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On the Golden Flower: A Houseboat in the Vale of Kashmir
On the Golden Flower: A Houseboat in the Vale of Kashmir
On the Golden Flower: A Houseboat in the Vale of Kashmir
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On the Golden Flower: A Houseboat in the Vale of Kashmir

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'At 52, I went to live and die there.' A life of retirement with her pet in what had seemed to her as the most beautiful country in the world turned out to be a life of adventure and personal challenges: getting used to living on a houseboat, enduring and enjoying Himalayan mountain and water treks, teaching all ages of Kashmiri students and running schools, exploring her own ideas and beliefs in wonderful exchanges with Kashmiris, both educated and uneducated, facing accusations of spying and murder, fighting for her home, and the final deciding factor of deteriorating health. The presence of her Irish Setter, who accompanied her and journeyed everywhere, affected everything she did and was a source of much fascination to all.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherXlibris UK
Release dateDec 26, 2012
ISBN9781477114834
On the Golden Flower: A Houseboat in the Vale of Kashmir
Author

Vikki Pitcher

Vikki Pitcher was born in Dorset in 1943. After her seventh birthday, she lived a largely nomadic life as the daughter of a military man, as a WRAF Officer, as a married woman, and for thirteen years on her own. She returned to England from Kashmir and then Spain, and settled her beloved Dorset in 2009, in the beautiful Blackmore Vale which inspired her to put together some of her writings about the equally beautiful Vale of Kashmir, both have been described as ‘Heaven on Earth’. This story would be nothing without her companion, Frodo, an Irish Setter of singular and indomitable character, who followed her everywhere in the fields around the lakes and on mountain and river treks, attracting attention and interest.

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    On the Golden Flower - Vikki Pitcher

    Copyright © 2012 by Vikki Pitcher. 303530-PITC

    ISBN: 978-1-4771-1483-4 (ebook)

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

    To order additional copies of this book, contact:

    Xlibris Corporation

    0-800-644-6988

    www.xlibrispublishing.co.uk

    Orders@ Xlibrispublishing.co.uk

    ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

    To my friend and neighbour, Peter Stamp, for his patient support, political and historical input, technological know-how and exact readings of my book.

    To the authors of Europeans in Kashmir: Shafi Shauq, Qaiz Zahoor and Shoukat Farooqi, who started me on the path of understanding the history and huge present-day problem of Kashmir.

    To Christopher Thomas and his wife, for their friendship whilst I was in Spain, and for sowing the seed from which this book grew inspired by Chris’s vast knowledge of Kashmir as an experienced journalist and writer.

    To the Beatles for the excerpts of their song: Nowhere Land which I use in Chapter 16.

    To my friends, Jiggery, Dupa, Tiptip, Basharat and his brother, Faruq, Amar and his son Arshid, Zunie wherever she may be, and many others who made my five years in Kashmir an experience to be remembered. For support and advice, linguistic tuition, and help with Frodo’s care, many thanks to my two professor friends and their families.

    Many thanks for technical advice go to Mr Richard Clarke, BSc (Hons) D.Ophth of Eyes Right Opticians, Sturminster Newton.

    You will not know peace of mind

    if you a kingdom gain,

    Nor will you gain content or rest

    if you give it away.

    Only the mean, free from desire,

    will never die.

    Only he has true knowledge

    who, though alive, is as one dead,

    dead of all desire.

    The soles of my feet wore off on the roads

    while I wandered in search of Him.

    Then lo! On a sudden, I saw

    that He was all and everywhere,

    I had nowhere to go in search of Him.

    This was the Truth of a hundred Truths.

    Who ever learnt of it, will they not wonder?

    Will they not be mad with joy?

    (These Vaakhs or songs, and those throughout the book, are attributed to Lalleshwari known also as Lal Ded, the 14th century Kashmiri poetess and Sufi saint.)

    8HB%20First%20Birthday%20in%20Kashmir.tif

    The author, her houseboy Faruq and Frodo standing on jetty in front of The Golden Flower HB on Nageen Lake, on her first birthday in Kashmir: 16 May 1996

    FOREWORD

    WHAT LED UP TO MY DEPARTURE FROM ENGLAND

    This is in no way a learned treatise on Kashmir. Rather it is the experiences of a naïve, idealistic 52-year-old single woman, who had very little idea of the current political situation, let alone the tragic past and the consequences of the Partition of 1947, on the Himalayan Indian province she was going to live in.

