Word Count: 1956 | Reading Time: 7 min
“Sir, three more cancellations.”
“Seriously?” was all Manav could manage as he tore his eyes away from the computer screen. After 20 minutes of juggling multiple open tabs from flight tracking to hotel reservations, it took his eyes a few seconds to adjust to the room’s dim white light and properly see the young man staring nervously at him.
“These people heard from friends who reached Srinagar last night and earlier this morning,” Ishan tried to explain. “This brings the cancellations to, um –”
“Seven.” Manav completed. In the past hour.
Manav, who had inherited the travel agency from his father close to a decade ago, was used to a few last minute hiccups. This, however, he wasn’t prepared for. “Remind them they’ll still need to pay 75%.”
“But sir,” Ishan said, looking even more nervous than before. “We do guarantee a full refund if they don’t see tulips while visiting, and –”
“We can’t let people keep canceling based on some rumors!” Manav’s frustration at the situation quickly morphed into annoyance towards Ishan for choosing this moment to remind him what they ‘promised’ their clients. “I don’t understand. Look at this,” he picked up his phone and began to aggressively swipe through photos. “I got these from Srinagar yesterday. Yesterday.” Even through the greasy fingerprints on the peeling phone screen, Ishan couldn’t deny the vast stretches of exquisite tulips. Every color he could imagine. “I don’t understand either, honestly. I wonder if it started as a joke, or –” he was interrupted by his phone and quickly walked over to his desk, almost tripping over the long wire running the length of the floor. Manav remembered that they needed more fans for the stuffy office while the air conditioning was out. One crisis at a time, he had to tell himself.
This was not turning out to be the week Manav had envisioned. It was supposed to be stressful, yes – but a mundane kind of stressful. Flight delays, disappointment with a hotel room’s view, maybe someone confusing 1:30 AM for 1:30 PM on their itinerary. Crises he could anticipate, that added just enough of a zing to keep days interesting without being too threatening. Like a well oiled machine, Manav could almost mindlessly navigate these situations. But he couldn’t have anticipated this crisis; he was actually starting to worry about a potentially serious financial loss.
Manav tried to understand Ishan’s phone conversation but could barely make anything out from his monosyllabic responses to whoever was on the other line. At that moment, Manav felt almost envious of the recent university graduate; Ishan would just find another job if he needed to, he thought. This was only ‘work experience’ and paychecks for him while he dreamed of running a resort in Goa (Manav figured a few years of real work would knock those ambitions right out of him). His mind wandered to the kit kat in his desk’s bottom drawer. He had promised his wife that he would stop stress eating, but the situation was testing him. Before he could spend too much longer wondering whether or not the moment called for chocolate, however, his attention was brought back to Ishan, who was now playing a video loudly on his phone.
Manav could hear the grating ‘breaking news’ background score as Ishan absentmindedly walked towards his desk. “It’s everywhere,” Ishan said, taking a seat next to Manav. Squinting his eyes, Manav leaned forward until his face was barely an inch from the phone, as if seeing the news up close would somehow explain away its absurdity.
Manav’s travel agency was one of many across India that had spent months meticulously planning travel itineraries for clients who were eager to see the annual tulip garden festival in the promised “Paradise on Earth.” Hotels had booked up months in advance with almost 4 lakh tourists expected to visit Kashmir, the first batch of which had taken off yesterday as the tulips had just about begun to bloom. Travelers had waited excitedly for the carefully carved out time, hoping that spending a few days surrounded by acres of bright color would somehow carry them through their daily mechanical dullness over the next few months. Newly married couples were looking for that perfectly instagrammable photo to show the world how in love they were. Families were hoping that a few years down the line, some carefully choreographed photos in front of a tulip field would block out the trip’s tensions, and instead manufacture a collective memory of the best vacation ever.
The murmurs had started last night, but were quickly rubbished as frivolous (possibly drunken) chatter. This morning, however, no one could ignore the barrage of voices asking the same question: where are the tulips?
Enraged tourists were calling their travel agents from Srinagar, claiming that there were no tulips to be seen. News clips showed live updates from Srinagar, with hundreds of travelers saying they could see nothing but barren land – no tulips – heck, not even a few blades of grass. Bewilderment and skepticism marked India’s national mood that morning, while tourists angrily claimed that they were victims of an elaborate scam. Who were the scammers? That was a trickier question, but conspiracy theories were building alongside the mobbish anger and mayhem.
“The government tricked us!”
“Kashmiri militants destroyed the garden!”
“Global warming!”
“Must be Pakistan!”
“Corruption!”
And when no explanation seemed good enough, “I don’t care, I just want my money back!”
Manav leaned back in his seat, mentally tuning out the screechy voices of journalists and tourists blaring from Ishan’s phone. He grabbed the kit kat from his drawer and bit off a large chunk.
