:: THE KASHMIR WILLOW ::

When I think of Kashmir & India, I am normally hard pressed to find points of affinity and connections, despite having grown up in the Valley; summers & sometimes the fall, either playing golf in Gulmarg, picking cherries in my grandfather’s orchard in Srinagar or angling for Rainbow trout in the Lidder Valley. I visited Kashmir after some 20 years this summer, a period of absence during which the region witnessed upheavals of unimaginable proportions. I did not recognize many a place. Development & Destruction had changed the landscape considerably. I found most of my childhood connections somewhat alien now.  What did catch my eye was our national pastime, ‘cricket’, which seemed to be happening across the valley: alleys, lanes, fields, parks, gardens and even sloping meadows. Not surprising, cricket, invariably connects. What strengthened and placed a completely different dimension to this very obvious connection was what I witnessed on my way to Pahalgam from Srinagar.

It is the Kashmir Willow bat industry that thrives on a 10 kilometer stretch of this highway. Factory outlets selling cricket bats dot the highway, (surrounded by Willow plantations) behind which the factories churn out hand made Kashmir Willow bats, of varying grades, to feed very hungry cricketing nation with high quality VFM cricket bats. It’s not the English Willow but it’s just as good. It is considered a good starting and practice bat quality across the globe. It takes a willow tree 25 years to reach maturity before it can be harvested. It is then cut shaped for a bat, and left for 6 months to dry. These bat shaped blocks of willow are then pressed, carved and shaped by hand by the bat craftsmen of the Valley into well shaped and seasoned cricket bat . It’s a happy & productive community, providing the Indian subcontinent, with cricket willow bats, that surely bring joyous smiles to every proud owner.  These images, attempt to capture, this proud little cottage industry and its people, happily going about their daily work, in an otherwise troubled countryside. Interspersed with frequent Hookah and Kehva tea breaks, every person involved in the creation of these bats, goes home at the end of the work day with the quiet satisfaction of having contributed thousands of cricketing smiles across India & beyond. The Kashmir Willow connects the Valley, to almost every cricketing soul across the globe; silently.