Dal Lake is the “Alice’s Restaurant” of lakes.
As some of us are old enough to have heard when the relevant lyric was new, in 1967 a 20 year Arlo Guthrie delivered the following words:
You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant
Excepting Alice
Imagine that you are out on Dal Lake – or relaxing, somewhere along its shoreline – at any daylight hour, on any fine day…
You are feeling peckish…or romantic…or craving a freshly brewed, deliciously-spiced cup of tea, or a crappy, sweet soft drink…or you have run out of photographic film or card capacity…or you wish to obtain trinkets, postcards…or even some handcrafted clothing.
Relax, and stay right where you are!
Chances are excellent that before very long a Shikara will approach, and its owner will be delighted to sell you food, flowers, or at least one of the other, above-mentioned items.
If a Kashmiri songster were inclined to follow in Arlo’s footsteps, but write a new, Srinagar-set lyric, this could be its refrain:
You can get anything you want out on Srinagar’s Dal Lake
Exceptin’ dhal
However, that would probably be inaccurate.
Yes, we failed to see anybody proffer dhal on Dal Lake, but I reckon we probably just didn’t look hard enough!
If one spends a few days on and around Dal Lake, one becomes familiar with a few of the more “enterprising” local individuals.
The next several posts celebrate a few of them.
Footnote & musical bonus
An entire side of Arlo Guthrie’s debut LP was occupied by its “shaggy dog” titlepiece, which Arlo partly sang, but mostly recited, atop his own fingerpicked, cyclic, ragtime-esque acoustic guitar.
Alice’s Restaurant Massacree is very much of its particular time and its (dis)United States place, but is still a hoot, 57 years on.
If you are new to it,I’d suggest you click here before you listen. Most of the song’s events really did happen!
In 1969 director Arthur Penn turned Arlo’s eighteen minute monologue into a full-length feature film.
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