There are many versions of Kashmir. The one we encounter in news headlines and cinema. The one we borrow from other people’s stories. The one we live ourselves, as tourists.
And then there is Krishan’s Kashmir, as his guests fondly call it.
In Krishan’s Kashmir, the car stops for a sheep herd and nobody minds. Brunch is laid out by the river. Wazwan arrives on a single trami— and guests share, the way it has been shared for centuries. Evenings belong to Sufi music, and somewhere in the conversation there’s always a story about a kani shawl and the hands that wove it.
None of it is staged. It’s simply how Krishan’s family has always received people. It has stories and unmistakable ritual of hosting.
The relationships built at Anand’s family table have outlasted generations. When John D. Rockefeller was announced a state guest of Kashmir, he chose to stay with the family instead.
Krishan’s great grandfather hosted him with remarkable grace. “As the family tells it, he wrote the menus and shopped for the groceries himself, to make sure there was only the best and nothing else,” Krishan shares.
And the same care was extended to Farida Khanum the evening she sang “Aaj Jaane ki Zid na karo” at his family home in Jammu in the 2000s.
Raised on such stories and having witnessed some himself, Krishan never knew any other way to build a relationship.
An Event, An Irony and A Shift: Every Road Led Home
So when he hosted CEO summits at Strategy& and saw no relationships being built— It was not a pleasant sight for him. Even after exchanging stacks of business cards. “Three hundred CEOs, and not even twenty acquaintances to remember by the first name at the end. What could have been more disappointing?” he recalls.
It was just opposite to what he admired about the Sun Valley Conference, where moguls arrive to relax and leave with ground-breaking business relationships. It’s where Google’s interest in YouTube took shape.
A business card could introduce you to someone. A shared experience could change the relationship altogether.
So he left Strategy& in 2018 and came back to Kashmir— to craft experiences for people. He picked up his inheritance— the art of hosting. Gifted stories to people— beyond the headlines.
Perhaps your thirties give you a certain quiet audacity: the courage to change a narrative, not by arguing against it, but by creating a different experience altogether.
He started doing it with Secret. He shows a Kashmir that exists beyond the noise of news articles and conflict caused by political turbulence. A Kashmir of wazwans and Sufi music, of art and mountains, and a culture of hosting passed down through generations.
Sometimes, changing a narrative begins with something as simple as opening a door. The door he opened for his friends on a ski trip in 2016, while he was still at Strategy&.
A group of Krishan’s friends came to Gulmarg for a ski trip and stayed at his chalet. They lived across the globe. Krishan says, “these are the people who have stayed in the finest hotels and dined at the most exclusive restaurants”.
That week he found himself showing them his version of heaven (as people call it). “I was able to show them Kashmir, which is my home”,shares Krishan. “The lawns where my grandparents danced, the hotel where my parents fell in love, the floating post office on Dal Lake from where I sent my first love letter”.
“The ski trip got slightly out of hand” Krishan adds with a chuckle.
His friends didn’t come back talking about just the slopes. They came back talking about the people, the stories and the table.
And then it never stopped. “People who come to Secret are my friends, my friends of friends, and my friends of friends of friends”, says Krishan. That is how he personalizes the experience for everyone who arrives.
“This is my home,” Krishan says. “I am just learning to share it.”
Are you quietly changing a narrative of your own? Share with us!
