Prof. Suresh Chander
suresh.chander@gmail.com
In the 1950s, Jammu was a smaller and slower city, where public life unfolded largely through direct human contact. There was an ease to everyday interaction, and an unspoken rhythm shaped by shared spaces rather than schedules. Residency Road then had only two good restaurants, but that seemed sufficient. What mattered was not variety, but the people these places brought together.
From City Chowk through Raghunath Bazar and up to Residency Road, this stretch functioned as an informal public forum-almost a village chaupaal transposed into an urban setting. One could encounter people across age groups and occupations: writers and teachers, civil servants and traders, students, political workers, and those who preferred to listen rather than speak. Conversations were spontaneous and unstructured, yet remarkably substantive. Social currents, political moods, and cultural concerns circulated freely, often with greater clarity than what today’s media-driven discourse manages to convey.
It was within this living social space that figures such as Vedpal Deep and Mohan Yavar belonged-not as public personalities in the contemporary sense, but as natural presences within the city’s shared life. Vedpal Deep was a literary talent of uncommon depth who never received the recognition he deserved. His long love poem ?????, written for his beloved ???????, was a work of quiet intensity. I read the slim volume when I was barely ten or eleven years old. At that age, I could not fully grasp poetry as an expression of love or the pain of a young heart, yet the work left an impression that has endured. Even today, I find myself wondering whether someone somewhere has preserved that fragile booklet.
Mohan Yavar was another distinctive figure of those years. He always spoke in Urdu and was often seen at Premier, reclining on a sofa and sipping tea without haste. Tea then cost six annas-roughly forty paise-and was served in a pot, with sugar and milk kept separate. Refills were unlimited and brewed afresh each time. This may sound improbable today, but it was simply the texture of everyday life.
Outside the hotel, meat tikkas were prepared on charcoal braziers, their aroma mingling with conversation. Chicken tikka had not yet entered popular cuisine, nor had it found a place on restaurant menus. One waited patiently for what was available. Nearby, in Pakka Danga, roadside vendors prepared kaleji on iron tawas, cooked fresh before one’s eyes rather than reheated from pre-cooked stock. Ojri sellers were also part of this landscape, though I never quite gathered the resolve to sample that soup.
What added a further dimension to this social world was its seasonal migration. The same group of people-the same conversations and informal networks-would relocate to Residency Road in Srinagar during the summer months. The Durbar Move, now a politically charged subject, was then also a social phenomenon in a literal sense. It involved the shifting of the government secretariat from Jammu, the winter capital, to Srinagar, the summer capital, but it also meant that the city’s informal public sphere moved with it.
People relocated as naturally as one shifts position with the changing sun. Conversations resumed where they had paused, as though geography were incidental. Ideas travelled with people rather than through mediated channels. Familiar faces reappeared each summer, carrying forward unfinished discussions and shared memories.
There was, in those days, a certain ease with disagreement. Differences of opinion did not immediately harden into hostility. The chaupaal did not reward volume or theatricality; it valued attentiveness. Authority arose less from assertion than from experience, and persuasion relied on reason rather than performance.
Viewed against today’s altered social and cultural landscape, that world appears distant. Public spaces have diminished even as communication platforms have multiplied. Conversations once shaped slowly-over tea, across generations, grounded in shared experience-are now compressed into soundbites and televised certainty. Debate has become performative, and listening has receded.
As cities grew faster and louder, we quietly lost the habit of thinking together. Residency Road serves as a reminder of a time when society spoke to itself through presence rather than projection-and did not need to raise its voice to be heard.
(The author is former Head of Computer Engineering Department in G B Pant University of Agriculture & Technology)
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