Kashmir and Karachi - Thoughts upon returning from Neelum Valley

Welcome back readers and Eid Mubarak! I can't believe this is my second post in 2018 and more than half the year has flown by...I am extremely sorry for not being able to post anything (I was busy with stuff) but I'll try to post more regularly from now on. :)

This post is just some reflections upon returning to my home-city Karachi after a trip to Sharda (Neelum Valley, Azad Kashmir). Kashmir is such a wonderful place..I was awed by the beauty and serenity of the atmosphere. We got ample opportunities to explore the place as well as to interact with the locals and, in short, had lots of fun. :)

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I glance out of the cab’s windscreen. I squint. How come are we not surrounded by mountains? I wonder. Then it strikes me: of course. We are in Karachi, and there are no mountains in Karachi.

As our cab hits the roads, we are surrounded by cars, people, traffic, lights (Karachi isn’t called the city of lights for no reason), billboards and visual pollution. Shops are bustling with people doing their final Eid shopping and preparations. The sky is a orange-ish mauve hue owing to smoke and air pollution and there are no stars. I think of the deep blue Neelum sky which would light up with stars on cloudless nights. All of a sudden, I wish I lived in Kashmir instead of Karachi.

There is a sense of urgency in the air – everyone seems to be in a hurry. Impatient drivers honk their horns at whoever happens to be driving at a slower speed. In my mind’s eye, I picture young Kashmiri girls who are seldom in a hurry, no matter how many cows they have to bring back home before dusk.

On the footpath sits a woman with her two little children, her hands outstreched. No one seems to notice her. In Kashmir, there was no such concept – the financially well-off would always help the poorer families, no matter what. As a native told us, those who own cattle and goats in his village share the milk with those who don’t have livestock. As a result, you would rarely spot a beggar on Kashmir’s streets, despite the fact that the average annual income of Kashmiri villagers is quite lower than that of us urban-dwellers. In Neelum, you could not walk a kilometer without meeting a local who would invite you to her home for dinner, whereas in Karachi, no one emphasizes for the millions who go to sleep hungry each night.

In my neighbourhood, very few people know each other. I myself have never met the family who lives next door - while Azam Shah, a resident of Sharda, says he knows everyone in the district, all the way up to Taobat; a village located almost sixty-two kilometers away.

Villages in Kashmir are extremely close-knit. People are used to treating friends, neighbours and fellow villagers like close family. Yasir, a Kashmiri fifth-grader, said about the local fisherman-cum sailor:‘Woh tou mera mamoon hai’ (he is my maternal uncle). Shah jee, the fisherman, was no relative to him, but the kids there are used to calling their elders khala (auntie) or chacha (uncle). One doesn’t have to be your father’s elder brother for you to call him taya jee (uncle) in Kashmir.
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Hope you enjoyed reading this! Please don't forget to comment!
And stay tuned, because I'll be posting more stuff soon... :)