memories of kashmir..

we came to this place called 'the heaven on earth', when I was eight years old.Father was transfered to jammu from delhi and don't remember whether i was happy to see this so called unique place,for me every place seemed to be the same 'cause we often travelled where his job takes us to.Even the changes in climate wouldnt have made much difference, for now we were accustomed to all conditions,travelling to extreme north and far eastern states.
Here..the nature is dressed to kill..jaw dropping beauty all around,snow capped mountains,pine trees,apples and humble 'kashmiris',tall, well built with cheeks like apples,red and bubbly.
I never had enough opportunity to go around because everything was available inside the military campus.of!course school was little away but we had the army bus for transportation.
The initial months,when our quarter was not allotted ,we stayed for rent outside the campus and there, I experienced something which I will never forget.Although the nature had given everything to this place,the local houses did not have the sanitation facilities as any common house elsewhere would have.
The sanitation was very primitive and unique,all the house had their toliets on terrace and they were just a block of four walls without roofs,inside you have partitions for seperate rooms and each cabin would have two rows of cemented blocks parallel to each other to climb on and sit to relieve ourself,there was no drainage facility and the waste would just accumulate on the cemented floor.Now,every next day a person would come(mostly ladies),who is employed to dispose the waste(all the people who do this job are of the same caste ) with a broom and a big bamboo woven basket.she would collect all the waste inside the basket and wash the cabins ,then
would fold the broom in one hand,keeping the basket on her head and stroll away happliy to dispose,where does she do the disposal I never cared..
Imagine,a day when she falls sick or in case of a heavy rain..uh!! This 'was' kashmir..'the heaven on earth'.
We live in such a vast country where not only the languages,food,clothes,climates differ,even the methods of disposing human waste differ..but still there is a unity in diversity..we are all Indians.
the mighty Indians, the brainy indians.This is a country where a genius called 'Ramanuja' lived,who used to scribble his mathematical theorams on waste court papers,'cause he was employed as 'sepoy' in madras court and who later died of 'asthma' in london because he did not have the physical capacity to withstand the cold in london.His reasoning of infinity is still considers to be a genious work,scribbled on some of those 'yellow' court papers..
'I am proud to be an Indian'.