My childhood was spent in and around the Dal Lake. I grew up in a house bursting with assorted cousins and post-school hours were devoted to exploration and fun – climbing up the Shankracharya hill, riding in 'borrowed' shikaras and dakotas, mass participation in games of football or 'birra' cricket, flying kites and gawking at visitors (tourists) being disgorged by huge buses on to the boulevard.
On rare occasions we would venture as far as the mysterious lanes of the Dalgate bazaar which, with its strong Central Asian flavour, seemed to have a fairytale aura to our young eyes.
Beyond the tonga stand lay smoky shops filled with huge sacks of wares peddled by turbaned and pheraned shopkeepers pulling languidly on their hookahs.
The flower-covered roofs of earlier times and the tonga stand of my childhood are long gone – unplanned 'progress' having doomed the area into 'modernity'.
So, decades on from the earlier photograph, what is wrong with this picture?
My take:
– Heritage buildings replaced by hodgepodge structures
– Ramshackle sheds and garish billboards obscuring the delicate architecture of the area
– Iredeemably ugly poles and overhead wires, and unmaintained switch boxes
– Handcarts and illegally parked cars and autorickshaws obstructing traffic
– Leftover building material on roads Not in picture: – Street hawkers blocking pedestrian access. – Cows and sometimes horses blocking roads. – Packs of feral dogs harassing passers-by. – Garbage strewn on roads. – Roads left un-repaired after digging for pipes/cables etc. – Zero public toilet facilities. It is not like that architectural heritage cannot be preserved and maintained. Rebuilt Arts Emporium. Restored Boathouse at Nagin Lake. I feel that we need a project for soft loans and hand-holding for restoration of privately owned buildings so generations after us can enjoy these timeless works of art. Dalgate, being the nerve centre of tourism in Srinagar, can be a priority area for preservation of heritage structures, efficient traffic control, ample parking facilities and cleanliness. The lessons learnt here can be replicated across Srinagar city so it can live up to its name which historians tell us means 'city of wealth and beauty'. P.S All those 'experts' who quote natural progress, market forces, tourism demands blah blah can compare wartime and modern-day Europe, some 70 years later:
