A relief camp where those displaced by the floods have taken shelter.
...When I return,
the colours won't be so brilliant,
the Jhelum's waters so clean,
so ultramarine. My love
so overexposed.
and my memory will be a little
out of focus, in it
a giant negative, black
and white, still undeveloped."
When Agha Shahid Ali wrote these lines in a poem called
Postcard from Kashmir several years before his death in 2001, Kashmir's most well-known English poet couldn't possibly have known that one day, the same ultramarine waters would turn so dark and angry that they would swallow a valley in their wake.
He wrote of the insurgency, but one of his dearest friends, Irfan Hassan, a businessman, tells us he's glad Agha Shahid Ali is not alive to see the devastation in his beloved Srinagar.
Three months after the deluge, Kashmir's capital looks possibly worse than it did at the height of the conflict.
Irfan's own home is no different. His brother advised the entire family to leave shortly before the Jhelum breached the embankments on September 6 and submerged his home in 23 feet of water. But as he laments the loss of his family's personal histories and dries out salvaged books in the attic- the only dry space in his three-storey house - he admits that grief is relative.
"God forbid if I would have lost anyone in my family, I would be not be talking about Tendel Biscoe's pictures or my books. But this also has its own grief you know. Something which you have inherited. It's a loss, no doubt."
In fact, Srinagar's most affluent neighbourhoods look like ghost towns. Its inhabitants have either moved to relatives' homes in other parts of the city less affected by the floods, or else have found the resources to leave for the winter. But they are the lucky ones whose homes still stand.
Structural repair on these empty shells will begin once the spring sets in. But for others left with nothing but a pile of rubble where their homes once were, the harsh winter is only one obstacle in the road to recovery.
At Jawahar Nagar's main roundabout, we come across Bhupinder Singh, a state government employee who is using the space to store whatever he was able to salvage until he can build a new house. He arrives every morning by 8 am, no matter how cold, in order to work overtime with labour to clear up the rubble and dredge out remaining water before the chil-e-kalan or deadly January freeze sets in.
Singh says the residents of this mixed neighbourhood helped each other escape. "We formed a local co-ordination committee and helped everyone whether they were Sikh, Muslim or Hindu. The army reached this area four days after we left, and we could do that because our spirit of Kashmiriyat was alive," Singh says.
For families like his, whose homes were completely destroyed, the state government gave them Rs 75,000 as compensation, but Singh says he has spent double that just to have the site cleaned up.
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah who has been fighting a tough re-election campaign says he's bound by disaster relief norms and can't raise the amount. "Anything above that has to come from the Government of India," he says.
As he battles perception of being absent during the floods, he defends himself and says while he may have several regrets about his term as Chief Minister, the handling of the flood aftermath is not one of them. The state government has estimated the total rehabilitation cost at 44,000 crores, and has asked the centre to declare this a national disaster. In the midst of the election campaign, a decision on this appeal has been stalled in Delhi.
As the issue of flood rehabilitation becomes political, the BJP's local spokesperson, Khalid Jahangir says the party "is very clear that we want to help the real flood victims. No brokers in between. At present, the BJP wants to form a new state government and the rehabilitation process will start. It will be a non-ending process and very effectively monitored from New Delhi."
For a party that's never had a presence in the Kashmir Valley, these polls are promising to be a game-changer. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who so far was bound by the model code of conduct against announcing any big packages, has nonetheless made a grand show of spending Diwali with Kashmir's flood-affected families and visited the state several times. The BJP's candidates are hoping his trips and their promise of direct access to his office and resources will win them the elections.
As the National Conference's opposition pushed for timely assembly polls, Omar Abdullah, accused of wanting the polls delayed because of the fear of losing, hits back saying he was "quite prepared for the state to go under Governor's rule for six months, so that at least the rehabilitation could carry on and nobody could accuse me of wanting to hang on to power. But the fact that political parties wanted to capitalise on a perceived sense of anger, because of the floods, just compounds the sense of injustice."
In so many of Kashmir's ironies, another one emerges. On the opposite end of the political spectrum, separatists while insisting they had not formally called a boycott of the polls this time, found themselves saying the same thing as the Chief Minister.
