The water of the spring at the sacred Hindu shrine of Khirbhawani outside Srinagar has turned red, the phenomenon witnessed after more than half a century is being seen by the priests as a “bad omen.”
Khirbhawani is the most revered place of worship of Kashmiri Brahmins, located in Tulmul village-about 25 kilometres from Srinagar-and is visited by the devotees in large number particularly during the annual fair held on the eighth day of the full moon (Ashtami Shuklapak) to seek the blessings of goddess Ragnya Devi.
The sacred spring is on an island and in the centre of it (spring) is a small marble temple. The legend has it, the goddess changes the colour of the waters of the spring-to turn rosy, various shades of green, diluted milky and light blue around the occasion. The devotees who turn up for the event (usually in May) wash their clothes and abstain from eating meat. They offer milk, candy sugar raisins, clarified butter and candles amidst chanting vedic and tantaraic hymns.
The priests at the shrine said that the water of the sacred spring was light green during the annual fair. “About ten days ago, we were stunned to see it has turned red,” said one of them. Muhammad Ashraf, former director general of tourism, said the spring is said to exhibit from time to time miraculous changes in the colour of its water, which are ascribed to different manifestations of the goddess. “Turning of the colour into shades of black is supposed to signal approaching bad times,” he said.
In 1886, Walter Lawrence, the-then British settlement commissioner for land, during his visit to the spring, reported the water of the spring to have a violet tinge.
Kashmiris claim to have observed a darkish or murky tinge to the water just before the assassination of Indira Gandhi and the 1989 insurgency in the Valley.
Some people say that before the exodus of the Pandits from Kashmir the colour had turned completely black in 1990.
However, some ecology experts say the change in colour of water especially in marshy lands is due to growth of some algae and has happened in the Dal Lake area as well this time and on several occasions in the past.
The phenomenon known as Red Algae Bloom is mainly due to increase in sulphur content in the water. The officials of Kashmir Lake and Waterways Development Authority (LAWDA) said they are investigating the phenomenon in the Khirbhawani.
Yet, many of the Kashmiri Pandits who visited the shrine recently insist the colour of water in the sacred spring seems to be stronger than the scientific explanation.