Opinions that matter
"It took 3.5 hours to get to Jawahar tunnel and out of the valley"
II DON’T LIKE THE CONCEPT OF WORKING. I like doing certain things, and I like the idea of getting paid for it. So I did motoring journalism for almost two decades before moving ship to head the Adventure portfolio with Mahindra and Mahindra. Both jobs involved cars, beautiful places and incredible people. But then, rarely, ever so rarely, you end up using your brain a little bit. Allow me to explain.
Only a week before I started typing this column, I was in Srinagar getting started with the first ever Mahindra Adventure Kashmir to Kanyakumari expedition. Participants from across the country had arrived, 25 cars from the Adventure fleet were getting serviced and everything looked set for yet another rollicking drive. Then, as we were driving back from lunch at a local restaurant, we found ourselves in the middle of what looked like a scene straight out of a news channel. There were hundreds of people on the streets and they looked quite angry. Some had covered their faces with white clothes with holes cut in them, and they had stones in their hands. Somehow we were spared and we managed to head back to our base. It was the beginning of two days of angst, and I am certain of this; it took two years of my life.
News reached us soon – a very young militant leader and a Facebook icon at that, had been killed in an encounter and the valley was fuming. What we didn’t expect is that it would be on full fire so soon. I had close to 50 people staying in the houseboats of Nigeen lake and our expedition was to be flagged-off the next day. I called all the contacts I could muster – the voice from the other end of the phone was that of sheer fear most of the time. We decided to stay put for the time being and brief the participants of the expedition every six hours. Soon the internet died, people stopped taking calls and I had little to brief everyone. Still, I had to show a straight face to those who had come for an adventure and were now faced with more than what they had bargained for.
On occasions like this, you can see the true worth of people around you. Ashwin Naik, Musa Sherif, and PVS Murthy who together run the IMSC and are our event organisers, were calm personified as they diligently collected all the information that they could get. Gulshan Arora and Vinay Thomas, the gentlemen who handle our fleet, ensured that the participants were fed – even if that meant taking a motorboat without headlights and heading out in to the pitch dark Nigeen lake to collect food. The participants were calm too, most of them at least. One night and an agonising day went by before I started getting some encouraging signs. Incredibly, it was the motorsport fraternity that came to the rescue – Vijay Parmar, Hari Singh, Raj Kapoor, Sunny Singh... all pitched in with contacts in the army, CRPF and local traffic police. At six in the evening on the second day I could announce to the participants that we would leave in the middle of the night. And we decided against an army or police escort since that would attract more attention.
Leave we did. Sneaked out of the valley is more like it. The roads were blocked, shattered glass was all over, trees were chain-sawed down across the roads and set on fire. It took three and half hours to get to the Jawahar tunnel and out of the valley and my head felt like a pressure cooker letting off the steam.
As I write this the Mahindra Adventure K2K 2016 has reached Lonavala after halting at Dharamshala, Amritsar, Bikaner, Mt Abu, the Rann of Kutch and Surat. Kashmir is five states behind us. But as I close my eyes and reflect on the journey that is at the half way stage, all I can see are the smouldering tree stumps in the otherwise stunningly beautiful valley. By the way, did I tell you that I hate working?