    I went with a strong belief in the innate goodness of everyone. I hoped that by going to Kashmir, I could help at least one family among the many suffering people of this Paradise on Earth. I had not thought through in detail how I might help apart from the idea of buying for myself the most beautiful home I could imagine, thereby pouring into the family finances, money that would enable them to set up again after the paralysis of the past 15 years. That was as far as my ideas went. I had an extraordinary compulsion to go, to get away from life in England. It seemed an opportunity not to be missed. Something I would regret for ever if I did not go.

    I was definitely not doing something because I’d reached a particular age or landmark. If anything, I had just landed a very good secretarial job in a new hospice in Dorset and it was madness to leave it so soon. I had no desire to be challenged or to have something different to experience, because my life had already been filled with travel and excitement, and I had seen and lived life in several other countries. I was driven by a very strong need to go to live the last few years of my life in the ‘Pearl’ in the necklace of India, called Heaven on Earth by the moghuls. More importantly, I felt that life was very short and I wanted to go and live and die in the most beautiful place I had seen, if not in heaven, then so high in the skies as to be almost there, and where I might be able to find myself and my self-respect before it was too late.

    I had had breast cancer and lost my father all at the same time in 1994. Radiotherapy scared me so much that I lost my belief in being able to go on regardless of the future. My father died unexpectedly and suddenly, and my mother immediately began relying on me heavily, but would not agree to me living with her. I felt hurt and alienated from my whole family and very alone. After years abroad, I had not taken to life in England, nor had the English taken to me!

    In the early 1990s, I saw a ten-minute Bookmark programme on television about Rumer Godden, the author of Kingfishers Catch Fire, Greengage Summer and Black Narcissus. Kingfishers Catch Fire describes how she had spent some years in Kashmir with her two daughters in a small chalet overlooking Dal Lake in the Vale of Kashmir, a valley of lakes and rivers in the Himalayas. Life for her in the 1940s was extremely primitive and not without its challenges, but she dogmatically refused to be discouraged throughout various trials, trying to get on with the local people, farmers and villagers.

    Like her, I found a special place in my heart for the kingfisher which nests in a ‘strange, unthoughtful’ place and is gone in a flash of brilliant blue. I was drawn to the symbols of Kashmir which appear in silk carpets, carvings and embroideries. Like Rumer, all have the same importance for me: the kingfisher, the bulbul, the lotus, iris, vine and the chinar leaf.

    I identified with her in this and many of her other auto-biographical books. In Kashmir, she set up a business drying herbs and making herbal remedies; a jealous Kashmiri or disappointed business acquaintance either intentionally or mistakenly thinking he was giving her an aphrodisiac, nearly poisoned her and her daughters with a concoction containing ground glass. Reluctantly she was forced by her concerned family to leave. Like me, she confessed she ‘had some terrifying experiences in India [Kashmir for me], yet the country beckons’.

    I was fired up to go, no kind advice would stop me! It felt so right – for me. I had kept in touch with the houseboat family that my husband and I had stayed with in 1982, and in May 1995, I went out to see them with the intention of buying one of their houseboats: the Golden Flower HB.

    Beforehand, I had thought of all the things that could possibly happen to me, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine what would actually transpire: that I would run schools, climb some of the highest mountains in the world, challenge the authorities in New Delhi, be accused of murder even. Nor had I anticipated the effect on myself of living among Kashmiris who had become traumatised and dependent unlike the extraordinarily independent people of Ladakh. I got a distinct feeling of Kashmir being a Nowhere Land full of disillusioned hopeless people, and entitled the bulk of my writings just that: a place without hope, forgotten by the world. But in the end, I could not give up on this so beautiful place, with its highly intelligent and skillful people, so distinct in their looks and ways that even I found it possible to recognise a Kashmiri in the crowded streets of New Delhi.

    Like Rumer Godden, in the many and diverse things I did, I discovered a lot about myself and human nature, before I too had to retire to Europe. I did not have children with me, but I did have my faithful friend, an Irish Setter I called Frodo, who unknowingly was my guardian, and who affected many events without realizing it. Because of him, we went to Spain for the following eight years after leaving Kashmir.

    This is an autobiographical record taken from my copious writings and travelogue notes, from the articles I wrote for local, national and international newspapers, and the many hundreds of letters I sent to my mother, and friends all over the world, who were kind enough to send them back with photographs, when I started this work of many years! Hence the change from present to past tense when I’m adding comments since I left Kashmir.

