Google, My Cohort In Nonaction

Ice on the ankle seems a fair trade for another enjoyable Soccer Sunday pick-up game. And! Being physically immobile also increases the likelihood of a blog-posting - there's a silver lining. So here you have the lemonade from lemons. As long I can walk to work tomorrow I'll continue the good cheer.

Some people would naturally throw the tired legs up on the couch and veg through some American Idol or Real World or Lost or whatever else is trendy at the moment, but as you might expect I'm not much refreshed or inspired from exposing myself to the false idols of this nation.

What's my idol? Tonight it'd be Google Earth I guess. I entertained myself with satellite imagery of the many places I've visited and still pine for. I swung by San Telmo and the People's Palace. I then dallied about in some places I reckoned I may never visit - in this case, Kamchatka and the panhandle of Alaska. Which, almost expectably, after a romp about the fjords and meandering rivers of these two, my globehopping theme quickly reversed itself into a "All the Places I Really One-Day Hope to Visit" tour.

Soon afterwards I had the thought to fly myself over to a digital visit of Srinigar, where I'd spent 9 days on a houseboat in 2003. At that point, violence had quelled significantly from previous years, and if you were willing to forgive a regular midnight raucous due to the first cricket test between India and Pakistan in decades, well then you'd have right to think it was a fine season for a visit. OK, so I was only half-mad.

Here is a satellite photo then, of the area I spent those 9 days, half of them ravaging away with some sort of food poisoning:



I can narrow down to about five houseboats the one I stayed in. I'm sure I could dig it up from my journals somewhere, but I've also forgotten the first name of the good hearted man who took me in, welcomed me with such openness. Towards the end of my days there, when my body had nearly recovered, he took me on a cruise around Dal Lake. I forget the words of our exchange, but he ultimately decided it would be best to show me both the most beautiful and the most tragic parts of Dal Lake.

The description of that trip should be left for another time, but I remember the beauty of the Kashmiri Valley, flush up against remembering the trash and pesticides which polluted its water into a toxic green. In my half-conscious recovery, I was overwhelmed with appreciation for my guide and the good people we met padding along in our shikara. He only asked of me to help him, to write to newspapers or embassies or anyone that could be in a position of power to help remove the tragic element from the lake.

I felt powerless physically, mentally, and even politically. I said I would try. To myself I wondered if the best way I could help would be to continue in academia. To get a geography degree and learn Kashmiri. Few times before did I feel that what I could study could do so much.

But I haven't done it. In my own sort of way, with cohort Google, this is my vegetating way of feeling the potency without acting. This is supposed to be a time of non-acting. A relaxation before I return to work.

I can very clearly remember the movielike face of a twentysomething man in a woolen coat, describing to me how most Kashmiris have only ever wanted independence. In the last month, the state of affairs in Kashmir have not often captured the news, given our current saturation of tragedies. But for those searching, there are a few blogs from those who live in Srinigar (some with graphic content, be advised):

http://kashmir.wordpress.com/
http://kashmir-truth-be-told.blogspot.com/

Some entries speak of the ecological nightmare that is Dal Lake, some about the darker side of Gandhi, and many many entries about the unfortunate sense of being occupied by Indian troops.