i had always read and seen in TV that Kashmir is a troublesome geography and felt that india should soon try to resolve the issue and get complete control over the state. but then i was behaving like a typical indian, born and brought up in one of those states that have not even experienced the pains of partition and do not share borders with either pakistan or bangladesh. we do share borders with nepal in bihar but that has never been a point of worry for india. when i joined this job and stared looking after sales in the geography of Punjab, Himachal and Jammu-Kashmir, i started knowing things better.
for most of the time i travel in punjab as the business is mostly concentrated there and frankly the onluy places that i have gone to in J&K are Jammu, Katra and Leh, none of which are part of the Kashmir valley. But having my distributors there gives me some feel of how would life be there. I have been planning to go to Srinagar but the safety requirements of my company still advice me not to go. Nevertheless, the issue that brought me closer to the Kashmir issue was this fuss created over the Amarnath land ownership. I am not completely aware of the issue and the only fact that i know was that the government instigated a hot debate about the ownership of the amarnath land. as it falls in the kashmir valley, kashmiris would want to have the ownership but then they are Muslims and Amarnath is a hindu pilgrimage. So jammu people also would want the owneership. this little discussion soon turned out to be one of the biggest clashes between the people of Jammu and Kashmir. These are two different worlds. While Jammu is primarily Hindu and looks more like any city of Punjab, Kashmir is mostly muslim and differs from Jammu in more than one ways.
the disturbance kept rising and there were protests, self-immolation, riots and finally Curfew. Our company has a depot in Jammu that supplies stocks to both Jammu and Kashmir. We had to stop the supplies till the matter calmed down. initially i thought it should last hardly a week. then i felt may be a month...but the issue was not as small as i guessed. i couldn't convince myself as how a piece of land as big as park can become the most prestigious issue between hindus and muslims. but then i reminded myself of 6th december 1992 that how one single temple with a dome of a mosque became an issue big enough to shatter the country for about a decade. the government was in a fix. if the decision wa sin favour of Hindus, Kashmir would burn and if it was in the favour of Kashmiris, Jammu would show signs of disturbance. I kept losing my business and missing my sales targets. but that is not important. I anyways sell cosmetics and i guess people can manage without it for a couple of months. but what about food and milk and vegetables. J&K started starving. No supplies from any other part of the country would reach J&K and people were running out of there reserves. the markets were so empty that the day they would open, we would sell a month's stock in a day. but only if they open.
the troublesome months of Sawan (the month of pilgrimage to Amarnath) passed by and we expected government to take some decision. I had this feeling that chances of Jammu burning were much higher than of Kashmir because while for Kashmiris it was about possesion of land within their geography, Jammu had taken it to the heart linking it directly to religion. Jammu was closed but Kashmir wanted to run normal, we decided to either supply Kashmir through our depot in Punjab or open Jammu depots only for supplies to Kashmir. The latter plan worked for a week. We kept openeing our depots in the nights and loading trucks for Kashmir. Jammu kept mum on business. The government also realized that Kashmir would not create much trouble and finally the decision came in favour of the Hindus. this time, both me and the government had gon wrong. While Jammu returned to normalcy with a blink of the eyelid and we got back our lost sales in just ten days, Kashmir was getting worse. The issue became one of self respect and the Kashmir trade association denied to take any supplies of stocks from Jammu depot for any company.
We tried convincing our Srinagar stockists but they were not keen to go against the association. In fact, some of them also are important members of the association. We thought we will listen to them and relook at the option of supplying Kashmir through Punjab depot while Jammu depot keeps supplying the Jammu area. Many companies had actually done that. it required some commercial and legal hassles to be cleared. some taxes and inter state transport stuff... by the time we figured out how to get it, we got a letter from the Jammu traders association that if we supply stocks to Kashmir from anywhere excpet Jammu, the Jammu depot would close its operations. We were shocked. Jammu people had got what they had asked in the Amarnath issue. What was their problem? the language of the letters from both the trade associations spoke of the strong emotions
while the Kashmir tarders had written about how they felt it poltically disturbing to keep trade relations with Jammu in the time of high conflict and warned us of no security of goods if supplied from Jammu, the other side warned us of shutting down Jammu operations if we supported the "anti-national" forces of Kashmir by supplying them from Punjab. I thought to myself - where is all this going? how can one petty issue become so huge that it starts looking completely incorrigible. i decided to intervene and having understood that it would be difficult to displease the Jammu guys, i planned to convince the Kashmiri stockists to accept the stocks from Jammu. I started making phone calls and kept making phone calls to several people in Srinagar, our stockist, stockist of other businesses of the company and influential people of the association. in the interactions with them, i tried to calm them down and make them fele the pinch of losing business. probably they saw some point in what i said. I was finally successful in convincing all three major stockists of our company in Srinagar to take supplies from Jammu.
i felt i had been victorious, but the tables turned like never before. Our trucks left for Srinagar but could not reach there. there were disturbances in the way and one of trucks of some other company was destroyed by an angered mob. We called back our truck from midway. all negotiations ahd failed. after that, it has been more than a month and other than infrequent phone calls to srinagar, i sit helplessly waiting for the situation to calm down on its own. i don't knwo how long will it take.. i don't know if there is a solution... but one things is for sure... Kashmir is yet not India and we have to a go a long way to make it a part of India, not only geographically and politically but also socially....
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