Suman K. Sharma
Jammu is the place where I would like to live indefinitely. It has everything a citizen could desire. It has history – an official site claims it to be not less than 3500 years old. It has scenic beauty – Professor Lalit Mangotra in his Sahitya Academy award winning book, Cheten Diyan Galiyan, compares the city with the beautiful German town of Marburg-on-Lahn and it has culture – they call it ‘The City of Temples’. People from big cities like Delhi envy Jammu-walas their life of ease. Malls, plazas, eating joints and wine shops; chemists, clinics and hospitals; crematoria and burial places; schools, colleges and universities, offices big and small, not to say the winter secretariat of the state Government – all are available at short distances. Jammu can be very hot in summer; it is true – the record temperature being 46 degrees Celsius. But along the city flow the River Tawi and the Ranbir Canal, the latter so cool that you get thrilled at the chill its icy water sends up your spine at the first contact, whatever the ambient temperature is. The topography of the main city is such that with one good rainfall it gets washed and shiny like a newly minted coin. We Jammu-ites are a religious lot. A doctor going to his clinic or a jeans-clad youth going out for fun won’t mind seen bowing to any shrine that falls their way.
But let us have a look at our beloved city through the eyes of an outsider. He has come on a visit to a relative. The first thing that meets his eyes on alighting from the train is the squalor of the railway station. It is much worse at the inter-state bus stand in the heart of the city. The chaos prevailing over there is enough to put off even a hardcore bag-packer. The auto-rickshaw drivers demand fancy amounts as there are no fare-charts. Meters, though installed in every three wheeler, are a strict no no. Mr Outsider tries weakly to haggle but is silenced by the driver’s argument that petrol prices have rocketed sky high; as if it is only the auto-rickshaw drivers of the noble city of Jammu who have to bear the brunt of petroleum costs.
The poor fellow opts for a Matador instead. But what kind of a satanic device is that! Passengers are packed into it till there is hardly any space left for them even to breathe. The 20-something driver – his peers could be much younger – just won’t budge until then. He fires the engine, changes gears, takes sharp turns, comes to an abrupt stop to drop a few and stuff in yet more passengers. Inside the bus, the sitting ones hold on to their seats for dear life, and the standing clutch the overhead bar with both hands, the rest of their bodies going into spasms at every jerk. Are there no regulations in this city, wonders Mr Outsider, on the number of passengers a Matador can carry?
Heaving a sigh of relief, he leaves the Matador. His relative’s residence is just across the road. But crossing the narrow road is like crossing the Vaitarni. A minor slip and a man on the road may lose his life or limb in the crazy flow of traffic from both the sides. Would that Mr Outsider had known that as many as 574 vehicles ply on every kilometer of Jammu roads – a car, a bus, a bike or a full size truck on less than 2 meters of road!
A none too pleasant odour attacks his nose from the gutter. Soon enough, he would find that the ‘flush’ latrines in this locality are in fact holes opening directly to the gutter. Water is scarce and the shallow nali gets choked with solid human waste more often than not.
The man of the house has gone in his car for his morning walk in a nearby park. His adolescent son takes his bike to buy milk from the shop at the end of the lane. The daughter waits for the return of her father’s car to drive to the neighbourhood coaching centre. Obviously, people in Jammu hate using their legs for mere walking.
A July-day in Jammu can be exasperating. It is hot, humid and airless. The electricity goes off and the fans in the room stop working. It is not a ‘cut’, the host declares, but a ‘fault’. The son says that the next door neighbor has installed three ACs in his newly built house and the supply must have tripped because of the overload. ‘He must be paying a small fortune towards the electricity bill,’ remarks Mr Outsider. The host informs him that the meter-reader can see to that, provided he is paid his price. It is an open secret that a major proportion of electric supply is stolen.
It gets tolerable in the evening. Mr Outsider goes out shopping and returns with a quantity of walnuts. Walnuts are his wife’s favourite. He is happy on having struck a bargain with the shopkeeper for the finest quality of walnuts that can be broken with bare hands. The host offers him a smile which is more of a smirk. Plunging his hands into the bag, he takes out a walnut and asks the guest to break it. Mr Outsider tires out himself with the effort, ending up with smashing it with a heavy stone. “Bata khod!’ exclaims the host. It turns out that the salesman at the shop had slyly given him a demonstration of a ‘kagzi’ walnut while passing him off with the poorest quality of the dry fruit.
Jammu is a nice place. But, perhaps, we all need to live up to its fair name.
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