    I hope you enjoy sharing my journey through five years of life.

    Vikki Pitcher

    Sturminster Newton, Dorset - March 2012

    Map%201%20Indian%20Continent.JPG

    Indian Continent

    Map%202%20NAGEEN%20AND%20DAL%20LAKES.tif

    Nageen and Dal Lakes

    Map%203%20KASHMIR%20VALLEY%20NORTH.tif

    Valley of Northern Kashmir & Jammu State

    INDEX

    1. Arrival in Kashmir

    2. Shafika’s Wedding

    3. Visit to Kashmir in 1982

    4. My new Home

    5. Frodo and local dogs

    6. Seasons and Wildlife in Paradise on Earth

    7. New Life and Customs in Kashmir

    8. Attempts at earning my Living

    9. Personal Encounters

    10. Employment Hopes

    11. Water Trek through Heaven on Earth

    12. Spring 1996 – Mr Marvelous – Terry

    13. My marriage – Streets of Srinagar

    14. Family – More Experiences

    15. Dunoo trek – Storm

    16. Near sinking – Deportation Order! - Houseboat Repairs completed

    17. Chief Minister and yet more Dramas

    18. The Death of my Friend

    19. Lake-Isle Hotel – Kargil war

    20. Unique wedding – Ladakh - Mountain trek – Collision with Courage

    21. Death and Loss of Belief

    22. Finale – Departure

    ONE

    ARRIVAL IN KASHMIR

    Ill or well, whatever befalls

    let it come.

    My ears will not hear;

    my eyes will not see.

    When the voice calls from within the innermost mind,

    The lamp of faith burns steady and bright

    even in the wind.

    In August 1995 I went out to live in Kashmir. I was 52 years old. Even now, over 25 years later, I can’t really say why I finally went. I was driven by a compelling need to go; I was traumatised by the sudden death of my father at the same time as the discovery that I had breast cancer, followed by the two operations and radiotherapy, all in the autumn of 1994. I wanted to live and die in the heavenly environs of the Vale of Kashmir. I had spent two weeks there in 1982 and had vowed then to go back after experiencing a ‘spiritual awakening’ on a mountain side.

    In 1994, six tourists disappeared on a trek to the Mansar and Tarsar Lakes. There were many theories about what had happened to them, whether Pakistani or other foreign insurgents had taken them out of the country over the mountains or hidden them somewhere in the Valley, in Jammu, Ladakh or the Zanskar; or whether it was an Indian Government plot to discourage tourists and pilgrims from visiting the country, and to give them an excuse to pour more troops in and defend the country unencumbered by foreigners as witnesses of what was really going on. Kashmir has very remote areas bordering onto Pakistan, Afghanistan and China, but a foreigner is easily spotted in the wilderness, and word travels fast in Kashmir, Kashmiris being great talkers. I heard on many occasions of the hostages being spotted, with militants in outlying villages, in a taxi in Srinagar even.

    Of the group, an American escaped soon after his capture; the Dutchman was beheaded and his body found near Pahalgam with the word Al Faran (the name of a militant group) carved on his chest. Many attempts to find the remaining hostages and pleas by diplomats and family to get them released followed. In May 1996, a captured rebel told investigators that all four had been shot dead in December 1995, five days after an Indian military ambush killed four of the original hostage takers including the man leading them, Adbul Hamid Turki. It remains a mystery until this day about what happened to the four as the bodies have never been found.

    Despite this, I just knew I had to go back, to see theKashmiri houseboat family I had kept in touch with since our holiday in 1982. I had sent letters of concern when the political troubles and clashes with the police and military made Kashmir a less recommended place to visit. Along with all the other houseboat people, they suffered from the lack of tourists for over ten years.

    So, in May 1995, I made a six week recce there, leaving Frodo with his usual dog minder, the owner of his best friend Rufus. The Dunoo family owned three houseboats; they had looked after us very well, but business had declined with the political disagreement and fighting between India and Pakistan over the Kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir, a small valley in the mighty Himalayan range. I had thought then that it was the most beautiful place in the world. I wrote letters to them for nearly fourteen years promising every time that I would keep my promise and return! During my stay in May, a sailing buddy from my hometown Weymouth came for a couple of weeks to give me his opinion and moral support. I don’t remember particularly going over-board about the idea, but I went ahead nevertheless and agreed to buy one of the Dunoo family’s houseboats in Nageen Lake, the Golden Flower H.B. We had a lawyer set up a legal document laying out the deposit and further payments I would make to the family, in return for a detailed list of repairs, including the repairs to the bottom, and renewals of fixtures, fittings and furniture that they would carry out to the houseboat.

