‘Desiccated Land – An American in Kashmir’ is a compilation of the American journalist David Lepeska’s finest works from his time at Kashmir Observer, providing a stark portrayal of life in the conflict-ridden state.
Here’s an excerpt from the book:
A Trip to the Country… or, Escape From Waterhal
David Lepeska
Kashmir Observer– November 19, 2006
ANY journey into rural Kashmir is bound to be fraught with danger, what with its hidden, unpredictable militants, secretive paramilitaries, anxious soldiers, and conflicted locals caught in the crossfire. Yet last Thursday morning my colleague Farooq Shah and I set off in search of that rare animal: an outdoor primary school, with mud seating for upwards of fifty children, little or no facilities, barely-trained teachers, and nothing but the Valley’s bitter late autumn for a roof. A disconcerting image of just such a beast had appeared without warning in our paper the previous week and, being enterprising journalists’ game for a good story and an adventure, we packed up our gumption, a Twix bar and some chewing gum, and sallied forth into the relatively uncharted southern reaches of Budgam district.
We hit the road at the crack of 11, my little motorbike as game as could be after 19 Valley winters. Thrumming joyously and adding to the warmth kindled by our huddled torsos and reportorial verve, the old blue lady zoomed around curves and bobbed up and down, in and out of vast water-filled potholes, we two riders twittering like morning sparrows. Neither the previous few days’ downpours and bitter cold nor the threat of a run-in with armed men of indeterminate allegiance could dampen our spirits.
Shortly after noon, however, our rural jaunt began to feel more wild goose chase-y. The mud sucked greedily at our bald tires. The road, with its jeep-sized potholes, became a minefield, and our destination, the tiny village of Waterhal, increasingly mythical. Minimal signage, suspicious, tight-lipped villagers, and a bland brown landscape bereft of identifying markers added to the sense of foreboding. Yet we soldiered on, querying a few locals to regain our bearings, and soon enough crossed a little concrete bridge into our dust speck of a destination. Middle-aged men commiserated next to tea shacks. Women carried baskets of spinach-like greens and bulging plastic sacks of rice on their heads. The road grew yet muckier and still on we ventured, finally hearing the high-pitched voices of young children just off to our right as we neared the top of a small rise.
We parked and clambered up a short, slippery slope and found ourselves in the Middle Ages, which is to say the very school from the photo. Children as young as three and four were bundled in sweaters and scarves and pherans, faces unwashed, noses dripping and feet bare and purpling. Shivering yet smiling at their visitors, they sat one behind the other on ruddy jute mats. The two teachers taught while we snapped photos and asked questions. After an hour or so our work was done and we headed towards my bike, and home. But I couldn’t get the old girt started. And when Farooq tried he found that the accelerator cable, which should be attached to the right handlebar grip, had been severed. Oops.
“You’ve got to be more gentle, Dave,” Farooq admonished. “You can’t just – rgegh, gerhehr, rghea!! – attack everything like a wild animal.”
“Yeah, I know, you’re right,” I admitted.
Then I grabbed my colleague by his puffy coat and shook him.
The sky filled with clouds as the clock ticked past two. My bike had become little more than a useless mass of heavy, rusting metal and worn rubber. I stared at her proud blue gas tank. I considered the wonderful times we had together. I considered pitching her into the stream.
Finally, I considered what Kashmir’s most revered foreign observer, Sir Walter Lawrence, would do with such an excellent opportunity. Investigate the local flora and fauna? Query the villagers about their religious practices? Decipher the make-up of their pre-industrial economy? I decided I didn’t care; I was cold and wanted to go home. Luckily, my phone had just enough juice to call our editor and apprise him of the situation.
“Hey, Sajjad, we found the school and got a really nice story,” I told him.
“Oh, really,” he responded, just slightly pleased.
“Yes, but my bike broke down and now we’re stuck.”
“Oh,” he said, not surprised.
“Yeah, the accelerator cable broke and we’re trying to figure out how to get back.”
“OK,” he said. “Let me talk to Farooq.”
I handed the phone over and took in a changed scene. Perhaps a couple enterprising villagers had employed the mosque loudspeaker to announce our plight, because Waterhalis had gathered from far and wide. Young and old, big and small, pheran-wrapped and kangri- wielding, staring at my strange mug, fingering my gleaming, muddy machine and foisting up potential solutions. We’ve got to fix the bike, they told us; it can be very easily done. No, no, others disagreed, you’ll never fix it; leave the bike here, hop a Sumo back to Srinagar and come get it later.110 That’s no good, still others interrupted: walk the bike over to Budgam and they can fix it in a jiffy.
Manzoor, the school headmaster, recalled a fellow villager who owned a motorbike, and thought perhaps he could help. He scurried to retrieve him as Farooq and I endeavored to entertain the remaining audience. I made silly faces and pretended to attack the little boys. Learning that the teachers occasionally beat the youngsters, Farooq found a thin switch and made to whip a little boy, to great hilarity.
Manzoor soon returned and after ten minutes of tinkering the man, Ahmed, announced his diagnosis: our accelerator cable was broken and needed to be fixed. Duly noted.
A second plan formed: Farooq and I would walk the bike in a weaving northeasterly direction towards the main road, which would lead us to salvation.
“It’s only four, five kilometers,” said Yusuf, a 17-year-old who was studying in Budgam to become a doctor and was one of the few villagers who spoke English. “You can definitely make it, and then in Budgam they will fix bike.”
