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Imagined Journeys to Cashmere: Lalla Rookh and Her Story

Nirupama Rao

“Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar,

Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell? Whom do you lead on Rapture's roadway, far,

Before you agonise them in farewell? Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar,

Where are you now? Where are you now?”

“Kashmiri Song”, 1902, Lawrence Hope and Amy Woodforde-Finden

Felicien David’s Opera, “Lalla Roukh”, performed by Opera Lafayette, Washington D.C. , 2013. Photo by Louis Forget

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In 1817, an Irish poet, Thomas Moore who had never set foot in India, closeted himself in a Derbyshire village near the stately home of an aristocrat acquaintance, to write the story of a fictional Mogul princess, she of the tulip cheeks or Lalla Rookh as he called her. Moore’s poem captured the popular imagination with its rendering of exotic scenes and colorful images from the distant Orient. More importantly, it introduced the valley of Kashmir to the Western mind, providing the “canvas upon which future European travelers to Kashmir painted much of their story”. 1 A succession of writers and music composers after Moore were taken with the story of Lalla Rookh and the work soon saw itself in many interpretations. It became in in its popularity a ‘Sound of Music’ of the nineteenth century. Its association with the beautiful valley of Kashmir, accentuated the veneer of romance and youthful love and beauty with which it came to imagined. For instance, in the early 1900s, a spirited Englishwoman, Florence Parbury wrote “An Emerald Set With Pearls” extoling the beauties of Kashmir and the poetry of “Lalla Rookh”. Parbury traveled to Kashmir, sketching and painting its natural beauty and devoting extensive space in her book to the story by Moore. She added musical scores for some of the poems in the book, particularly those with references to the Vale of Kashmir2. Her account commences with paeans of praise to the Valley, drawing reference to ancient Indian and Persian poets writing of “a wondrous land tucked away in the Himalayan Range”, and describing its charms by such names as “Kachemire-be-Nazeer” or the Unequalled, the “Garden of Paradise” and the “Emerald set with Pearls”. Mentioning the early European traveler, Francois Bernier who visited the Vale of Kashmir in 1664 with the royal suite of the Mogul Emperor, she says:

                                                                                                               1  Kenneth  Iain  MacDonald:  “Kashmir”  in  J.  Speake  (ed)  (2003)  The  Literature  of  Travel  and  Exploration:  An  Encyclopedia,  London:  Routledge.  2  Florence  Parbury:  “An  Emerald  Set  With  Pearls”,  London,  Simpkin,  Marshall,  Hamilton,  Kent  &  Co.,  Ltd.,  1900  

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“Those only who have seen Kashmir in the beauty of its seasons can appreciate the truth of these old-time poets, none of whom however, of any nationality, have ever done justice to this delightful country and immortalized its lakes, flower, valleys, streams and fountains as perfectly as Thomas Moore, the Irish poet, did in his famous ‘Lalla Rookh’..”3

Parbury bemoaned the fact that few had heard of Moore’s work at the time of her writing her book. In fact, by the turn of the century, in late-Victorian England, the poem had lost much of the tremendous popularity it had enjoyed in the decades after its publication in 1817. Her effort therefore, was to “rouse a fresh interest in the poet’s beautiful work, in the form of a souvenir of Kashmir”4. To corroborate Parbury’s lament, the story of Lalla Rookh was lost to most modern audiences until the Opera Lafayette, a Washington-based performing company, revived its operatic version by the French composer, Felicien David in 2013. The music from David’s opera was also recorded by the company on the Naxos label and released in 2014. The performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and at the Lincoln Center in New York had the characters in the opera dressed in Indian costumes by Poonam Bhagat of New Delhi, and introduced also the element of Indian classical dancing onto the stage during the performance with the dancers of Kalanidhi Dance of Washington. (see title page of this paper) An imagined India Moore, the author of “Lalla Rookh” never went to India and yet ventured to write a work that inter-wove courtly Indian customs and manners, history and landscape with Persian lore and legend. Writing his book over a period of six years between 1811 and 1817, he had extensively researched available scholarly material on India as the extensive footnotes and bibliography seen in “Lalla Rookh” would indicate. Access to the research materials was provided by the Anglo-

