So the USBRL project got inaugurated yesterday and it took me back to my Reasi days. 

Man, that bridge the one everyone is talking about deserves all the hype it’s no less than a marvel. Look it up and you'll find what all contribution were made from different prestigious institutions across the country. And honestly, not just the bridge. The whole railway line is something else. It’s almost all tunnels and bridges, barely any stretch of flat terrain. Just pure engineering madness.

As someone who’s always been into infra, these were my weekend spots. I used to just roam around visiting under-construction tunnels, bridge sites. If there was a site I could access, I probably went there at least once.

Apart from the railway stuff, there were other go-to places too. Salal Dam, a couple of waterfalls around. Peaceful corners. Reasi itself is a small, quiet town. Though it’s a district HQ, it didn’t really have even the basic amenities you’d expect from a third-tier town in the mainland. But no complaints. I genuinely liked it. Jolly good people with a smile that did not need reason, living under the watch of maa Vaishno Devi. In kind of terrain that will make any sane man sit back and wonder how small we and our petty lives are in the scheme of things. 

One particular memory stays with me. I was coming back from the Chenab Bridge one weekend and stopped at a small shop in a nearby village for some snack. Got talking to a local there and he mentioned something that would make everyone from the plains feel privileged. He said their village, which is technically just across the mountain from Reasi, had always felt cut off. No real road, no easy access to the town. They used to literally carry pregnant women and sick people on their shoulders over the mountains for primary health care. But when the bridge construction began, things changed. A tunnel was carved through the mountain for and a proper road was laid through their village for transportation of cranes and stuff. And so for the first time, they felt connected. Not just that, a few folks from the village got jobs during the construction too qnd they are now economically better off too. 

See, in the news we hear about how this project connects Kashmir to the mainland by train and how this is a game changer logistically and security wise. But the ripple effects, the kind of quiet impact it has already had on people living in far-off corners like that village that’s something else and it is sometimes completely overlooked.