    I was in seventh heaven, my head so high in the clouds that I missed the signs that should have warned me of the pitfalls I inevitably fell into. I think I just did not want to believe anything but the best of my new friends. Maybe this was due to the traumatisation of the personal tragedies of 1994 and my ongoing and continuing inability to grasp how soon the money would go, particularly with the parasitical character of the Kashmiris. I was so willing to believe in the charm, apparent generosity, hospitality and business ingenuity of the Kashmiri people, all these character traits noted by Sir Walter Lawrence over a century ago in his detailed and learned tome The Valley of Kashmir. Later, I was to note the isolation of foreigners by the houseboat people to prevent them being influenced by outsiders, the telephone that never arrived, the ensuing arguments, delaying tactics, such a contrast to the dreamworld I lived in during the first wonderful autumn months. The houseboat people are not classed as the same race by land-bound and land-owning Kashmiris. Later, I was to hear sneering references to the houseboat people as Hanjis: the lowest of the low. We, foreigners, do not understand or see a difference – at first.

    Three months after my recce, in August 1995, my little house in the Bride Valley of Dorset was empty at last, after garage and car-boot sales. Frodo was taken by friends to the Petcare Centre near the airport. With ten bags of luggage and a new boom-box, I was taken by another friend to Heathrow. At the airport, I became quite dazed by what I had set in motion, and couldn’t find the VAT forms for the radio and several other purchases I had made at the last minute which needed to be signed by the Customs official, therefore missing the chance to get the VAT reimbursed.

    After an eight-hour flight to New Delhi airport, I was met by members of the Dunoo family and we journeyed into the bowels of the teeming city. It took me several days to recover from the combination of packing, handing the house in England over to my tenant, seeing to the arrangements for my dog, saying goodbye to family and friends and finally the long flight from England.

    We had to wait three days for Frodo to catch up with me. I was singularly unprepared for this, and did not understand why Frodo did not turn up at New Delhi airport when expected a few hours after me. I did not have all the telephone numbers I needed to find out what was going on in England. The Indian telephone system is not the best in the world, so the days were filled with considerable anxiety waiting for my beloved dog. He was delayed because the carrier, Air India, had three cadavers to carry and, like most airlines, do not carry animals in the hold at the same time. So Frodo came by British Airways. My relief was somewhat tempered by the fact that his ticket cost more than mine! But then there followed a three-hour nightmare struggle to get Frodo out of the clutches of Customs at New Delhi airport. The veterinarian would not release him directly, wanting to put him into quarantine, and he would not allow me to take his dried dog food. I had all the papers, certificates of good health, rabies and annual injection certificates required and still he would not let Frodo go. At one stage, the customs official left us in the office of the large warehouse where airfreight was stacked around. I peeped in; Frodo was there in his travelling box. He had been in it for more than twelve hours already, allowing for crating him at Heathrow, the eight-hour flight and now several hours in the warehouse. My heart was near to breaking point. I could hear my beloved friend crying and barking. So I went into the warehouse and opened up the box, and let him out on the lead; together we ran round the crates and boxes. He didn’t find the smells at all interesting at first, and took ages to squeeze a pee. Once done, I hastily I put him back in the box, and left him again, this time his eyes looked very beseeching, ears hanging flat down the sides of his head, front legs splayed out to get a better view out. As I disappeared behind a mountain of crates, he began to cry and yelp.

    The veterinarian appeared again. What followed was a comical ‘examination’ of the dog, whom he refused to look at let alone touch. I had to open the dog’s mouth for the official to look briefly in. I persuaded him to let me have Frodo, as I was going to have him on an island in Kashmir, where, I said, he would not be in contact with anyone. Of course, he was angling for a bribe; as a result, I’m sure, of not getting one, the disappointed official told me I had to bring Frodo back to New Delhi in 6 months’ time for a check up. If I didn’t return, he would give orders for the dog to be destroyed. I have always had definite views about paying bribes to officials to get them to do what is their public duty. It is a fact of life in so many countries that corruption is rife, but to go along with it, is to perpetuate something that is wrong and destructive. However, I did make my own life difficult many times by sticking adamantly to this belief.

