As Time Goes By

In Kashmir, tulips bloomed flaming yellow and red this spring too. As spring segues into summer, they fade. The wheel turns, another season arrives. And the Valley sighs, wondering if an ancient promise will materialise. Will the train to Kashmir, linking it to the rest of the country, ever morph from dream to reality? How long does it take for a dream to ripen? How many generations must turn to grass before the wait ends?

An eternity has passed since the ambitious project was first conceived. The Maharaja of Kashmir once wanted to try his hand at it. The British had plans to execute it in the heydays of the Raj. In the fifty year lifetime of the Indian republic, governments have come and gone, holding out the promise like a shimmering dream. Work on the rail goes on, some deadlines have been met, many have fallen like ninepins on the way.

Older Kashmiris have accepted this as a fact of life. They treat the project with the same stoicism reserved for birth and death. "It goes on…" they say. Their tone is laced with neither hope nor cynicism. "How long will it take? Who can tell," they sigh and get on with the business of life.

Time has whittled down their hope to resignation. The story goes back to 1898 when Maharaja Pratap Singh enticed his subjects with the prospect of a railway line connecting Srinagar with Jammu. But the empire objected. Bowing to imperialist dictate, the idea was abandoned. Many moons later, the British proposed a rail link between the two. It was a spectacular project – a line snaking over the formidable Pir Panjal mountain range climbing up to a height of 11,000 feet. Powered by hydro-electricity drawn from mountain streams generously strewn over the range. The Maharaja approved the plan. But harsh reality never let it take off. The engineering challenges involved in negotiating the terrain sounded its death knell.

In 1983, the Indian government flagged off the construction of a rail line linking Jammu to Udhampur. Work on the fifty-kilometre stretch was to be completed in five years. The line, cutting across the Shivalik Hills would have 20 tunnels and 160 bridges. The Shivalik Hills posed lesser topographical challenges than the Pir Panjals to engineers. Even so, the line took 21 years to be functional. Built at an estimated cost of 550 crores, it was inaugurated on April 13, 2005.

It didn't take a savant to see that a rail link to the isolated Valley would bring its people closer to the mainstream. Years of centre-state hostility could be bridged at least to some extent through the connection. In 1994, the central government announced that a railway line connecting Udhampur-Quazigund and Srinagar, running all the way up to far-flung Baramullah was in the pipeline. It would make travel to and within Kashmir a less daunting task for residents as well as tourists. It would end years of Kashmir's alienation and open up new channels of communication. It was a prospect full of promise.

But hurdles loom large on its horizon. The project is one of the most challenging railway engineering feats ever attempted. Experts compare it to the recently completed China-Tibet railway line in terms of complexity.

Construction has to keep in mind the challenge posed by extreme winters and heavy snowfalls. The route crosses the Pir Panjals whose peaks touch dizzying heights of about 15,000 feet. Bridges, tunnels and via ducts have to be erected. The mountain stands tall in the face of puny mankind. Then, there is the mighty Chenab. A rail bridge -- 1315 metres long and 395 metres above the river bed – is being built across a stretch. Once completed, this structure will be the highest railway bridge in the world.

"Water seepage threatens the tunnels. The mountain exerts pressure on the tunnel beds and their dimensions have to be squeezed," says an engineer who has been working on the Quazigund stretch. Avalanches and snowfall has often put a stop to construction work. They also stand in the way of transporting coaches from Jammu to the Valley for trial runs.

"I've seen a train onscreen…in a Mithun Chakrabarty film," grins fourteen-year-old Vijay. He lives in Nowgam, a sleepy village in Srinagar's suburbs where the newly constructed railway station is located. Vijay and his parents have watched the coaches chugging across the line during the recent trial runs. "I can't wait to get on the train," says Vijay. "I want to hop on it and travel to Bombay, Delhi." He imagines the metros as exotic fairylands the train will ferry him to. His parents are sceptical about whether they will live long enough to see the train service become operational.

"Who knows what the government is planning!" asks Sabah. Her family has lived in Nowgam for generations. Sabah's family distrusts the rail link. "It will erode the essence of Kashmiri culture by throwing our doors wide open to the world," says Sabah's grandfather. "It will bring us closer to the rest of the country, the world," Sabah agrees. "But I worry that it will change us in ways we don't expect."

The latest update is that the stretch within Kashmir, from Qazigund to Rajwansher, will begin operations in 2008-2009. According to the railway budget of 2008, the deadline for the Udhampur- Qazigund link has been stretched to 2012. The authorities are tight lipped about the Udhampur-Katra route after recent tunneling difficulties. There was hope that it would be completed by 2013, but more delays are expected.

And so the Valley waits.