                                                                                                               3  Parbury,  ibid.  4  Ibid  

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Irish peer Francis Rawdon, the Earl of Moira at his mansion, Donington Hall in Derbyshire, accessed by Moore in writing the book, while living in a simple cottage near the residence of his aristocrat benefactor. Francis Rawdon subsequently went on to become Governor General of India as the Marquess of Hastings from 1813 to 1823. It is believed that Moore had hoped very much to be included in Hastings’ entourage when he departed for India and that he was deeply disappointed when this did not happen. Moore was never to set eyes on India. In writing his book, Moore received encouragement from a number of friends, including his more famous contemporary, Lord Byron whose ease and eloquence of poetic expression and bold and revolutionary choice of themes for his writing were renowned, and evoked a sense of considerable insecurity in Moore. Yet, unprecedented for his time, Moore received an advance of 3000 guineas for the book –a sound business decision by his publisher, since the book went into at least five editions in the first year of publication (1817) becoming the toast of England and the Continent. Gems and Pomegranates It also won great popularity in the United States. The story line of Lalla Rookh – that of a privileged Mogul princess departing Delhi in a magnificent cavalcade crossing from the heat and dust of the plains to the majestic Himalayan mountains and then into Kashmir, lent itself well to showcasing in pageants and theatrical spectacle. An illustration of this is provided by the contest held in the 1880’s, by American showman Adam Forepaugh to choose the ‘handsomest woman in America’ who could play the role of Lalla Rookh, the winner being awarded 10,000 dollars. Louise Montague, 25 years old, from New York, won the title. Nature it was said, had ‘not dealt to Miss Montague a sparing hand’ ; she could boast of an ‘excellent type of beauty’ and a ‘face so strikingly beautiful that one wonders how so much loveliness can be concentrated in one human being’. 5 The attraction personified in the image of a young and lovely Lalla Rookh

                                                                                                               5  The  Atlanta  Constitution,  October  9,  1881  

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can be seen in the following photograph of the English stage actress Kate Vaughn from the 1870’s. It is not clear whether she was playing a singing role as would normally have been assumed from the various musical renditions of the story since she is dressed in fashionable Victorian clothes complete with a corset to emphasize her waist which would have made singing impossible! This would suggest that the character of Lalla Rookh was much sought after essentially for her show-stopping regalia, recalling a princess of the Orient. Vaughn wears a plume on her head dress which is intricately decorated, and a veil to suggest her Eastern character, and distinctly pronounced jewelry.

Kate Vaughn,(1852-1903) in the role of Lalla Rookh at the Novelty Theatre, London. Photo by William Downey (source: www.tumlbr.com) What was the world that Moore sought to create? Perhaps it is best summed up by this passage:

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“A gleam of Bokhara’s vaunted gold, of all the gems of Samarkand.. where is the Orient? Where does it begin and end? Hunt in vain for a map; at one moment it might be mysterious Cathay, at another enchanted Persia, or a Persia which extends beyond Araby, beyond Abyssinia, even to India..Its frontiers are the veil of the harem, the walls of sunlit and jasmine-scented gardens where the nightingale eternally warbles to the rose. The Beloved guards its boundaries, she of ruby lips, of teeth like pearls, and ringlets like hyacinths. Her brows are an archer’s bow, her arrows the glances that speed from it. She watches over hooris, who weave their dancing way through innumerable courtyards, adorned with diamonds, nourished by the dew of heaven. And always the pomegranates are melting with sweetness.”6

This is the vision of the Orient that captured the imagination of writers and lay people alike in the Western world of the nineteenth century. It is the world illustrated in the poster of Lalla Rookh’s departure from Delhi as shown in the great show of Adam Forepaugh.7

                                                                                                               6  Excerpted  from  the  jacket  of  “Poems  of  the  Orient”,  CD,  Naxos,  1999  7  Picture  from  the  collection  of  the  Rhode  Island  School  of  Design,  Providence,  Rhode  Island,  September  14,  2014  

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The picture is ‘one unbroken line of splendor’8: dancing girls and elephants, mahouts and lancers, an adoring populace, the bejeweled and beautiful princess on a caparisoned elephant, Mughal India meeting Barnum and Bailey.

