When I auditioned for the part of ‘Zahgeer’ in Piyush Jha’s thriller “Sikandar”, I had a very vague idea of Kashmir. An idea gleaned primarily from news clippings, documentaries, news reports, and that idea wasn’t a very positive one. But being an actor in desperate need of work, I wasn’t about to let something as trivial as strife get in the way of my first movie role now was I?
The moment I landed at the airport was the beginning of my education into how complex a place Kashmir was. At the baggage carousel, I was asked by a army officer to step aside and show them some papers. Now I have been mistaken for Spanish/Italian/Whatever before, but always by a foreigner. Never has an Indian refused to believe I was Indian. I don’t know what threw the man - my height (which is a few inches north of average), my accent (which is more Brooklyn boy than Mumbai munda). Regardless, after a rapid exchange in Hindi, my Indianness established, he clapped me on the back and let me collect my baggage.
The taxi ride up to Pahalgam, the hill station where we would be staying and shooting for the next month, was awkward by the fact that my legs didn’t fit, the taxi driver refused to smile, and the sheer volume of army personnel we saw standing by the roadside or in convoys around us. I was feeling increasingly claustrophobic. I would have to spend a month here!
But all my anxiousness and tightness of chest vanished as we drove out of Srinagar and up into the mountains. Winding up the Pahalgam River, snow capped mountains on side and verdant, forbidding forest on the other, with that almost overwhelmingly clean air caressing my face, I grinned like a starving man at a banquet all the way up.
I have been swimming in Mediterranean Sea, I have dived in the islands of Lakshwadeep, strolled the streets of Vienna and Venice at sunset, kissed a girl on top of the Empire State Building with New York City sparkling below us, and seen the Golden Gate Bridge loom out of the morning mist in the San Franscisco Bay. And I have never - never, seen a place as beautiful as that hill-station in Kashmir.
Actor Hard at Work
I hiked for hours, picked apples off trees and shared them with goat herders, walked with a caravan of gypsies from Pahalgam to Aru, which is about twelve kilometers further up the mountains, shared many cups of Kahwa with the warmest, kindest fellows, with eyes that had seen years of struggle and pain, yet still crinkled with laugh lines at all my stupid jokes, and I loved every day of it. The sun shines like a goddess during her wedding, the air charges you with a vitality that makes you feel like Clark Kent, and you can fill a bottle from a stream and drink water that tastes so good you want to cry.
Some days I still wake up in the morning and wish it was the Himalayas outside my window instead of Juhu.
I miss you Kashmir. Be safe, Darling. Forgive us humans. We fuck up everything we touch. We can’t seem to help it. Hopefully we won’t be around much longer. And you can be at peace again.
The moment I landed at the airport was the beginning of my education into how complex a place Kashmir was. At the baggage carousel, I was asked by a army officer to step aside and show them some papers. Now I have been mistaken for Spanish/Italian/Whatever before, but always by a foreigner. Never has an Indian refused to believe I was Indian. I don’t know what threw the man - my height (which is a few inches north of average), my accent (which is more Brooklyn boy than Mumbai munda). Regardless, after a rapid exchange in Hindi, my Indianness established, he clapped me on the back and let me collect my baggage.
The taxi ride up to Pahalgam, the hill station where we would be staying and shooting for the next month, was awkward by the fact that my legs didn’t fit, the taxi driver refused to smile, and the sheer volume of army personnel we saw standing by the roadside or in convoys around us. I was feeling increasingly claustrophobic. I would have to spend a month here!
But all my anxiousness and tightness of chest vanished as we drove out of Srinagar and up into the mountains. Winding up the Pahalgam River, snow capped mountains on side and verdant, forbidding forest on the other, with that almost overwhelmingly clean air caressing my face, I grinned like a starving man at a banquet all the way up.
I have been swimming in Mediterranean Sea, I have dived in the islands of Lakshwadeep, strolled the streets of Vienna and Venice at sunset, kissed a girl on top of the Empire State Building with New York City sparkling below us, and seen the Golden Gate Bridge loom out of the morning mist in the San Franscisco Bay. And I have never - never, seen a place as beautiful as that hill-station in Kashmir.
Actor Hard at Work
I hiked for hours, picked apples off trees and shared them with goat herders, walked with a caravan of gypsies from Pahalgam to Aru, which is about twelve kilometers further up the mountains, shared many cups of Kahwa with the warmest, kindest fellows, with eyes that had seen years of struggle and pain, yet still crinkled with laugh lines at all my stupid jokes, and I loved every day of it. The sun shines like a goddess during her wedding, the air charges you with a vitality that makes you feel like Clark Kent, and you can fill a bottle from a stream and drink water that tastes so good you want to cry.
Some days I still wake up in the morning and wish it was the Himalayas outside my window instead of Juhu.
I miss you Kashmir. Be safe, Darling. Forgive us humans. We fuck up everything we touch. We can’t seem to help it. Hopefully we won’t be around much longer. And you can be at peace again.
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