I set out to my expedition to kashmir on 10th of march 2015 on the eve of the interview which had been scheduled to be held at the deep hostile territory of Kashmir named Pulwama. At first i was very much skeptical about going and living there but later i was being convinced by my mother and her father that there was nothing dangerous about living there and rather we could stay at their own house, so i along with my cousin brother Vicky took the keys of their house and set sail to kashmir.
We were a group of eight people in the Sumo all were friends with my brother Vicky, i only knew a couple of them, and also there was a very beautiful girl in the Sumo which was the cousin sister of my brother's friend, her name was Neha. so the Sumo picked us up at our home at 4.45 am and we sat at the last seats available and then we went to pick that girl from Bakshi Nagar, from the moment i saw her i knew that i am gonna enjoy this ride.
The driver was also a jammu locale and also we all synced very well. The girl Neha sat just infront of me with two other married ladies of our group and the front seat along side with the driver was occupied my two of my brother's friend. I along with my brother sat at the last row with another person which was also my brother's friend and by the way was also fat, so it became a bit difficult to adjust along with such a mighty personality but we managed. we were all having a good time passing jokes on one another and sharing a good laugh and it became very easy to pass time with them. In no time we covered half of the distance and we reached Peera which is famous for its 'Rajmah Chawal', the driver parked the car and we came down to have our lunch at one of the dhabas there and i was very hungry too. I went to my brother and persuaded him to eat lunch but he denied, so it felt a bit awkward for me to sit all with the other group mates. Eventually we all ate together except my brother but as soon as i finished i went and paid for my lunch and after some time one of the friends of my brother who is also named Vicky(the brother of Neha) came to me and lovingly scolded me for paying my bill. After have a sumptuous lunch and tasting not so good 'Rajmah Chawal' at that dhaba as the original dhaba was not not open that day, we continued on our journey towards kashmir. Soon enough we reached Banihal and the driver got the news that there was a huge traffic jam after banihal and it would take us 4 to 5 hours to reach srinagar, so we decided to go by train from Banihal. We went to the train station and took the tickets and also we saw huge pile of snow there too and it was my first time seeing the snow and i was really enjoying it. The girl Neha was standing beside me with two huge luggage bags over her shoulder so i insisted to carry one of them, first she denied but later she agreed and i was also happy to lend a helping hand. The Train came around 2.15 pm and it was heavily crowded at the platform, so we pulled all of our stuff in and we got ready for the arrival of the train because we knew it would get ugly when the train would get there. The train came a bit late than its scheduled time and and the crowd was getting anxious to get inside the train. The train came and somehow we managed to get some seats and i was sitting alongside my brother and Neha was at the other corner just adjacent to my row. Slowly the train reached our destination so i along with my brother had to bail out and as i stood up to get out, Neha greeted me and wished me luck for my Interview and i did the same and also i asked her to take care of herself and then we arrived at our station and we left the train after bidding adieu to all the other group mates to set foot in the valley.
From There we boarded a cab and went to pulwama. After reaching pulwama i recalled my fathers words that there was some Hindu restaurant at Pulwama bus stand, so we searched for it but before we could find it we came across and utterly disgusting scene at one of the butchers shop, where a cow put for a display as her meat was ready to be sold to the people. That hideous face of people cutting a cow for the taste of their tongue just boiled my blood, so we decided not to eat or drink anything there and to continue to our destined location. We took a mini bus from there and went to Arihal, the place where i was born and also the house of my grand father was there where we were about to live for the next couple of nights. I anticipated the place to be a lot better but again to my disappointment it was dirty as hell, i wondered that the place which was once considered as heaven is now much like the diseased infected rat hole. My heart was not consenting but we went towards our room where we had to stay and there was our 'Mamaji' waiting for us inside the room, we met him and greeted him and after that he showed us around the house, the bathroom, the kitchen and all other paraphernalia of the house, and then he shoved the keys up our asses and bade us farewell and we thought that we had someone looking after us for the night and caring for us but i guess we were on our own. After the whole disappointing day (except the ride in the Sumo) we set up our things in the room which had no TV and literally no electricity apparently the area was so backward that even the electricity knocked the door only for an hour during the whole day. We set up our luggage and put some fire in 'Kangri' and laid the mattresses and blankets so that we could keep ourselves warm because it was freezing outside and also there was a lot of snow there too. My brother and i first took some rest and then after some time we decided to make dinner, my brother cooked rice and i cooked 'Dhal' as i was the only one who knew how to cook different dishes. After some tiresome hard work of peeling onions and garlic and preparing Dhal and boiling water in such freezing climatic conditions, we took dinner and shared a good laugh alongside the dinner and then we went to sleep at around 10 pm and rounded off that days hectic schedule.
