Smudge on the wall

Who is responsible?

Who else? We ourselves are responsible for the devastation in Gulmarg.

What a beauty Gulmarg was, but how ruthless our behavior has been, and is towards it. Recently, just two months before, I met a friend-cum visitor in a famous hotel in Srinagar, who had come to the valley from Utter Pradesh to attend a marriage ceremony. Before the function, he had got a chance to visit Gulmarg; he had visited Gulmarg thirty years back. I spoke to him and asked how he experienced at Gulmarg. He spoke about the hospitality, the delicious food, especially the traditional Kashmiri delicacies, the delicate nature of people and the treatment ventured to him and his family. But his expression altered when I asked about Gulmarg.

He said that as a thirty something man he had visited the place and had found the experience quite soothing and refreshing. The traditional Kashmiri breeze complemented the food, the cold grasses sucked out the heat from the feet and the air inhaled made the inner body pure. Now as an old man, he had thought that something similar would still be available. He had embarked on this trip to Gulmarg in a hope that his youthful days would be repatriated and he would swing back to a thirty something man. But all the hopes were crashed when he visited Gulmarg this year.

The proliferation of hutments and hotels clearly signified that the hill resort had been turned into a money making place, the pony wallas roamed around without any purpose, trash was thrown by everyone on the road and in the meadows leading to further pollution; all in all Gulmarg had been turned into a hell hole. I asked him about the multi crore project Gondola and his experience. “Gondola is itself a pollution machine”, he said with anger. “When you try to induce a non-natural thing into a natural place, cynical results are bound to come out”. His wife who was listening all this while joined in the conversation. She questioned the authorities as to why no serious measures had been taken to swipe away all the constructed establishments in order to make Gulmarg free from these unnatural things. I had no answer. I felt ashamed. I didn’t know what to say; the words hit me like disturbing  news and shook me to the core.

Down the memory lane are the days when it looked like a paradise. But now this paradise is gone and we visit only the constructions of hotels, concrete structures and recently, the make in of Gulmarg, the high profile Convention Centre which was inaugurated by the Chief Minister Omer Abdullah who said that it can generate revenue rather than become a burden on the government. He said that the centre can be used for weddings, MICE activities and a coffee shop can be leased out so that it can become a place for the tourists visiting here to enjoy their evenings. He said that it would further strengthen Gulmarg’s position as a premier global tourist destination. And at least two to three major events can happen here a year. And now the cabinet meetings and other national and international summits would be conducted.

Gulmarg, the Valley of Flowers, has already been injured. Now, by constructing a Convention Centre, the Government has bruised it more and infringed upon the already vanished natural beauty of this place. Gulmarg’s exquisite beauty has been the subject of attraction for one and all. Despite nature’s bounties, how unfortunate it is to behave so recklessly towards our own environs. We have destroyed our environment of every kind and in every way, particularly at Gulmarg. We have changed the lush green spaces and moors at Gulmarg into business complexes and hotels, security centers, and offices, not caring that if the green is diminished, who will come to visit this place.

Even the naturally fascinating places of Affarwatt and Kongdoori are smudged and look clumsy after the installation of Gondola. I myself found waste piling up there during my visit to these spots.  We may be earning a lot of money from it, but the crowded gatherings and the encroachments around it, is a matter of concern.

Construction projects  like Convention Centre at Gulmarg will negatively impact natural landscape and tourist sites, leading to environmental degradation, habitat destruction, and increased risks of natural disasters like floods and landslide. Activities such as road construction through ecologically sensitive areas, dredging of forests for Convention Centres, colossal hotels and large-scale conferences and meetings at this place with their long motor cavalcades shall disturb the region’s delicate ecological balance and endanger its natural beauty and biodiversity. We saw collapse of many tourist places and rural villages in Utrakhand and Jammu region and the national highway due to rain, flash flood, which surely resulted due to disturbing of mountain terrains and forests as expressed by experts.

I am sure that time is not far away when the sheen and pride of Gulmarg, the famous, green bowl space may be one day transmuted into a bowl of mud and stones. The destruction of forests and hills around it will show results, which unfortunately, has been carried for providing opportunities to rich mortals to  construct large and spacious hotels and realize their dreams of commercial interests and business.

While constructing a huge Convention Centre at this sensitive place, our government and the authorities, could have chosen a piece of space for Convention Centre somewhere else like Pampore–Nowgam by-pass  or Srinagar–Narbal bypass; where in at these places we have conjunction of many roads, and easy connectivity to Airport.  Travelling from capital city to a hilly destination for cabinet meetings does not much of a sense. And now when the Centre is there, the already congested Gulmarg could be only be damaged more.

The ongoing development at Gulmarg can undermine the pristine beauty of the place; leading to a less enjoyable and environmentally compromised tourist experience. Nature has bestowed Gulmarg with immense natural wealth. It is an irony that this natural wealth has been tampered with.