Beneath the Anger

The savvy and silent electric buses of Nouveau Kashmir

- Tabish Rafiq Mir

THERE is now a fresh cobblestone path by the famous Polo View in Srinagar, the brief avenue which not very long ago housed the Press Club of Kashmir, taken over in an ostentatiously mysterious coup. Along this avenue, not too long ago, were two motorable roads that went in and out towards and away from the main artery of Lal Chowk, shuffling between Maulana Azad Road, and Residency Road. The avenue, thankfully even now, is shadowed and shaded by the mighty Chinar trees, often only inches apart at the zenith of their foliage and yet several, several metres apart at their roots. Such is the might of the Chinar. Unless chopped down to make way for boutique stores.

These roads, albeit with cars parked along their peripheries, used to serve a purpose. People going into Lal Chowk for work, and coming out of Lal Chowk for work, would use these roads to go about their day, quickly skipping one parallel line for another. If nothing else, one could always take a turn around the corner to Jee Enn Sons, and grab an eclair pastry from this local bakery much adored by the locals, and much too local for the non-locals who would tour much of the Boulevard and only sometimes come to the city centre for shopping. The City Centre, after all, serves a purpose.

When climbing a local Swaraj Mazda bus in Yapoar Lal Chowk (the part of Lal Chowk on the immediate side of the bridge), one could travel through the entire length of this part of Srinagar, running parallel to the once-grassed-overnow-concretized-and-gentrified Jhelum Bund. Journeying in this bus, one would then reach the Apoar (the other side, over the bridge) Lal Chowk—the hub of much merchant activity, where one could also make a stop at the famous