I woke up at around 7.30 am and then my brother made some tea for me and i got ready to leave for the venue where my interview was going to be held, we took a light breakfast and left for the venue at 8:30 am. We took a Mini Bus from Arihal upto Pulwama and there we asked the localized persons about the location and they showed us the way, we reached the venue at 9:30 am and at that point Vicky wished my luck and went back to the room after dropping me to the venue. Interview process started at about 10.30 am and that time they gave us some checklist form to fill and also made us to verify all our documents. After filling the form i quickly went and verified my documents so that i could give interview quickly because there were about 80(including many married and single women) candidates waiting to give the interview which figuratively blew my mind off, so i quickly verified my documents and after 15 odd candidates i was lined up to give my interview. After one and half an hour my turn came so i went inside the room where three interviewers were sitting in different sofas, one was straight ahead me one was to my right and the last one was to my left. The one just ahead me started started with the interview asking about my qualifications and then he asked me a weird thing that they do not need any person with technical hand of computers because they don't need anyone to teach computer, i was about to counter question him but it barged myself from doing that. He asked me whether in what subject i am more comfortable, i replied him with math and science then he asked me some simple questions of chemistry about the difference between carbon dioxide and carbon mono oxide and their presence in the atmosphere and their properties along with others and then they asked me about the Local GK which by the way i was not familiar with, they asked me a series of questions regarding the sex ratio of pulwama, literacy rate of pulwama, number of zones in pulwama and the actual name of Pulwama and I found myself unable to answer those questions like they were trying to make a ridicule out of me but I sincerely told them about my unfamiliarity regarding the local GK. He then shifted his questions from local GK to politics and asked me about some current ministers in the cabinet such as Dy Cm, Education Minister in this term as well as the last term and i answered them quite rightly and then they asked me to leave and i left from there not completely satisfied but still i knew in my heart that i answered all those question which were in my radar. As i left the interview room other candidates may it be males of females sprang and jumped upon me like i was a cute little puppy or i was like some celebrity and they asked me more questions than the persons inside the interview room did, like how was it, what happened, what questions they asked, are the interviewers good or evil, are they old or young and God knows many such questions and with much difficulty i made my way through it and stepped outside the venue gate and breathed the air as i knew that now the monkey was off my back. I took the mini bus from there back to my room and again to my much awaited disappointment the traffic was stuck midway and there was no possible way to get out of there apparently it was a group of local-ides who blocked the traffic to protest against the outrageous power cuts which were happening in their area, so as good as already my day was going i had to step outside and to cover the distance on foot. I opened my phone tried to locate and navigate myself via GPS but the internet services were very much slow in that area which again added to my long list of disappointment, so i started to ask for direction from different persons who were on foot to their homes till i found one family who were also going to Arihal, I asked them for the directions and they were very polite so I opened myself to them slowly and they also then shared those days of Migration and cursed those days and there was a small kid with them who became friendly with me we talked a lot and it took more than half an hour to reach Arihal and then i bid them adieu and went to my room. As i entered my room my brother Vicky had already prepared rice and also there was some yesterday's leftover Dhal remaining so i came in and freshened up a bit and then took my lunch. After some time one of local muslim guy came to visit us and greeted us warmly and assured us that if we needed anything he would assist us, later on my brother and I went outside and i dressed myself like all the other muslim local-ides, its the other thing that my accent threw me but other than that i was blending quite well (well a lot of credit goes to me beard, i have to say i admire my beard..). Vicky went inside a barber's shop go get a shave and there were some old men sitting there and and as i already told that our accent was the main flaw the old people quickly realized that we weren't from here, and then we revealed our identities and quite to my surprise they were friends of my grandparents, then they hugged us and told us of all they good times that they have had with the hindus at their time and how they really missed all those times and in top of all that they gave a free shave to my brother but my brother insisted and gave them the money. After coming out of that Barber's shop we went and brought some edibles for us and some milk also and then went back to our room. Then i made some tea and we had some edibles with it. After taking tea and a short nap i got up to make dinner(Potatoes with onion 'gand aloo') and rice, it took me a good amount of time to make dinner because it was only me who made the whole dinner that night. After more than an hour of preparing dinner i along with my brother sat and ate dinner and then i went to sleep and vicky was studying to prepare for his interview which was scheduled for the next day and thats how we wounded up that day.
