Global Village Idiot: Collective consciousness, the economy and return of Kashmir to mainstream tourism
Indians are falling back on centuries-old civilisational habits in a collective unconscious effort to increase spending within our limits and revive economic activity across regions so that all of us stay safe, secure, connected and slowly inch forward together
It is fascinating, unnerving and reassuring to know that our childhood habits, learned across years growing up with family, stay with us throughout our life.
Fascinating because the habits survive despite the exuberance and free experimentation of youth.
Unnerving because it goes to show that we know little and have little control over our behaviour than we think we do.
Reassuring because it’s a relief that they come to our rescue when we need it the most because the habits are second nature to us, subconsciously driving us to do things that keep us safe, sane, and functional.
For instance, take a food habit that I grew up with: munching chhola every morning. Chhola is Bengal gram, also called kala chana or black chickpeas. Every night, a bowl of chhola was soaked in water. The next morning, it was nice and crunchy. After brushing our teeth and a glass of water, each of us had a handful of chhola with one or two cloves of garlic and a pinch of salt. Every day. Once a week, we used to get sprouted chhola (which is soaked overnight and then wrapped in a wet cloth for a day). My father used to call chhola, horse power since it’s a treat for local horses. And the plight of local horses in India used to be (and still is) more or less like the lower middle class and poor people: one has to run long hours every day on limited food and water.
The chhola habit is not a Bengali thing per se. It came into our family since my father’s family was from Kashi (Benaras or Varanasi) and they had slipped into dire straits barely above the poverty line, on account of my grandfather’s passing and several other historical and economic factors. My father and his siblings were still very young. Chhola was cheap then, as you can imagine since it was horse feed. And it made a super breakfast for the family. “Ek mutthi chola se aadhaa din nikalta tha (We could go half a day on a fistful of chhola)”, he used to reminisce.
Like many of that generation across the world, my father and all his siblings travelled across the country, worked hard and climbed up into lower-middle-class struggle and later into middle-class stability. But even then, many of the frugal habits remained with all of them, travel and eating chhola being two of them.
By the time my generation came along, chhola was also being cooked in curries and other forms. I picked up the habit and a taste for it and in my youth, it used to be my main power snack during sports and athletics events. In recent years, I have used it mainly on mountain climbs.
Cultures are also like people. It’s fascinating, unnerving and reassuring that the habits of the collective consciousness developed over centuries of negotiating conflicts and overcoming vagaries of nature, stay with a people across generations.
Fascinating because civilisational habits survive despite the oppression and insecurity unleashed by terrorist acts, political apathy and natural disasters.
Unnerving because it goes to show that we know little and have littler control over how a culture adapts and how civilisations develop.
Reassuring because it’s a relief that they come to our rescue when inertia and fear would otherwise keep us in a state of inaction, driving a society to do things that keeps it safe, sane, and functional.
For instance, the first thing we are doing after two years of sitting at home due to Covid-19 restrictions is, plan a vacation. And it turns out that we are late. We have just started thinking about planning a vacation, while most people I know are planning their next one. Destinations in and around Pune, around Maharashtra, and across the country are packed, in spite of evolving weather conditions and rising budgets.
If I had continued to go by media reports and political opinions, I wouldn’t step out of the house because crime, sporadic terrorist acts, high fuel prices and inflation have apparently dumped the nation into an economic spiral downwards.
But when I talk to friends, family and travel industry professionals, it’s a different reality. Some have just left for road trips, some are making bookings, and some are returning from their summer vacation. And what are the most in-demand destinations? Kashmir, Ladakh and Spiti.
Jammu and Kashmir has been packed past few months, prices are high, and while the incidents of gutless terrorists targeting and killing locals are real, the simple fact is that the Indian nation is on the move and Kashmir is back as one of the top destinations for domestic travel. Terrorism feeds on fear, hatred and oppression and terrorists lose their armoury when people travel and connect to each other, overcoming fear and establishing connections. I wonder why the media is not highlighting this adequately. Except for opposition political parties and economic analysts, everyone on the ground seems to be aware of the government’s (central and local) resolve to get Jammu and Kashmir back into mainstream economic activity and also aware of the common Indian citizens’ resilience. It all caught my eye because of a tweet by a friend who just returned from Srinagar. She was thrilled she could make digital payments sitting on a houseboat in the middle of Dal lake.
People across the world have faced the same problems in all eras. The beauty of the human spirit is that in each region, we have overcome the problems with some similar and some different solutions. At the moment, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, Indians are falling back on centuries-old civilisational habits in a collective unconscious effort to increase spending within our limits and revive economic activity across regions so that all of us stay safe, secure, connected and slowly inch forward together.
Sometimes we need to look beyond new-age rhetoric and step back in time to find our resilience.
Sanjay Mukherjee, author, learning-tech designer and management consultant, is founder of Mountain Walker and chief strategy advisor, Peak Pacific. He can be reached at thebengali@icloud.com