Floating Lunchboxes & Pink Tea: The Lost Picnic That Defined Old Kashmir

By Syed Majid Gilani

I was the age my elder daughter is now, eleven, or close enough, when my father said,“Tomorrow we take the lake.”

The sentence felt like a promise and a command rolled into one.

In 1987, a picnic was still a serious affair in Srinagar. No one owned enough cars, so legs did the planning.

Our little house in Botshah Colony usually had twenty-two people crashing there every night, and that week we'd squeezed in three cousins who'd come down from chilly Kupwara to breathe easier.

We never bothered with invitations. If you opened your eyes under our roof in the morning, you were already family and already welcome.

Mom started the rice before the sun was even up. I'd lie there listening to the water smack against the sides of the big copper pot while she and Daadi bickered over salt, like how much does a picnic by the lake really need?

Daadi always won. She'd lean over, sniff the steam, and say,“Boring,” like the rice had personally offended her.

Two fat cups of salt later, we were stuffing everything into bags: the little kerosene stove, six banged-up tin plates that looked like stars from all the dents, the chipped enamel pot just for kehwa, and that one plastic spoon we all fought over. We called it“the truce” because whoever got it stopped the war over who licked the cake bowl.

My job was guarding the saffron. I clutched that tiny jar to my chest like it was made of gold and might run away.

We left at seven, walking in a braid of hand-holding. The road to Nigeen was still unpaved. Dust rose and settled on our polished shoes, turning them the colour of walnuts.

My cousin Shaban, two years older and already praying with the grown-ups, recited multiplication tables to keep the little ones from asking how far we still had to go. I remember counting willow trees instead, forty-three between our gate and the shore, because numbers felt safer than distance.

The shikara was waiting for us, bright green like an unripe guava. Papa stepped in first, careful in his stiff office boots, then turned to give Naani a hand. She just laughed, waved him off, and hopped in like a total boss. She still bragged about the time she crossed the Jhelum when it was raging.

One by one, we piled in until the boat sat low in the water, full and grinning. Qadir Chacha, our boatman with the white beard and kind eyes, only asked,“Where to?”

Papa smiled and said,“Where the water's so clean it tastes like nothing, and the lotuses haven't opened yet.”

Qadir Chacha's eyes twinkled. He got the hint perfectly.

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