Moore’s work cannot however, be dismissed as the scattered musings

of a dilettante. Firstly, it was the product of research from materials available to a European audience in that era. Beginning his arduous endeavor, Moore wrote to a friend: “I shall now take to my poem and do something, I hope, that will place me above the vulgar herd both of wordlings and critics; but you shall hear from me again, when I get among the maids of Cashmere, the sparkling springs of Rochabad, and the fragrant banquets of the Peris.”9 Even the name of the work, “Lalla Rookh” was unusual, and Moore’s friend, Byron lauded him for choosing a “tough title”10. Secondly, the themes addressed in Lalla Rookh are not trivial or merely romantic. While the connecting narrative of the poem basically concerns the marriage of Lalla Rookh, the princess of Delhi, to Aliris, the Prince of Bucharia or Bokhara, and the story of her journey from Delhi to the Vale of Cashmere where she is to be married to the Prince, this narrative is interspersed with four long poems: The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, the Fire Worshippers, Paradise and the Peri and the Light of the Haram. All these are recited to her, accompanied on a stringed instrument called the kitar, by Feramorz, who presents himself as a Kashmiri troupadour, and who steals her heart along the journey to Kashmir. Happily, he turns out to be the prince to whom she is to be married, on the very day of the marriage ceremony.

The four long poems in the story are where the themes of religious fanaticism and despotism, the violence and injustice of conquest and imperial domination, the tragedy of star-crossed love, and

                                                                                                               8  Lalla  Rookh,  1817  edition,  Page  2  9  Allan  Gregory:  Paper  (2006):  Thomas  Moore’s  Orientalism,  Newstead  Abbey  and  Irish  Byron  Societies  10  Ibid.    Although  Robert  Nye  (1989)  in  the  Memoirs  of  Lord  Byron:  A  Novel  expresses  also  what  is  the  common  version  of  Byron’s  view  of  Lalla  Rookh:  “a  box  of  Turkish  delights  with  the  sugar  mostly  stolen  from  me”.    

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romanticism cast in the Persian mode, are all intertwined. Mokanna, the veiled, lustful, degenerate religious prophet of the Khorassan poem is oddly reminiscent of an evil leader of the ISIS, although Moore was believed to be targeting the excesses of the Jacobins in revolutionary France in this story of the beautiful and virtuous Zelica (Zuleika) who is seduced and corrupted by the evil Mokanna. Mokanna presents himself as a prophet and savior who claims he has to ostensibly hide his “beauty” under a veil because it is so blinding, but is actually camouflaging a horribly disfigured body and an equally malformed soul that perpetrates great cruelty on all who fall under his spell. Similarly, in the Fire Worshippers which recounts the struggles of the Zorastrian people against the Arab conquest of Iran, Moore is thought to have allegorized the rebellion of the Irish people against British rule and domination, and their quest for liberty. Returning to the story of Lalla Rookh and her minstrel beloved, one is struck by many humorous references in the narrative to courtly Indian life and manners, often recalling popular entertainment in Hindi film. A few examples will illustrate this. The delineation of the character of Fadladeen (Fazluddin), ‘Great Nazir or Chamberlain of the Haram’, who accompanies the Princess Lalla Rookh to Kashmir is one of them. This is how Moore describes him: ‘Fadladeen was the judge of every thing, - from the penciling of a

Circassian’s eyelids to the deepest questions of science and literature; from the mixture of a conserve of rose-leaves to the composition of an epic poem..His political conduct and opinions were founded upon that line of Sadi, -“Should the Prince at noon-day say, it is night, declare that you behold the moon and stars”11.

