Paradise lost

PWD Guest House, Barot, Himachal Pradesh

I squinted as my eyes popped open, one chilly May morning, back in 1996. I turned around to wake up my sister, then hopped out of bed to go irritate my parents. I couldn't help it. I was six.

They brushed me away and thus snubbed, I slipped on my chappals and bounded outside into the fresh air.

Ah.... Barot...

The above picture can never do justice to the Barot of my memories, simply because this picture is not my own but a more recent one. The PWD guest house then, was set a short trek away from the town, a steep climbing path up the road, which led to the crest of the hill. When one climbed atop, a clearing would come into view, with the green-wooden slatted cottage sitting plumb in the middle, against the backdrop of a mountainside dotted with leeches and daisies. In front, was a single tree, whose solid branches I remember trying to climb on and off many times.

It was pristine, I remember everything as if it were yesterday. Me wheeling my sister around the house in a wheelbarrow, us playing catch-n-catch around Dad's freshly washed, unrolled turban drying on a huge span of grass, my mother giving us a good tel-maalish before splashing us with ice-cold, mountain spring water. I don't remember the bedrooms much, but the bathrooms were scarily fascinating. Every rare bug on your green window sill, next to exposed metal pipes, which in turn only added to your fear of the deathly cold water, as you shivered in anticipation, on a plastic stool too cold for your backside.

I remember trying to climb up the mountainside of daisies and leeches, running races with my sister, and at the end, collapsing in a heap and sticking my foot into the ground, trying to heap mud over it to build little castles, and giving them the finishing touch by sticking daisies in them. I remember trying to draw my foot out carefully without letting it collapse, and then grimacing when it did.

Many times, the whole family would bundle down the path to the town, which intrigued me because it had things other mountainous towns from my knowledge then, didn't. Like a fish farm. Or the river-sized trough of gushing water over a turbine. Only upon googling now did find out that it was a state Hydel power project on the Uhl river, and the fish farms were derived and operating on the fish from the reservoir. What I remember from then is a dread in my heart, standing on a bridge over the river-sized trough, watching at the falling water, and trying to imagine what would happen if someone fell over. What if that someone was a family member? I closed my eyes and wished back my thoughts as I ran across the bridge to where the rest of them were, my father leaning down to explain to me the concept of turbines and electricity generation. Whatever my understanding then, I remember thinking, 'Great, falling in the water is not good enough, now we get to die of shock too.'

The fish farms were a different story altogether. Rows upon rows of water channels, with silver glinting in it everywhere you looked. I would bend over and try to touch, but a quick look from my mother would stop me. The black water, the man with the long cleaning brush, the glint of silver in the water and my mother's look. Memories work in strange ways.

Often, we would plan a trek up and out from the guest house, crossing streams and cooking next to the river, with cowdung as fuel and a few pots, pans and matchsticks. The rice was sticky, and the curry being cooked watery and spicy, but it felt good to eat, probably because it seemed to have come out of nowhere, in the wild. I'm struggling to recall whether the curry had fish in it or not, and I can't be sure, but I'm being completely honest here.

I know we went down to the small market set across the hydel project and the fish farms, but I can't really remember anything of it. Packets full of bread and eggs, maybe. Then again, maybe not.

Sometimes, the days would be spent soaking up the sun, sitting under the single tree in the yard, as our mother tried coaching us about our pending homework and my sister messed around with her alphabets. My dad stretched out on the ground, sleeping with abandon, a small part of the whites of his eyes showing, giving me and my sister reason to snigger.

Oh, Barot. I can't not think back to simpler times without my eyes misting over. When life was easy, vacation periods coincided, when we were innocent, stupid, and shamelessly happy.

I wrote this whole monologue in one go, and I know what flowed from my fingertips were not words, but carefully stashed away memories, of a small insignificant place long ago... of a paradise lost.

Barot, Himachal Pradesh

Fish Farms, Barot

A Thousand Splendid Suns

A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS- Khaled Hosseini

(Bloomsbury Publishing, 2007)

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'One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,

Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.'

And so the 17th century Persian Poet Saib-e-Tabrizi immortalized the spirit of Kabul forever.

Prejudiced and judgmental to a fault, I happened to pick up 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' at a time when the out-sourcing of terrorism (and terrorists) from Islamic States into the West was at its peak. I flopped on my bed, swimming in all my preconceived notions, and turned to the first page of the book.

And then I started reading.

Before I knew it, I was sucked into the magical world spun by Hosseini, landing bang in the middle of the narrative of a woman in Pre-Taliban Afghanistan...of her trials, her tribulations, the stories of the lives that revolved around her, that came before, with and after her time.

The book starts off in 1959 Afghanistan, with Mariam, the protagonist, as an outcast living on the edge of the city of Herat, a hustling-bustling melting pot of Persian culture, art and literature. Herat, with its towering minarets from Queen Gauhar Shad, green wheat fields, plump grape orchards and crowded, vaulted bazaars would be the setting of the first 15 years of the protagonist's life, yet she would never come around to experiencing it.

