Kitni khubsoorat yeh tasveer hai, mausam bemisal benazir hai yeh Kashmir hai yeh Kashmir hai….These were the beautiful lines that Amitabh Bachchan, Raakhee and Vinod Mehra sang in Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Bemisal .This was in 1982, some years before gun shots disrupted the melodious sound of Bollywood romancing the Kashmir Valley. Before militancy and extremism Kashmir was truly a paradise on earth. Many of the 1960s musicals like Subodh Mukherjee’s Junglee and Shakti Samanta’s Kashmir Ki Kali were shot in the Valley. In fact so many of Shammi Kapoor’s films were shot in Kashmir. It was only befitting that after his death his ashes were immersed in the Jhelum.

Pardise: A general view shows the mountains and the frozen Dal Lake in Srinagar on January 19, 2012