    The official would not allow Frodo out of the box. We had to carry him in it across the tarmac to the taxi, get him straight away into the car, dismantle the crate and load it in two pieces one inside the other onto the roof of the car. Some of the ten items of my luggage were put into the crate on top, the rest filled the boot, bags and other things piled in around us and under our feet. In this way, we set off directly to Kashmir.

    Frodo took all in his stride: he seemed to love the 12-hour journey from England, the three hour wait in Delhi Airport for the import formalities to be completed, followed by the 27 hours in the ancient Ambassador car carrying four members of the family, the dog and myself, and our luggage, driven continuously for the whole journey by the taxi owner.

    We were all happy and smiling with relief, two men squeezed in the back beside me, Frodo by the window, the driver with two other men in front. We had the windows open for quite a lot of the time, and Frodo and I began to experience the smells, sounds, heat and dust of India that I remembered so well. There were strong smells of farms, of dung from the bullocks pulling carts on the road side and the occasional camel striding out with a man on a little wheeled vehicle behind; smells of spices and peppers drying, wood smoke, charcoal and dung fires, buses belching diesel fumes in black clouds over all; sounds of horns and hooters blaring, bells tingling, a lot of violent braking and swerving. The chatter of my companions in rapid Kashmiri. Much of the chatter was mine, too, ninety-to-the-dozen in English to the Kashmiris who were beaming with pleasure. My oh my! What happiness! Back in India again! I felt so happy to be here at last, to begin a new life.

    I kept hugging and patting Frodo with relief and everyone grinned, the men could not take their awe-filled eyes off the dog. There was no space in the car, but I did make every effort to keep the dog by the window. I did not want anyone fainting with fright. Frodo had yet to learn that not everyone in India would be glad to see him, or want to ‘shake hands’ and pet him.

    We drove across the dusty Punjab plains of northern India, stopping for a drink, snack and calls of nature, and rest for the driver, every two or three hours. I enjoyed small cups of milky sweet tea, and occasionally, rice, dahl and vegetables cooked in spices at the roadside cafes.

    Then up into the hills from Jammu on the windy narrow roads for 6 hours to Pattnitop before the 3-kilometre long Banihal Tunnel at 9,000 feet. We trundled into the blackness, no overhead lights, the noise of trucks thundering behind us. Suddenly a truck coming towards us roared past, and another and another. We were choking in the fumes; I hastily pulled Frodo in and we closed the windows. The arch-shaped white light of the exit appeared ahead at last, and we popped out into the sunshine like a ball coming out of a canon. Windows open again, and we were looking down into the sunny Vale of Kashmir.

    Many hours later, and several more stops for chai and lentil/vegetable dishes where I found the lack of conventional toilets and Frodo ditches of unpleasant smells very trying and uninviting. We were a source of wonder and interest wherever we went; an audience of children and men, sometimes a few women, stood silently around us; and many faces pressed at the car windows before we drove off.

    We are very relieved to arrive in Nageen just after sunset. Through the gate in the field by Ashai Bagh bridge, we bounce to a stop at the steps where the shikarawallahs wait in their picturesque gondolas to taxi people around the lakes. All five men leap out of the taxi and greet their friends and the boat men with hugs, back slapping and face touching. They unload my ten bags, Frodo’s crate and the various plastic bags. What a squeeze, we are like puppies popping out one after the other from their labouring mother. Frodo and I go for a quick run around the field under the majestic chinar trees, stopping at various inviting posts and pillars. No rabbits though. Poor Frodo, there will be much to get used to from now on. Houseboats line the shores with the occasional light blinking through the foliage as the darkness increases.

    Back at the steps, Frodo is confronted by several shikaras, the bows resting on the steps, canopies hung with patterned curtains flapping in the breeze over a sofa bed affair and lots of people in big coats all smelling of charcoal smoke and incense. All new sights and smells for the dog. He looks at me helplessly, eyes popping, knock-kneed and panting. Running along planks in the fields at home, jumping through hoops, up ladders and such like had been fun, but he is afraid of water. In my endeavours to get Frodo on board, I get my feet wet as I tug the leash. He comes on board in one great leap taking me by surprise. Uproar from the watchers. He sits down on the maharajah-style seat-bed, most of him, bony elbows and all, digging uncomfortably into my thighs. The men cheer and rock the boat as they get on board, one at the bow and several behind the headboard of the

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