For Mariam was confined to her ghetto, set a hill and a stream away from this cultural paradise, a one room kolba made of sun dried bricks, plastered with mud and straw, housing two cots, a table, two chairs and wooden shelves around a single window. Outside, among a few other things, a chicken coop and a trough for feeding sheep. That and the endless green.

A 'bastard child', she tried escaping to her real father's house, spending a night getting rejected at the doorstep of his mansion, only to be brought back home to find her mother swinging lifelessly from the branches of a tree outside the kolba, not having had the strength to stomach the apparent abandonment.

Soon after, Mariam's well-off but socially insecure father took her in, and put her in an alien world, a prison of marble statues, expensive vases, richly colored tapestries and carpeted hallways, from which she was rarely allowed to step out, for 'honourable' reasons. All that before he married her off to an apparently 'rich', abusive shoemaker, thirty years her senior.

And THAT is how Kabul happens to this story.

As a reader moves through the various phases of Mariam's married life, Kabul's changing face and seasons serve as a suitable backdrop. When Mariam first comes to the city, Kabul betrays its big-city self, with its bursting populace, big cars, grey administrative buildings, crowded markets, lipsticked and skirted women, with all the steely resolve of a city in progress.

This same city transforms itself during the month of Ramadan, taking on a sort of golden hue by night, since it is mostly dead during the day. Sweetmeat sellers with delicious wares piled up in carts, men and women dressed in their finest, lights decorating the facade of anything and everything, and firecrackers lighting up the sky, as the city pours into the streets and crowded markets for iftar together.

Hosseini's Kabul is a joyful place, a potpourri of people from all walks of life, with ethnically diverse backgrounds, co-existing with other people and the elements. Kites, pots, pans, cycle tyres, public tandoors, et al. Here, poets and artists teamed with ordinary men over cups of cardamom tea in roadside cafes. Here, the wise and the foolish, ate together and made merry together. People were kind, people would share, and people were happy. Kabul was alive.

Mariam's street itself is an expression of the people of Kabul trying to make the best of what they have. Public wells, shared cooking spaces, gossiping women, and blossoming friendships in the shadow of bad administration, worse amenities and the worst, abusive husbands.

This of course, was the pre-war scenario.

When the Taliban finally descended upon the streets, it was mob rule at best.

Rockets bombing friends next door, houses collapsing, as the skies outside lit up in garish shades of orange and yellow, with flashes of blinding light and deafening roars at all odd hours of the night. Kabul was a changed place, the spirit of a city raped. Bodies piled upon bodies, as the people took sides between the government and the Taliban, some choosing to stay on and die, some leaving for safer skies. The infrastructure collapsed, as the streets became the death zone, with occasional fires in mountains of rubble. Death and disease were as prominent as Kalashnikov-toting, bearded Taliban leaders with suffocating rules, patrolling the streets in jeeps.

The civil strife reached it's ugliest lows when people accused of flouting senseless laws were publicly prosecuted, either shot, or stoned to death in stadiums, in front of thousands of other people. During the war, these public executions served as perhaps the only way of gathering communally, exchanging news, and inquiring about family.

The main characters of the story then choose to leave Kabul for safer lands in Pakistan, where they live and work, albeit half heartedly, for their hearts and minds are still in Kabul. Their story meets its just end when they return to Kabul and are a part of a new wave of reform sweeping through the country, slowly prodding it back onto its feet again.

This story is as much about Kabul, and the author's longing, for its dining halls piled high with meats, for the joy resonating through its hallways, for its centuries old Pashtun- Uzbek ethnic mix of culture, for the call for azaan as the sun rises, for the din on Id in its marketplaces, and for the people who lived, and died in it, long long ago...

At your service

This too shall pass

OBITUARY

AMRI CHADHA

Architect, Visionary

(1990-2032)

One of the world's first advocates of blue architecture, Amri Chadha, designer of the modern underwater cities of Hudronia and Glascliff, passed away at the age of 42 yesterday in an unfortunate accident, descending the summit of peak Lhotse in Nepal.

A two-time Everester, Ms. Chadha was loved and respected by one and all in the disciplines of architecture, marine engineering and mountaineering. She completed her Bachelor's degree in architecture from School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi and went on to pursue a Master's in Urban design from Harvard Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, MI.

An avid nature lover, Ms. Chadha worked on many urban renewal projects, commercial complexes and residential assignments, in many parts of the world, stressing on sustainability and the environment. In her early 30s, she began developing prototypes for aquatic cities and is known to have subjected herself to under-sea pressures and currents through extensive deep-sea diving along trenches in the Pacific. In 2025, her blueprints for the twin cities of Hudronia and Glascliff in the Polynesian region of the Pacific were accepted and commissioned by the UN.

Ms. Chadha is survived by her husband and two daughters.

Services shall be held this Friday at the family home at the Aldhedge Estate, Geneva, and her ashes will be scattered over the Pacific by air, as per her own wishes on Sunday.