The next three hours passed by in a haze of more travel cancellations, and repeated attempts (and failures) to make sense of what was going on. Phone calls to Srinagar were met with busy or out of reach connections. News channels seemingly competed for the catchiest headlines (Ishan’s favorite was ‘Paradise on Earth turns to Desolate Hellscape’), while politicians in white kurtas screamed at the cameras that they would “get to the bottom of this.” When Manav finally saw “Alisha,” one of his contacts at a Srinagar hotel flashing on his cell phone, he called out to Ishan and rushed to set the phone on speaker, barely saying “hello” to the woman on the other end before launching into “what the hell’s going on?”
“Sir, we’re not quite sure.”
“I just received photos of the tulips yesterday. How can someone have ripped them all out overnight?”
“The situation’s a little more complicated here.”
“What do you mean?”
There was a small pause before Alisha’s response brought an entirely new outrageous element to the picture.
“Well…some of the locals – Kashmiri locals, I mean – are saying they can still see everything – the tulips and all that.”
Manav might have thought he had misheard Alisha if it weren’t for Ishan mouthing “what!” as he scrunched his eyes skeptically.
“I don’t understand.
“I was there earlier and I couldn’t see the tulips either. I saw the same thing the others were seeing. Just land, almost desert like. And there’s something like fog…. But then there are these locals who insist the flowers are right there.”
“They’re obviously lying.”
“Maybe. But the police came in and interrogated many of them separately, and they all pointed out the same colors, patterns… even the children identified the same things. They can’t convince so many people to coordinate such a big lie, especially not kids.”
“But it’s not possible–”
“I have to go, I’ll call you if there are any updates.”
And she hung up before Manav could complete his thought. He looked up to find Ishan watching him incredulously. “Sir, do you believe that?”
“Of course not,” Manav scoffed. “Some locals are probably just trying to entertain themselves. Create more of a nuisance. Isn’t it on the news?”
“No, I haven’t seen anything. Maybe they want to keep it quiet. It would make things even more chaotic,” Ishan guessed.
“It’s better that way. People hear these things and start making up more stories.”
“Hmm…” After a long pause, while Ishan fidgeted with a paper weight he had picked up from Manav’s desk, he dared to think out loud: “I wonder…I mean, could it be? If those people are being honest…” Manav rolled his eyes at the suggestion. “Hey, I’m just playing devil’s advocate,” Ishan clarified quickly. “If they’re being honest….how would we explain that? I mean, really, how could they be seeing something that none of the travelers, the chief guests…even Alisha said she couldn’t see?”
“Exactly, it’s just not possible,” Manav didn’t have the energy to engage with what he was convinced was nothing more than idle talk. “Isn’t it enough that we’re dealing with one ridiculous problem, that acres of tulips seem to have magically disappeared overnight? We don’t even have an explanation for that! You really want to add on more?”
“I know, I know…” Ishan sighed. “It’s just…strange to think about it. What could make all those people stop seeing something, if it’s right there?”
“Yeah, the flowers just decide who gets to see them and who doesn’t,” Manav responded sarcastically.
The two of them fell into a contemplative silence – really the first moments of silence they had had all day. It was as if someone had hit pause on a cassette that had been playing the same shrill song for hours on loop. They allowed their thoughts to meander meaninglessly, exhausted from the desperate search for some sense of coherence in the day’s events. Ishan was the first to stir, mumbling something about needing to call a client back. Manav wasn’t paying attention – he was clinging to the precious moments of quiet, almost afraid that disturbing it would bring in a new storm he wasn’t prepared to face.
Ishan’s haunting questions, though, lurked in the air. As the two of them spent the rest of the day trying to convince clients not to cancel their trips just yet, that this would all sort itself out in no time; as they finally headed home much later into the evening than they typically did; as Ishan tried to drown out the metro’s noise but barely even listened to what played on his headphones; as Manav tried to ignore the splitting headache near his left temple while his children chatted loudly about their day at school; the questions wouldn’t leave.
Were the tulips really gone?
Ripped from the land?
Wilted and disappeared?
And then, there was the question so eerie it was almost unspeakable: were they really right there? Unseen?
It couldn’t be.
What could make thousands of people lose their ability to see them?
The questions grew louder, yet never quite sure of what they were asking. They were taunting, confused, angry – and perhaps frustrated by their own inability to define themselves.
As Manav lay in bed that night with his eyes closed, he half wondered – even if by some inexplicable miracle, the disappeared tulips came back into sight – could things ever return to normal after this bizarre day? He drifted off to sleep with these muddled thoughts swirling in his barely conscious brain. Perhaps the tulips would reveal themselves. Perhaps, an explanation for this peculiar day would. Perhaps, those for whom the tulips had disappeared, would at least catch a glimpse of the questions being asked of them.