Abdul Gani, 52, a wazwan chef, has done no business this season. After the unrest started in Kashmir in the second week of July, he started getting calls and 90 per cent of his bookings were cancelled.
Like Abdul, a resident of uptown Srinagar, most of the wazas in Kashmir made no money during this wedding season as the weddings were either cancelled or solemnised in a simple manner due to the ongoing unrest.
“This season we have done no business. We are only getting calls for cooking at langars in hospitals which are being set up by volunteers. The weddings are being mostly solemnised with austerity due to the ongoing agitation,” says Abdul.
There has been unrest in the Valley for more than two months. The situation has brought everything to standstill, there is no business, schools are shut and offices are closed. No one knows when this is going to end. The wazas, who mostly make money from April to October, which is the peak wedding season, have lost the hope of resuming business any sooner.
“The way situation has unfolded we don’t think it’s going to end soon,” says Ali Muhammad, another waza.
The weddings in the Valley are incomplete without wazwan — a multi-course meal in Kashmiri cuisine, the preparation of which is considered an art. The dishes prepared by wazas are meat-based using lamb or chicken. However, this wedding season wazwan made little or no appearance in the silent weddings that took place amid curfew.
“This loss will affect us the whole year. In winters, usually after October, we don’t make any business. Now the September is also ending, it’s really a tough time for people like us ahead who are wholly dependent onthe seasonal earnings,” says Muhammad.
In many cases, weddings have become a worry for people in the current situation. There are no lavish celebrations, no invitations are being sent and no wedding songs fill the air. As the mobile phones and Internet continue to remain shut in Kashmir, there is no word about the marriages among the relatives even.
Around 90 per cent of the marriage functions have been cancelled and people are quietly solemnising marriages with simplicity.
“We would make money in two months and then spent it whole year, but this year we didn’t do anything. We don’t know what to do,” Muhammad adds.
In the month of April booking a good waza (chef) for a wedding was next to impossible in Kashmir. The wazas are usually booked several months in advance before a wedding.
However, today most of the wazas are sitting idle.
Unrest lands Valley’s wazas in soup