My brother woke me up at 8.00 am and requested me to make tea for him as he had to study and i wondered that he was taking the interview way too seriously. I got up and freshened myself a bit and then made him tea, after having a light breakfast Vicky suited himself up and i wished him to kill the interviewers(figuratively). He left for the interview and then i went back in my mattress and slept again and after an hour i went outside and brought some edibles and came back and made some tea again and took another round of breakfast and that time my brother called me and asked me to packup all the things and come to pulwama as we planned to go srinagar and stay there for a night at the apartment of the Vicky's uncle, so i washed up all the utensils and cleaned all the rooms and all packed all our stuff and got ready. I locked the whole house and left from Arihal around 1:40 pm and within 20 minuted i reached Pulwama at the venue where the interview was being held and met my brother and apparently there was another big protest(the protest happened because in the district hospital there a couple of pregnant women died due to wrong dosage of the drugs) happening at pulwama and the blocked the roads there so we decided to stay at the venue and and wait till that was over. My brother told me that one of his friends who had his interview along with his wife brought their car and they insisted my brother to come with them and they assured him to drop him to his desired location at srinagar. We waited till the time things cooled down there and then we went to Srinagar in the car of my brother's friend and this time i found myself sitting with a nice beautiful girl by my side as she was the sister in law of that person and wasn't she beautiful but still not as good as Neha, she left an impression in my mind. In midway we took a detour to their house and then that friend of my brother took us inside their home and then offered us food and both of us were already hungry so we pretended first not to eat but then we knew that we won't be able to resist. We took our lunch there and it was tasty, i mean seriously tasty, it was all simple stuff, dhal, aloo and paneer but it tasted wonderfull, so i filled my belly as much as i can and as soon we finished we were ready to leave. Within 5 minutes of finishing our lunch we left for Srinagar and after some time we reached there and vicky's friend dropped us a couple of meters ahead of the apartment where we had to go. We went by foot from there and there i realized something not so good about vicky, as he was walking we was spitting like at the speed of 101 spits per minute, like he had some kind of an invisible machine of some kind or a special power inside him, i was wondering that from where all of that saliva was coming out, no wonder he is so skinny indeed his all body power might be utilized in creating saliva only. It irritated me a bit but one thing i knew that the small and little problems do not come to surface if you love the person that much, so we continued towards the apartment. We reached the place at around 6.00 pm and then we first of all emptied our bowels and took rest and talked and laughed the whole evening. We ate our dinner bit late and then we decided to leave in the morning for Jammu and then we called all the other group mates who traveled with us to Kashmir to check if they were ready to come with us and again to my very long list of disappointments(and this was a big one) i heard the news that Neha wasn't traveling with us as she already went back to Jammu with one of her uncles but the others were ready to join us. So we fixed the timings and checked with all the other group mates and then packed all of our stuff and went to sleep.
I woke up at 7.30 am and went to bathroom freshened a bit and then took a light breakfast and then rechecked all of our stuff again and then went to catch the train from Srinagar upto Banihal. We left the apartment at exactly 8:45 am and from outside we took a mini bus which dropped us to location named 'Pantha Chowk' and from there we took another mini bus which dropped us at the railway station. We had to cover a couple hundred meters to reach inside the station and there again my wicked mind noticed that spitting issue of my brother and again i hinted him a bit but then i persuaded myself to not to pay attention and so we walked inside the station. There was a long queue at ticket counter, generally i would bypass that and directly go into the train without ticket but i was with my brother so i lined myself up in the queue to take the ticket. After buying the ticket we went on the platform and waited for the train which arrived almost 20 minutes late than its scheduled time and also it was heavily crowded both inside the train and also on the platform. Some how we managed to get ourselves inside the train and it was very very congested inside. After a long miserable 90 minute ride in the train we finally reached the Banihal station where we met our other group mates. We boarded a Sumo(SUV) there and started our ride back to jammu. On our journey upto Ramban we were many times stuck in horrible traffic jams and it took us much much longer to Ramban as it usually would had. Finally we reached Peera again and this time that Dhaba was open and we all went there and had our lunch the famous 'Rajmah Chawal' there and this time it was good and i really savored it. Then the driver picked up speed because we got pretty late due to traffic jams as the my brother was engaged in his humorous talks with his friends and you know where i was engaged, i was engaged in finding the digital footprints of Neha off the internet. I took me sometime but everybody knows the nerves of steel i got i finally found her on the Internet, it was a long process because i only knew her first name and the name Neha is the most common name in India and there are lakhs of girls named neha on the internet but thats the other thing. The process i wont disclose because if i would it would only harm me but nonetheless i did it. After feeling a bit pride on my achievement it became easy for me to go through the ride. We reached jammu at 9.00 pm and that time we had no means of transport to travel home, so we requested the driver to go some extra miles and drop us at our homes and he agreed. The driver dropped us half a Km short of our home and from there we went on foot and till the time everyone bade farewell to one another and after that i went alone to reach my home sweet home.
All in all this was a good one. ;-)