The last few lines recall what in the Persian and Urdu tradition is called khushamdi, or ‘hukum ka ghulam’ or the essence of obsequiousness when it comes to flattering, or agreeing with your masters. Elswhere, the minstrel Feramorz is described as “graceful as that idol of women, Crishna – such as he appears to their young imaginations, heroic, beautiful, breathing music from his very eyes,

                                                                                                               11  Lalla  Rookh,  1817,  pg.4  

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and exalting the religion of his worshippers into love”12. There are touches of humor too, which are not bereft of the Indian touch: when it is said that a series of disappointments and accidents had happened to Fadladeen during the journey, for one, couriers stationed between Delhi and the Western coast of India had ‘failed in their duty’ to ‘secure a constant supply of mangoes for the Royal Table’ and ‘to eat any mangoes but those of Mazagong was, of course, impossible’. 13 In another example, the chamberlain’s personal copy of the Koran has been mislaid by his Koran-bearer three whole days, and to all this the last straw is when, owing to the ‘obstinacy of the cooks, the pepper of Canara is put in his dishes instead of the cinnamon of Serendib.14 Beyond Lahore at the end of the Grand Trunk Road, the ‘loss of the good road they had hitherto traveled’ leads to Fadladeen being ‘very near cursing Jehan-guire (of blessed memory!) for not having continued his delectable alley of trees, at least as far as the mountains of Cashmere’. And, the classic touch of the burlesque is provided when Fadladeen at one point of the story, goes

‘into a panegyric upon all Mussulman sovereigns, more particularly his august and Imperial master, Aurangzebe, - the wisest and best of the descendants of Timur, -who, among other great things he had done for mankind, had given to him, Fadladeen, the very profitable posts of Betel-carrier and Taster of Sherbets to the Emperor, Chief Holder of the Girdle of beautiful Forms’ (his business being at stated periods, to measure the ladies of the Haram by a sort of regulation-girdle, whose limits it was not thought graceful to exceed. If any of them outgrew this standard of shape, they were reduced by abstinence till they came within its bounds)15.

Maids of Cashmere Readers of Lalla Rookh, soon after its publication, were obviously star struck by its many descriptions of the beauty of the Indies, and particularly of Kashmir with all its allusions of an earthly paradise. The scene of lighted lamps floating on the river, which Lalla Rookh                                                                                                                12  Ibid,  pg.  7  Moore  describes  Krishna  as  the  ‘Indian  Apollo’  13  Ibid,  pg.  124  14  Ibid,  pg.  125  15  Ibid,  pg.  290  

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encounters on her journey, inspired a number of European artists during the nineteenth century. So too, the theme of Kashmir or Cashmere as it was widely called, became the popular fixation. The subject of the Indian bayaderes or dancers, was sure to draw crowds. The ballerina Marie Taglioni in Le Dieu et La Bayadere, sometimes called the Maid of Cashmere, mesmerized audiences with a cashmere shawl draped around her shoulders, jewelry on her forehead and on her arms in the Indian style, and her ballerina dress ornamented with distinctly zardozi-like embroidery.

Marie Taglioni, as La Bayadere, coloured lithograph, 1831 (V&A) Indeed, the whole subject of Indian dance and dancers was one hotly

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debated and scrutinized as a study of press coverage and critical commentary on the first ever tour of Indian dancers and musicians to continental Europe and England in 1838 would testify. The statue of the eighteen year-old dancer, the beautiful Amany, sculpted by Jean- Auguste Barre in 1838 illustrates the impact made by devadasis from near Pondicherry on often-mesmerized western audiences eager to see the real form of Indian dance.

Statue of Amany, 1838 (Jean-Auguste Barre) In Berlin: a grand feast Music and Orientalist spectacle is never far from the story of Lalla Rookh, considering that many composers created their own musical interpretations of its narrative, choosing different parts of the story.