The prospect of pushing a motorcycle five kilometers up and down winding valley roads in near-freezing and possibly drizzly conditions did not titillate. I wracked my brain for an alternative.
“Isn’t there someone who has a truck around here?” I asked no one in particular. “There’s got to be one truck, right? If not in this village, then somewhere near here…”
Excited murmuring in Kashmiri rose. Index fingers pointed northwest among a general nodding of heads and just like that, praise Allah, plan number three solidified: push the bike the kilometer or so to the next village and find the man with the truck.
“Yes, I think it’s best idea,” said Manzoor, dropping the clincher.
Farooq and I began making our way, pushing the old lady through the muck and up the hill with much of our Waterhal entourage in tow. Thirty meters on we were stopped by an interested passer-by, an eagle-eyed villager with a great red beard. Apprised of our plight he offered up strategy four in the Escape from Waterhal sweepstakes: he would call a nearby mechanic to come and fix the bike straight away! Off he went to retrieve his mobile phone.
Again we sat waiting, the sky darkening as the clock ticked three, children getting restless and finally wearying of staring at the shiny– headed, pale-faced alien. Farooq had a sudden brainstorm and tried to start the bike. Inexplicably, it roared to life. He grabbed the rubber- sheathed accelerator cable near his right thigh and employed it as a sort of jerry-rigged gas controller. He put the bike into gear and chugged wobbily up the hill. Seeing this, the man who had gone off to call his mechanic friend decided we were in no need of mechanical assistance. He stomped off to the fields to resume his work. I went up to Farooq and patted him on the back.
“Hey, nice job,” I told him.
“Yeah, yeah, but let me work on it,” he said, sputtering off and tinkering with his new system.
Reverting to plan three, I rejoined Yusuf and Manzoor and we continued to stroll towards the neighbouring village, Harden, and the man with the pick-up truck. Minutes later we found Farooq in what passed as the village square, chatting with a young local.
“I fixed it,” Farooq said, with obvious pride. “I’ve figured it out. We don’t need the truck at all! Let’s just ride to Budgam, we’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure, Farooq?” I asked.
“Yes, this cable basically works just like the accelerator,’ he explained, reaching down near his knee and tweaking a black rubber cord. “You try it.”
“Are you sure?” I asked again, not wanting to start something we couldn’t finish.
“Yes, I told you,” he said, getting impatient with my suspicion. “Try it for yourself.”
“No, no, you figured out how to do it,” I said. “You can drive.”
Yes, loyal reader, plan five: employ Farooq’s half-baked accelerator controller to matriculate over hill and vale to Budgam. We climbed on, shook hands with Manzoor and Yusuf and started off down a steep, serpentine decline. Progress was slow, but steady, and we began to feel our little ordeal had ended, that all would be fine. We came to the bottom and just over a muddy concrete bridge the road angled up and away into infinity.
As if in fear or awe, the bike halted at the base of the incline and the engine – eehrerhhr!!!!! — roared loudly, stuck on peak acceleration as the bike stood stock-still. I jumped off in fright and nearly fell down a small cliff. Time froze. The ear-splitting whine echoed across the ravine. Blue smoke shot out the exhaust. Vaguely visible through the haze as he tamed that neighing stallion with steely nerve, Farooq fingered gears and twitched his heels. I thought momentarily that this would be the last I’d see of my charming friend, bravely riding out the death throes of an overheating 1987 blue Yamaha. But it wasn’t to be.
The engine fell silent. The smoke and dust settled. Farooq clambered off like a hero, exasperated yet relieved.
“Hey down there!” a disembodied voice called out from overhead. “Yeah!” the two of us shouted nearly in unison.
”Do you need the pick-up truck?” the voice asked.
“Yes, we do,” Farooq shot back.
We looked meaningfully at each other then caught our breath and took in our surroundings. A tiny trash strewn creak dribbled under the nearby bridge and on three and a half sides steep, aspen-pocked hills loomed. We were about half a kilometer from the surface world: no place to be broken down. Thankfully, a revised plan three was back in effect.
“Some friend you are,” Farooq said. “You just left me to handle that thing all on my own!”
“You were driving!” I responded. “What could I do?”
“I don’t know, but don’t leave me to die,” he said, making a decent point.
There was a long pause. The creek gurgled. An over-flying kite peered down hungrily.
“I totally thought the bike was gonna blow up,” I said, starting to smile. “And you were a goner.”
He giggled. “I thought I was going to fly!”
Fly from that ravine we did when the pick-up pulled up some ten minutes later. A pleasant, mostly silent ride to Budgam followed, Farooq and I warming ourselves and thinking of butter chicken and a hot bath. The Budgam pit stop was beyond easy: drop bike at mechanic’s, get tea and a snack, retrieve bike ten minutes later and we’re on our way to Srinagar. There was just one problem: I left my helmet in the back of the pick-up.
“Look at it this way,” said Farooq, wind whipping through his hair, “we owed them.”
- If you live outside India and want to purchase the book Click Here
We arrived in Srinagar in 15 minutes. So our brush with oblivion in a relic of a previous century – a village without electricity, without any sewage system or running water, with roads of foot-deep mud and near-starving children dressed in tattered clothing endeavoring to learn their multiplication tables in the bitter cold – took place only about 25 kilometers from Srinagar, a city of a million inhabitants, a place of Internet cafes and lush golf courses, cozy restaurants and swish hotels.
Walk to Budgam? We could’ve walked home.
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