Searching for any IT connection
It hasn’t rained for a couple of days, clothes, carpets, shawls dry in the sun on the roof and then are carefully folded and stored with other salvage from the house, which is now a wet wrecked shell. It’s bright and there are things to do but there is a feeling of emptiness, waiting for more rain or perhaps even the waters to go down.
A brother has returned from New Delhi wading for 2km chest high to reach his family, he is shocked. He has seen it all on TV, the aerial shots, submerged cars, rescue centres, makeshift camps, and the rusty red floodwater. We have seen nothing of this and have just heard rumours and a few helicopters. At last the generator kicks in and everyone gathers to watch NDTV News, in silence and disbelief. There are over one million people in Srinagar city and the sinuous Jhelum River has just burst its banks at Lal Chowk and thrust water right into its heart.
Next day Nageen looks beautiful. The chinar tree trunks look shorter, the children’s’ swings on the other bank are missing, some houseboats have rolled over but ours follows the water level. Noah knew about this.
The resourceful cook has found an obscure link to a phone network which can only be reached by sitting high on the ridge of the boat. At last we get a message to one daughter to say ‘we are safe’ and then it cuts out. Satellite is used by the Indian Army only; we are too near the Pakistan border. They are doing a fantastic job though and no doubt this will annoy the militant separatists. At the moment though it is a matter of survival.
Perhaps the water has peaked. There is time for the head of the family to tell us how he is descended from the Muslim prisoner and later emperor Timur and a marriage to a beautiful woman who migrated to Kashmir centuries ago. He talks beautifully.
There is a call “Come on the roof deck”. There is an exceptionally fine full moon in an inky blue sky with puffy clouds sliding past. In England this would be a Harvest Moon but here the crops are largely ruined, apple orchards lost, no saffron fields, and rice paddies washed away.
From my diary – September 2014
