gipsy, we avoid them, and run in the opposite direction.
So we didn’t go to the ‘touristy’ places. We visited the gardens: well-laid out, tree-lined avenues, with beds of flowers of all shapes and sizes. The cloud-tossed mountains of Kashmir form a fluid, poetry-filled backdrop.
One’s heart misses a beat. One can only close one’s eyes in prayerful ecstasy. I did.
I opened my eyes to see the man watching me half curiously and half-fearfully. He sometimes thinks I have lost some of my marbles. At other times, he wonders whether I was born with any at all.
And in the middle of all that glorious life, there is death. Silent, inevitable…and sacred.
We returned from Kashmir with severe food poisoning, dehydration, and feeling like zombies. The place we had booked, going by its name and website, and reviews, was awful in every sense of the word.
A fellow traveller, similarly suffering, informed us of the concept of ‘paid reviews.’ He said he had been approached by some shady character, promising him 10k, for reviews of a hundred hotels. The traveller sent him packing, saying that he didn’t want to make money by lying and cheating people.
‘Gar firdaus bar-rue zamin ast, hami asto, hamin asto, hamin ast’, wrote the Persian poet, Amir Khusro.
Loosely translated, it means that if ever there is (a) paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here. He was referring to Kashmir.
We were in heaven for two days, hell, for the other two…and ‘not a saint took pity on (our) soul(s) in agony’, with apologies to S.T. Coleridge. The flight back, with extra security at the airport, and a royal melee at Delhi airport, took twelve hours. We are now limping back to normal.
I remind the man who lives with me, just once, that I had my reservations, before we left. Only once. Every hour.
ⓒ 2023 Suma Narayan. All Rights Reserved.
I doff my hat to two writers I admire for their wild, wacky…and intelligent sense of humour. I sometimes try to imitate them, but I am sadly lacking in all these three necessary qualities:
And Srini