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They included besides Felicien David, Robert Schumann, Henry Clay, and Artur Rubinstein. The earliest known musical presentation of Lalla Rookh however, predates all these composers. At the Chateau Royal in Berlin, in January 1821, a grand ‘festspiel’ was staged in the apartments of Frederick I, overlooking the royal palace garden, in which members of the Royal House of Prussia and their guests, the future Tsar and Tsarina of Russia, Grand Duke Nicholas and his bride, Grand Duchess Alexandra participated. In fact, the Grand Duchess, who was also the daughter of King Frederick of Prussia played the role of Lalla Rookh. In this ‘festspiel’, the different stories in Lalla Rookh were enacted through tableaux vivants, songs and dances altogether presenting a grand and memorable spectacle causing the future Empress of Russia (who was often referred to as Lalla Rookh on many occasions in the future, including by the poet Pushkin) to exclaim (with a sigh), “Is it then all over? Are we at the close of all that has given so much delight?”16 This was obviously an unparalleled spectacle of oriental costume and adornment stretching till four in the morning, with 186 characters and the tableaux vivants of sixteen figures “in which every costume and detail was apparently so realistic that the audience felt itself completely carried away to the gorgeous East… and there was but one opinion upon the taste, elegance and beauty of the entertainment, for it surpassed by far all that had ever been seen of this kind.”17 And true to the spirit of Lalla Rookh, there was also a “Fete des Roses”. A souvenir was subsequently printed in Berlin18 on the orders of the King, to commemorate this grand event and copies of it reveal the munificence of the enactment: there are twenty-three hand-colored plates that show the splendid costumes and the chief characters, including Lalla Rookh and her bridegroom Aliris. The wealth of detail in the costumes of the various actors in the pageant, indicates a careful study of Indian paintings and representations together with the use of genuine Indian textiles, silk and wool, and embroideries to create the attire worn. Lamentably, the music                                                                                                                16  Parbury,  Pg.  14,  15  17  Ibid  18  Lalla  Rookh,  ein  Festspiel  mit  Gesang  und  Tanz,  Berlin  1822  accessed  online:  http://  

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composed for the occasion by Gaspare Spontini lacked any Oriental flourish, or melodic adornments and is largely forgotten today. The grand spectacle at the Prussian court led to the translation of Lalla Rookh into German and also provided for its introduction into the Russian imagination. The national poet of Germany, Goethe, was also immensely taken with the news from Berlin of the festspiel involving members of the royal court and the exotic allure of the story of the Eastern princess. The ‘romance, intrigue and mystery’ of Lalla Rookh was thus exerting a strong attraction on European audiences thirsty for a glimpse of the unknown East.

Grand Duchess Alexandra Feodorovna as Lalla Rookh and Prince Wilhelm of Prussia as Aliris, Berlin, 1821 drawn by Wilhelm Hensel Extending however, beyond the mysteries and exoticism depicted by Moore, work was underway to promote a serious study of the Orient,

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and India, beyond orientalist stereotypes. The first Boden Chair of Sanskrit at Oxford was established in 1832 and a number of travel narratives and letters were published with considerable depth of cultural detail and seeking to present a more realistic portrait of India that transcended western fantasizing. The import of Indian textiles, chintzes and Kashmiri shawls also provided the texture and feel of distant climes and were considered hallmarks of taste and distinction. The music of the East was also being introduced to western audiences. The East India Company’s various settlements and ‘factories’ in western and northern India became venues for musical interaction with the locals and exposure to Indian, particularly Hindustani, musical and dance traditions. The Company, it is said, did not quibble over the cost of elephants in those early days, and on “public occasions, such as the annual parade to mark the birthday of the sovereign, it was the practice (of the Company ‘nabobs’) to hire a full ‘naubat’.”19 A number of what came to be known as ‘Hindostannie’ airs were produced involving cooperation between Indian linguists and musicians and Europeans particularly in the kingdom of Oudh. One woman singer from Kashmir, called Khanum achieved much celebrity as a nautch dancer to army officers, and as a source of Indian tunes to women collectors. European performers dressed in Indian costumes while performing these Indian songs, and received even the commendation of Warren Hastings. 20 Brightest vale In his rendition of scenes from Kashmir, Moore conjures the image of roses, of the Sultana Nourmahal (the Empress Noor Jehan, wife of the Emperor Jehangir) wandering among flowers, feeding small singing fishes in marble basins. Feramorz the minstrel, singing his song, tells the story of “The Light of the Haram” (Noormahal herself), beginning thus:                                                                                                                19  Ian  Woodfied:  The  Music  of  the  Raj,  A  Social  and  Economic  History  of  Music  in  Late  Eighteenth  Century  Anglo-­‐Indian  Society,  Oxford  University  Press,  2001  20  Ibid  

