Blood Moon
- Amrusha
- May 19, 2019
- 3 min read
On the silent depths of Dal Lake
A sharp knock on the door startled us in our beds. The first instinct was fear, being two young women in the politically charged and often unstable region of Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir in India. I asked who it was, sounding braver than I felt.
To our relief, we heard the familiar voice of Jahan Mohammad, also known as Johnny, the sixty-year-old boatman assigned to our houseboat. ‘Madam, it’s just me. Can you come out? I’d like to show you something.’
The same morning, we had woken up at 3 am and climbed into Johnny’s shikara, his boat which is lovingly decorated with white and pink silky frills and soft cushions, to go to the famous morning vegetable market on Dal Lake. As the sun rose lazily, we rowed through fields of water lilies stretching as far as the eye could see and sleepy little villages waking up to a busy day. Soon Johnny pulled out a flask of hot, homemade kehwa, a delicious dry-fruit infused tea to warm us up.
Dal Lake is a buzzing ecosystem, home to many small villages. Shikaras are the lifelines of this floating world, used for transport, as shops and for ferrying tourists to and from houseboats. The chaotic market is an overwhelming experience, with shikaras skillfully dodging each other, hawking fresh produce and dewy, colorful flowers.
We then spent the day visiting places Johnny recommended, from the magical Pari Mahal which literally means ‘Palace of Fairies’ to Shankaracharya Temple, with breathtaking panoramas of the valley. We had returned happy and tired and ready to call it a night when Johnny knocked. He stood on the porch of the houseboat and beyond him, a silent, inky Lake Nigeen, gleamed as the light of the almost full moon glanced off faint ripples. ‘Sorry to disturb you, madam, I was going home but the lake just looked so beautiful, I thought I’d ask you ladies if you fancy a shikara ride? I would love the company.’ We didn’t need to be asked twice and stepped onto the little shikara. Underneath the seats was a stash of Johnny’s guilty pleasures- bottles of red wine gifted by delighted foreign tourists and strong, local cigarettes that he hid from his family.
We settled in and he started rowing leisurely, in no particular direction. I asked him how he wasn’t tired from rowing all day. He just laughed, ‘I’ve been rowing on these lakes since I was nine. I don’t feel a thing!’ He asked if we minded him singing. We assured him we would be honoured and his melodious, powerful voice, rough from crude cigarettes, rang out loud and clear across the moonlit lake, keeping rhythm with the paddle’s soft splash. He sang in the local Kashmiri dialect so I sat back and enjoyed the beautiful sounds of the words I did not understand.
After the last notes faded away, my curiosity got the better of me so I broke the comfortable silence we had settled into and asked him what the song was about. He carefully poured out and handed us each a little paper cup of red wine. ‘It’s a folk song’, he said, ‘about a lost Kashmir.’ He smiled a wistful smile that was different from the toothy grin on the weathered face we had gotten so used to. ‘It’s the lament of a mother who lost her son to the violence in Kashmir. She sings of how the soul of her beloved land has been taken away from her, just like the soul of her son’, he said with a quiet sadness in his voice. ‘She talks about a Kashmir of lush valleys and gurgling springs which was once a perfect paradise before the hate, bloodshed, and violence destroyed it. A bountiful Kashmir where poets and painters found inspiration, where today rosy-cheeked children have picked up guns. She grieves because all that’s left of her Kashmir is memories and this song.’ We sat in the same boat yet worlds apart, sipping our wine, on the lake that swallowed the tears of its boatmen and marveled at the beauty of a land that was forgotten, while countries fought over it.
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