Where the red never fades
VK Sanju
I was walking through Lal Chowk with Aman Bhat, my shopping wrapped up with a pashmina shawl tucked under my arm.
"It's named after the Red Square in Moscow," Aman said.
He wasn't thrilled that the streets of Lal Chowk — the ones he'd walked endlessly through his childhood and teenage years — had been repaved with new tiles, changing their old character. This wasn't the Kashmir he grew up in anymore, he grumbled; tourists had turned it into "Cashmere." And then, somewhere in that conversation, he opened a new window into his own love story.
"There's a lot of pressure at home for marriage," he said.
"From whom — your mother?"
"No... me."
I held back a laugh, thinking of how hard it would be to explain to him that there's a near-identical comedy scene in some Malayalam film he's never seen or heard of.
His girlfriend is two years older than him. She was his senior in college. And now, she works abroad — that's exactly what his mother has a problem with.
Right as he was sharing his worry about how to convince his mother, he suddenly changed lanes:
"Why did the Left lose in Kerala?"
Caught without an answer, my mind flickered briefly through secessionists, reactionaries, undercurrents — all the usual suspects, again from another Malayalam comedy movie. I mumbled something in a mix of Hindi and English to placate him, and mercifully, our fellow travelers, done with their shopping, showed up just in time.
Plan BThe wandering had begun that morning. Once word came that the meeting with the Lt. Governor wasn't happening, the WhatsApp group had already launched a Plan B.
"Mughal Gardens or shopping?"
"Wouldn't it be embarrassing to go to Kashmir and not see the Mughal Gardens?" someone typed.
"There's no other time left for shopping — don't we have to fly back tomorrow?" came the counter-argument almost instantly.
Some started lobbying through private messages to sway the vote — "There'll be nothing but flowers at the gardens. Let's just go shopping...." A few stayed diplomatically neutral, replying only with emojis.
Too lazy to check how the vote turned out, I simply climbed into the car when it arrived — without asking where we were headed.
The road we needed had been suddenly closed off for traffic control. There were more soldiers on the street than we'd seen on any previous day. It took Siraj two loops around the same U-turn before he finally got us to our destination.
A Mosque that looks like a PagodaA building with a sprawling boundary wall and a massive tower. Roads ran along all sides. One entire stretch was lined, shop after shop, selling clothes, footwear, handicrafts, and household goods.
I asked my fellow travelers what the building was. The answer left me stunned — Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in Srinagar!
Nothing here resembles the domes and minarets we're used to seeing. Instead, a wooden tower rising in tiers, step by step — it feels like a fusion of Buddhist, Hindu, and Islamic architecture all at once. From a distance, it looks like a Chinese pagoda. Up close, a sprawling fort. Step inside, and it opens into something like an expansive but simple traditional courtyard house.
This style isn't unique to Jama Masjid, either. The Khanqah-e-Moula (Shah Hamdan Mosque), on the banks of the Jhelum, is built in the very same tradition — entirely of wood, without a single nail. This pagoda style is a signature of Kashmiri mosque architecture.
Jama Masjid was built in 1400 by Sultan Sikandar Butshikan. It has burned down several times since and been rebuilt each time in the same style.
The mosque has entrances on all four sides — one reserved exclusively for women. Walking in, you find an open courtyard at the center, ringed by the building. A beautiful water channel runs through it. Lawns on either side. Flowering plants in bloom. Even in the noon heat of September, the mosque's interior stays pleasantly cool.
I stepped in half-hesitant, unsure if this was a place tourists could simply wander through. But those absorbed in prayer didn't so much as glance at us. Visitors like us, it seemed, were a common sight here. A man with an Afghan look sat on the grass, unwrapping his food and eating at ease. Some in our group struck up a conversation with a long-bearded man sitting indifferently on the steps leading into the courtyard. I stood a little apart, watching it all with quiet curiosity.
Faiths atop a hillJust as we were about to step out, Aman Bhat called.
"Come to Entrance No. 1."
From the mosque's courtyard, you can see a fort atop a distant hill. The moment I met Aman, that's what I asked him about.
"My house is right at the foot of that hill," he said, suddenly animated.
The fort is called Hari Parbat Fort. In 1590, Emperor Akbar built the first fortification here — part of a plan to establish a new city called "Nagar Nagar." History says he brought in 200 stonemasons from outside Kashmir, since the craft was unfamiliar to local builders. But the project was never completed.
The fort standing today was built later, in 1808, by Atta Mohammad Khan, governor under the Durrani Empire. Visible from nearly every corner of Srinagar, this hill is also considered sacred by Kashmiri Pandits — it houses a temple to the goddess Sharika. At its foot sits a Sufi shrine, and a gurdwara as well.
The Color of LoveOnce we'd finished with the mosque and wandered through the surrounding shops, several in the group weren't quite satisfied. Lal Chowk would have been better for shopping, some said, recalling our first day there. The locals traveling with us agreed.
We climbed back into the car — Lal Chowk wasn't far. On the way, Aman pointed to something being carried around and sold on a flat tray.
"This is trending here right now," he said.
Neatly sliced and arranged in the tray — it was coconut pieces! Priced at what he said was ₹120. I took a photo from the car, and the roadside vendor posed without a moment's hesitation. But there was no way to carry that back home. I'd already bought some dry fruits for that. A few sweets still needed buying — Aman suggested walnut fudge. Not available here, apparently, but there was a shop near our hotel that had exactly what we needed.
We parked near Aman's office, had a round of Kashmiri kahwa each, and walked idly through Lal Chowk. That walk wound its way through Aman's love story before somehow arriving, full circle, at Kerala politics.
According to Aman's version of history, it was Sheikh Abdullah — while fighting Maharaja Hari Singh's autocratic rule in the 1940s — who named this square Lal Chowk, or Red Square. Abdullah, with his socialist leanings, was said to have been drawn to the Russian Revolution. But for Aman, Lal Chowk must have been the color of his own love. That, perhaps, explains his irritation at the streets changing color. After all — love and revolution have always shared the same color, haven't they?
Whatever the truth of it, Lal Chowk remains Srinagar's political pulse to this day — a place that has witnessed countless historic moments, from flag-hoistings to protests, all gathered around its clock tower.
There wasn't much time left. If the route allowed, we still wanted to see an apple orchard. We were flying back the next morning. After a selfie with Aman Bhat, we climbed into the car once more....