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Who has not heard of the Vale of CASHMERE, With its roses the brightest that earth every gave, Its temples, and grottos, and fountains as clear As the love-lighted eyes that hang over their wave?21 …to see it by moonlight, - when mellowly shines The light o’er its palaces, gardens and shrines; When the water-falls gleam like a quick fall of stars, And the nightingale’s hymn from the Isle of Chenars Is broken by laughs and light echoes of feet.. ..And what a wilderness of flowers! It seem’d as though from all the bowers And fairest fields of all the year, The mingled spoil were scatter’d here. The lake too like a garden breathes With the richbuds that o’er it lie, - As if a shower of fairy wreaths Had fall’n upon it from the sky! ..Who in the moonlight and music thus sweetly may glide O’er the Lake of CASHMERE, with that One by his side! If Woman can make the worst wilderness dear, Think, think what a Heav’n she must make of CASHMERE!22

Moore calls ‘Cashmere’ a heaven on ground, the unequalled, every spot ‘holy ground’ - suffused by the smell of roses from which ‘Attar Gul’ or attar of roses is distilled, the Happy Valley, made even more beautiful by the ‘splendid domes and saloons of the Shalimar’. These descriptions of ‘fair Cashmere’ provided the ‘canvas upon which future European travelers to Kashmir painted much of their story’. 23 The identification of Kashmir as the Paradise of the Indies

                                                                                                               21  Moore,  Lalla  Rookh,  1817,  pg.  295  22  Ibid.,  Pgs  295-­‐301  23  Kenneth  Iain  MacDonald:  Kashmir  in  J.  Speake  (ed)  (2003)  The  Literature  of  Travel  and  Exploration,  London,  Routledge  

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and the Happy Valley however also persisted with tendencies to describe its populace in an Orientalist manner. These then, were images enshrined in the Western imagination throughout the period of the ‘Raj’. Travelers to Kashmir throughout the nineteenth century - writers like Vigne – referring to Lalla Rookh, said that ‘there is great justice in the ideas of scenery to be collected from the poem’. Explorers like Moorcroft and Trebeck, Hugel and Jacquemont sought to provide further intellectual ballast to the interest and curiosity about this part of the subcontinent abutting and indeed merging into High Asia. Artists like William Carpenter had also read Moore’s story before visiting Kashmir as would be indicated from the title of one of his paintings entitled: ‘The Shalimar garden; scene of the festivities at the marriage of Lalla Rookh, daughter of Aurunzebe’. Years later, Jawaharlal Nehru in his Autobiography would describe how Kashmir haunted him, quoting Walter de la Mare whose words in turn, seem to draw inspiration from Moore :

’Yea, in my mind these mountains rise, Their perils dyed with evening’s rose: And still my ghost sits at my eyes, And Thirsts for their untroubled snows’.

Nehru spoke of how the ‘loveliness of the land enthralled me and cast an enchantment all about me. I wandered about like one possessed and drunk with beauty, and the intoxication of it filled my mind.’ Kashmir to him, embodied feminine beauty, a supremely lovely woman with ‘a hundred faces and innumerable aspects, ever-changing’. Moore would not have disapproved. Nehru’s description of the view of the Vale of Kashmir from the Pir Panjal range on the road from Srinagar to Jammu is expressed in a similar vein:

‘The next morning we left Srinagar and sped towards Jammu. The road left the valley and mounted up the Pir Panjal. As we went higher, the panorama spread before us, and broader vistas came to view. We stood near the mouth of the tunnel and had a last look at the valley below.

