Nightlife and real life return to
Srinagar By Sudha Ramachandran
SRINAGAR - The summer capital of the
strife-torn Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir is
slowly developing a nightlife. It's not quite the
kind in cities elsewhere in the world, or even
other parts of India, but one that allows the
city's youngsters a measure of entertainment.
Srinagar's youngsters now have cafes,
fast-food joints and pool halls to hang out in
during the evenings. Coffea Arabica and Cafe
Robusta are doing brisk business, despite their
rather over-priced
menus. Pictures of Hollywood
stars dominate Coffea Arabica's chic decor and the
music is Western pop. Journalists, artists,
intellectuals and software and management
professionals troop in every evening "not so much
for the coffee as to unwind with friends", says
Inayat, a bank employee and a regular.
Boulevard Road, which skirts the city's
famous Dal Lake, hums with activity late into the
night with tourists and local Kashmiris taking
leisurely strolls, partaking of the street food or
simply soaking up the lake's calm. This is all
under the watchful eyes of the Indian security
forces patrolling the road, of course. But the
fact that civilians are on the streets long after
sunset represents a radical change: Srinagar's
residents are staying out later than they did at
any time over the past 17 years, and having fun
too.
"Srinagar is slowly limping back to
the good old days when we had so much
entertainment to choose from," says 55-year-old
Iqbal Haider. A month ago, Srinagar hosted its
first international film festival at a convention
center on the banks of Dal Lake. A few days later,
the recently inaugurated Zabarwan Park-cum-open
air theater was the venue for a three-day
international festival of Sufi and Kashmiri music.
Performances went well into the night.
Pubs are yet to make an appearance but
liquor, which since 1990 could be purchased only
from shops in the high-security cantonment area or
in bars in five-star hotels, seems to have become
slightly more accessible. In the past, residents
of Srinagar were forced to travel 150 kilometers
to Ramban for liquor. Now their drinks are much
closer, albeit not always easy to find. "A few
shops sell liquor but from behind iron grills,
sandbags and barbed wire," says Inayat, adding
that although "liquor is still not freely
available you can ask around and find at least a
couple of shops in the neighborhood that sell it".
Once a tourist paradise and a hotspot for
Bollywood movies, Srinagar was a vibrant city up
to 1990. People hung out late at night with little
to fear. There were no blasts or search operations
in those days. Locals recall nostalgically their
encounters with countless Bollywood stars, who
came to shoot films or to holiday, and visiting
Western celebrities such as the late ex-Beatle
George Harrison, who stayed in a houseboat on Dal
Lake. Srinagar was known as the "Switzerland of
the East", where people flocked to escape the
tensions of urban life and the searing heat of the
plains.
Things changed suddenly. In 1989,
an armed insurgency based in
Pakistani-administered Kashmir against the Indian
state erupted in the Kashmir Valley and spread to
other parts of the state. Srinagar was the
epicenter of the uprising and massive street
protests, bomb blasts and gun battles replaced
Bollywood and tourism. Srinagar was instead a city
under siege and its social life disappeared. With
militants and security forces slugging it out in
the streets, civilians preferred to stay indoors.
Srinagar after sunset was a ghost city with only
militants darting under cover of darkness as
Indian troops conducted patrol and search
operations.
The Islamization of the
militancy further deprived Kashmiris of the
culture and entertainment they had known. First
the movie theaters shut down; either burnt down by
militants or occupied by the security forces. Then
Kashmir's liberal Sufi culture went underground
under pressure from hardline Islamists. Beauty
parlors were closed. Dress and entertainment that
was seen as Indian or Western and not Islamic was
banned. In 2000, a Kashmiri teenager was shot in
the knees for wearing jeans and a pullover. Women
were expected to wear the burqa. Wall
posters warning unveiled women of dire
consequences sent them scurrying for burqas
(although this would not last beyond a few weeks
as it is not a part of Kashmiri Muslim tradition).
There are not too many burqa-clad
women in Srinagar these days. Heads are covered
but faces are rarely veiled. Tania, a student,
covers her head like many young women but insists
she is opposed to the burqa "as it is not
required by Islam". She and Afsana, a journalist,
say they can stay outdoors until about 7pm, but
beyond that they can do so only in the company of
their families.
Young women are skillfully
mixing the traditional with the modern. Some girls
wear the abaya, but these long coats are
far from dowdy. Girls have them tailored in the
latest styles, with colorful fabrics, sometimes
slinky and decorated with beads, sequins and
embroidery. Girls are streaking their hair,
painting their nails and using striking eye
makeup.
If in the 1990s, some of Kashmir's
youth looked up to militant commanders as heroes,
that has also changed. Today it is people such
Qazi Tauqueer, a Kashmiri boy who won the
pan-Indian contest, Fame Gurukul in 2005, who are
their icons. Another icon is Infosys founder and
chief mentor, N R Narayana Murthy, who symbolizes
India's information technology revolution.
Kashmiri youth are keen to be part of India's
software revolution and are eager to make up for
lost time.
Rasheed, a young artist,
recalls that he never had "real friends until
recently, as one was never sure who was friend,
foe or informer". That is slowly changing. Over
the past year or so he has been meeting with a few
of his former college friends "to catch up on
movies and music, even to argue about politics and
the militancy years", he says. Rasheed is also
part of a film club that meets on weekends at
hotel lounges to watch and discuss films. Srinagar
now has book clubs, too.
Even until a few
years ago, only men were seen eating at
restaurants. That has changed. Eating out has now
become a family ritual. Restaurants serving
Kashmiri, Mughlai, Chinese and Western fast food
have sprung up across the city. Kashmiris are
shopping with a vengeance. Malls and shopping
arcades have sprung up across the city and
youngsters like to hang out in them or window
shop, something they couldn't dream of doing in
the 1990s.
Even the conservative downtown
Srinagar, once looked on as the hotbed of
militants, is lighting up. Shops are open past
9pm, Bollywood music blares from restaurants and
the streets, once notorious for gun battles, are
bustling with normalcy.
But this return to
semi-normal has not been without its setbacks.
Kashmir's ever-active moral police, led by the
all-woman separatist group, the
Dukhtaran-e-Millat, and the Forum against Social
Evils, have repeatedly raided restaurants,
Internet cafes and liquor shops to "save Kashmir
from moral decline". Recently, young couples were
dragged out of a restaurant and beaten up. Shops
selling Valentine's Day cards were ransacked.
And violence still looms over the lives of
Kashmiris. Not a day passes without a grenade
blast or a gun battle in some part of the valley.
Six grenade blasts, including one in the busy Dal
Gate area, rocked Srinagar last Friday.
Although Srinagar's Neelam movie theater
has re-opened, "few Kashmiris are willing to go
there to watch movies", says Mohsin, who was eight
years old when the insurgency erupted. He has
never watched a movie in a theater in Srinagar.
"We prefer to watch the latest movies on CD or on
cable TV channels," he says. The lurking security
threat continues to keep youth away from the movie
theaters.
Restaurants with names like
Hideout and Peace, which are hugely popular among
Kashmiri youngsters, seem to be reminders that
Srinagar's social life is still a long way away
from cutting itself off from security concerns.
Sudha Ramachandran is an
independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
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