When they moved in to refurbish their hotel in Kashmir four years ago, it was a homecoming in more ways than one.
Musadiq and Huma Hussain belong to a new generation of Kashmiri hoteliers, who’ve converted their house on the fringes of Srinagar’s Nageen lake into a hotel called Dar-es-Salam.
It was set up in the 1970s, when state tourism was booming and film crews descended in droves each summer in search of scenic song-and-dance settings; Pighalta Asmaan, a Bollywood family drama starring Shashi Kapoor and Raakhee, was shot here in the early 1980s.
Then followed a long-drawn-out armed conflict, an era of uncertainty and disruptive events. As the killings began, visitors stopped coming and the hotel rooms started to empty. Like many others, the Hussains, too, closed their hotel in 1989 and left.
As tensions cool, the duo has decided, after 15 years of exile, to give another shot at reviving their hotel. “This is our home. I had to return,” says Musadiq, 56, who had moved to New Delhi with his wife and two children.
Musadiq, it turns out, had lived his whole life in the lakefront house built by his father, Maqsood Ali. It is uniquely situated, on the fringe of one and a half acres of land off Ashai bridge, the point where the waters of Nageen meet the more famous Dal lake.
It is easy to see why he fell in love with the spot. In colonial India, the British virtually owned the V-shaped Nageen lake. For the sake of privacy, early settlers built houseboats to bypass a local ban on buying property, and trespassers were kept off beyond the bridge with a sign that read “No Indians allowed”.
Perhaps it was the delicious orange sunset he viewed from the bridge, or the cool waters he enjoyed swimming in, Ali began dreaming up a blueprint for his future home right on the Nageen. So, in 1942, the wealthy landowner’s son successfully influenced and struck a deal for the property, exchanging paddy fields double the size to acquire it.
Like most traditional houses built close to the waters, the foundation was entirely made of deodar pines, vertically laid like pillars and later piled with earth to reinforce the base, all with the help of local masons.
Today, the biggest attraction of Dar-es-Salam, which boasts of personalized services, is its peaceful surroundings. Located on the quieter northwest part of town, it literally lives up to its name which means “abode of peace” in Persian.
Sipping Kashmiri kahwa in family silverware in an intimate sitting room, it’s hard not to appreciate the family patriarch’s quest to build a large country-style house to accommodate his six offspring and an ageing mother.
There are 14 rooms in the hotel and the family has judiciously decided to keep the original plan intact. “We are determined not to destroy the character of the place,” says Khurram, Musadiq’s 25-year-old younger son, who now helps run the business.