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There lay the Vale of Kashmir, so famous in song and history, in its incomparable loveliness. A thin mist covered part of it, and a soft light toned down the hard edges of the picture. Above the clouds rose snow-capped peaks, and down the valley below came the faint and distant sound of running water. We bade a silent farewell..’24

This passage recalls one from “Lalla Rookh” where Moore speaks of “the fresh airs and enchanting scenery of that Valley, which the Persians justly called the Unequalled. …the grottos, hermitages and miraculous mountains,..make every spot of that region holy ground” and where he goes on to describe “the countless waterfalls, that rush in to the Valley from all those high and romantic mountains that encircle it..” and “the wonders and glories of the most lovely country under the sun..”25 While Nehru, a Kashmiri, could lay claim to a sensibility which drew its inspiration from identification with the land and landscape of Kashmir, his writer’s imagination was also influenced no doubt by the visualized Kashmir in Western, particularly English popular literature. Gateway to Inner Asia During the nineteenth century, Kashmir, as it was more and more ‘discovered’ also became a natural stepping-stone to Central Asia. Moore had, perhaps, unconsciously heralded this in his treatment of the theme central to Lalla Rookh – that of the alliance of marriage between a Mogul princess and a Prince of Bokhara or Samarkand. Beyond the happy valley lay the high mountain fastness of the Karakoram with its passes functioning as gateways to Turkestan. This became the arena then for staging of the imperial Great Game and players like Curzon and Younghusband exemplified the transcendence of power and geopolitics over the romance and poesy

                                                                                                               24    Excerpted  from  Jawaharlal  Nehru:  An  Autobiography;  Oxford  University  Press  and  Jawaharlal  Nehru  Memorial  Fund,  New  Delhi  and  the  National  Herald,  New  Delhi,  24-­‐31  July  1940,  quoted  in  “Kashmir:  Garden  of  the  Himalayas”  by  Raghuvir  Singh,  New  York,  Thames  &  Hudson,  1983  25  Moore,  “Lalla  Rookh”,  Pg.  339  (1817  edition)  

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of Nurmahal and Jehangir and Lalla Rookh and Aliris. The ongoing differences with Pakistan over Kashmir, have of course, distanced the Kashmir Valley from its time-tested links with Central Asia. The present is very different from the past and the mountain caravans of yesteryear are mirages that elude our grasp. There is certainly nostalgia for the charm and innocence of the Kashmiri climes elaborated by Moore and interpreted in the various operatic and musical versions of his work. Simply put, Kashmir is not Cashmere, it is a very different place. Even images of the State in the Indian popular imagination have changed. The depiction of the Valley as a place of sylvan retreat, of eternal sunshine over snow capped mountains, glimmering lakes and heroes and heroines in shikaras, a romanticized Indian frontier region, has faded, its place taken by darker, somber narratives of love and longing in a time of violence and alienation. Thus, the ‘Cashmere’ of Noormahal and Jehangir, of Lalla Rookh and Feramorz is a Paradise Lost. Bollywood meets Kashmir today in a spirit very different from Filmistan’s dealings with the State in films like Junglee and Kashmir ki Kali, hits from the sixties26. But humans will dream and dream we will of that enchanted Kashmir. While capturing screen shots of Lalla Rookh and her sojourn to the Vale of Cashmere, and reading Thomas Moore, I am reminded of these lines from Led Zeppelin: Oh, pilot of the storm who leaves no trace, like thoughts inside a dream Heed the path that led me to that place, yellow desert stream My Shangri-La beneath the summer moon, I will return again Sure as the dust that floats high in June, when movin' through Kashmir. Orientalism it is true, does not do real justice to the East and its fascinating complexities, and Moore’s work is no exception, but who would not yearn for a ‘Feast of Roses’ on Dal Lake or in the Shalimar and dream about caravans crossing the high passes of the Karakoram,                                                                                                                26  Filmistan  is  a  term  that  perhaps  better  expresses  the  Hindi  film  industry  of  the  early  decades  after  Indian  independence.  Bollywood  is  a  much  more  contemporary  name  for  the  industry.    

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destined for Kashgar, Khotan and Yarkand and steeped in the lore of the Silk Road?

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