Kashmir Diary

JHELUM BRIDGE

I lived in baramulla, a breathtakingly beautiful village in the borders of Kashmir. Growing up in those mountains was the most beautiful thing that happened to me. That smell of himalayas is  imprinted in my soul and it will remain there forever.

Out of all the things in that lifetime, the Jhelum bridge has been one of the closest things to my heart. It is a little suspension bridge in the eco-park of baramulla. It lies on the river Jhelum,hence we localites call it 'Jhelum Bridge'. Only beautiful things have happened there. Just thinking of it brings a smile on my face. That was were I used to write my songs. The flowing sound of the river below the bridge had given me simply so many ideas and words for my music. 

That day, like any other day, I was sitting on my favorite bench i.e the one next to the lamp-post at the start of the bridge holding my notebook, thinking for a theme to my song. The sun was almost setting and the lamp light was burning above my head. Just then, two boys came entered the scene.

Both were tall, looked almost my age and seemed like familiar faces to me. Then I realized, one of them was a boy who worked in our bungalow's garden sometimes instead of his father when his father wouldn't show up and the other was also seen hanging around him all the time. So he approached me, " I'm Chiran Singh, you might have seen me at your garden and this is my friend Aadil." I cut in the middle of his words, "Approach my father if you want to ask a job for him." I said adamantly.  Looking infuriated, "We are here to offer YOU a job." Aadil mumbled. "Sorry what?" I asked in confusion.

Chiran sat down on the bench to explain. "We are planning to do something interesting in these holidays. You know, we have 3 months for college to begin. So we are maybe going to form a music band. A proper music band.                                                                                                                                 We see you here almost every evening trying to make songs, and we thought you might be interested to join us. Please actually think about it, we could do something really nice, who knows? Maybe we could get famous in all Kashmir!" He said and he looked at me as if he had enlightened me. "I'll think about it." I replied in one sentence. "Fine. We really hope you join." said Chiran.  Aadil didn't speak a word and I couldn't care less about it. They left. Even though I didn't sound and look like I was interested in this in front of them, deep down I was really exited for this. Music was my life and being in a band was like living my dream!

I waited on the bench until the sun turned blood red and drowned in the horizon, thinking about enchanting possibilities of what would happen if I actually was in that band...

But the first task then was to convince my parents about it. Thinking of the same, I went home on my cycle...