Hurriyat leaders however insist they speak from a humanitarian perspective, not a political one. In what sounds almost like sympathy for the state government, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq says, "We saw politics being done. We saw the BJP come up with its own agenda, stopping relief to the Omar Abdullah Government."
Outside Srinagar, away from the nasty political campaigns, the images defy logic. Miles and miles of rice fields and apple orchards look as though they've been charred by water. Taking away not just homes but livelihoods of entire villages as a result.
For example, in South Kashmir's Kulgam district apple farmers in the Arigutan village are wondering just how to pull through from here. Their lands are finished. Watching Akbar Bhat and his uncle spend clear mornings trying to salvage apple trees, it's evident the situation has created a vacuum of governance and help.
As the PDP, BJP and Congress point to high voter turnouts as proof that the people of Jammu and Kashmir didn't fall for the ruling party's argument of polls becoming an impediment in relief work, the Mirwaiz insists Delhi should not confuse high turnouts with an end to support for Separatist demands.
"The fact remains that you have to make a very clear distinction between grievances and aspirations and I think people have made that distinction very clearly. During the floods everybody saw that the whole system collapsed, there was no governance, there was no institution Obviously, Hurriyat is not in a position to provide electricity or
bijli or give
sadak and pani so these are important issues. But the problem is where New Delhi tries to club this with the bigger picture," he says.
Shujaat Bukhari, the editor of
Rising Kashmir, says by using the promise of increased flood rehabilitation as leverage in these assembly election campaigns, parties must ask themselves why they did so, because "Both the Supreme Court of India and the Election Commission of India made it clear that the model code of conduct should not become an impediment as far as the rehabilitation is concerned".
But those who are coordinating relief work say it has been impossible to keep things separate during the campaigns, even if the reasons were not only political.
Sana Javed, whose own home in Rajbagh was submerged has been working with the Tata relief committee distributing relief supplies and constructing shelters - one of several small civil society initiatives locals have come to depend on heavily. She says it was not wise to conduct elections at this time simply because administrative focus shifted.
As she runs around getting clearances from government departments, she says "Staff is busy because election observers are coming, people are being posted out for election duty. That has taken up a lot of their time."
In a state where everything forms part of a complex political fabric, the floods have been no exception. The widespread devastation has compounded general anti-incumbency sentiment and created a severe economic crisis.
For business owners, the damage is double. Not only are they rebuilding their submerged homes, but also refurbishing their business from scratch. As insurance claims came in fast and furious, the state high court had to intervene and push insurance companies to settle several small claims in order for the process to begin
But as small businesses begin to refurbish and restock, what's going to take a hit is Kashmir's recently reinvigorated tourism business where the damages and claims run into several crore rupees. Houseboats have been smashed by waves, hotels and vehicles destroyed.
In a moment of dark humour, Amit Amla, who owns one of Srinagar's oldest and biggest hotels, laughs and says the years of militancy didn't impact his hotel as much as the struggle for post flood insurance has. The gap between the Broadway's estimated damage of 24 crore rupees and what insurers are willing to settle at is over 85 percent.
Amla who's now being forced to consider lay-offs as the hotel remains shut says insurance companies asking for documents like met department reports, must realise "The flood is not our fault. We didn't bring it upon ourselves. We hire about 230 people, but we are not paying them because insurance companies are not being fair with us. It has a ripple effect. I don't know what the road forward is. The road to recovery is going to be one long road."
Everyone says disaster is a great equalizer- the floods did not distinguish between religion, caste or economic status. Nonetheless, the need for resources and relief are infinitely more urgent for those who have no roofs over their heads this winter.
While the dismal amounts of state relief continue to trickle in, the biggest casualty of the election campaign has been the declaration of a comprehensive rehabilitation package for Jammu and Kashmir from the Centre - one that pulls together housing, employment, opportunity and infrastructure in a well-knit web for citizens to get back to their lives.
And now, as results are awaited in this bitterly fought election, what's apparent is that the biggest challenge for any new government in Jammu and Kashmir will be to work with Delhi to ensure these reach them quickly, and without an eye on a political scorecard.