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They wanted me to write an obituary. I couldn’t. I couldn’t sum up a life in just a few words. In the end, he got an obit, the kind that has become the default for most Pandits of his generation who died outside of Kashmir in exile: ‘He was a Karamyogi…we remember…Papaji.’

After grandfather died, all the relatives came, it was a big gathering. Here, I asked his children again, “Why didn’t you tell me a Muslim did it.” They still answer, ‘Why would we lie to you?’

I rolled my tongue over my front teeth, felt the point where one of my front teeth bends in a little and seems mashes into another. Grandfather did pass some bad genes to me.

Instead, I see him sitting down to shave, his little shaving kit spread out. Working up lather using a badger shaving brush. Taking extra time to shape his toothbrush moustache. Once done, his face covered in little newspaper bits to stop bleeding from little cuts.

His youngest daughter remembers, “Papaji had a wicked sense of humor, he would never say, ‘no’. He would say, ‘I shall buy you ten’. We soon got to understand it meant you were not getting any.”

Then I remember Jammu, and an afternoon he was hit by tail of big bull “Billo Bhel”, Grandfather smells of Zandu balm. In those early days of Jammu, I remember him writing and receiving letters. Yellow postcards and blue envelope inlays. From and to relatives that were now spread all over the country. Often the letter would end, ‘Rest you know what has happened.’

In Jammu, he often took me on walks. His long excruciating walks, familiarising me to the new place. His habit of getting up early in the morning. His habit of walking steps ahead of his wife who would walk too slow. His habit of making weird funny sound to make his grandchildren laugh. His habit of working the garden of his new house in Jammu.

We finally started to built a new house in Jammu in 1996. It completed only in 2015. A vague cement copy of our house in Srinagar. We moved in even before the house had windows. The first monsoon, water just flooded in from the wall. An empty cup was afloat. We laughed and laughed. It took just two more years to get the windows done. The money was raised by selling-off the house in Kashmir. The land for this house in Jammu was bought in late 1960s, a direct consequence of sectarian polarisation of Hindus and Muslims of valley during ‘Parmeshwari Handoo Case’ of 1967 when a young Pandit woman married an older Muslim man. The violence that followed scared Pandits and some of them started looking for an escape strategy. It was his brothers who suggested buying a piece of a land in Jammu. This was well before politics of ‘Love Jihad’ was employed in Indian mainlands to polarise community. It is as if Kashmir was a little laboratory where future of India was getting shaped by some mad social scientists.

Grandfather’s elder son-in-law remembered him as a true ‘Sanghi Batta‘, a term often used for a Kashmiri Pandit member of the ‘Sangh’ of which RSS is the spurious fountainhead. In 1990, among others, Sanghi Battas, or anyone suspected of being a Sanghi Batta were the prime targets of the Islamic flavoured Kashmiri terrorist. Muslims were convinced ‘Shiv Sainiks’ were coming. I couldn’t think of my grandfather as a Sanghi Batta. I know in 1970s, he had taken part in agitation over closure of a local ancient temple in Chattabal. Like most Pandits, during the era of Nehru, he would have followed Nehru and during the time of Indira, he would have sworn by Indira. Just like most Pandits now swear by Modi. I think he did admire Vajpayee, and followed the Agra summit with much hope.

I never heard my grandfather talk about the Sangh. Like most Kashmiris he was addicted to News, he knew the politics of the land by heart. A passion for news meant piles of newspaper and every couple of months, he would ask me to carry all the junk paper to the local raddiwalla. And for this job, I could charge and he would pay me ten rupees. This way, every year I would at least make a hundred rupees. And often using them, I would buy comics or a book. My grandfather taught me to love books, he would take me to the library and I was free to read anything I liked. We would often mock fight over the right to read a book first. We read Manto and Sartre.

He once fell from a ladder while trying to change a light bulb. I laughed.

Then I moved out of Jammu to pursue higher studies. I got busy. When the studies finished, I moved to Delhi looking for a job. I remember, he told me Delhi had lot of book stores and book fairs, he gave me a small handwritten note with a list books he wanted me to buy for him:

1. In the woods of God realization by Shri Rama Tiratha
2. Yoga by Patanjali
3. Vairagya Satakam by Raja Bharthari (Bharthari)
4. Sunder Lahari by Sri Sankaracharya (Advita Ashram)

He was much older now and discovering God all over again, I was young and leaving the fold of religion. I promised him the books but never got around to buying them. I got busy. I still have the note in my pocket. I want to drown it in the lake at Harmokh.

His blood started clotting. We took him to Kashmir. He met his old neighbours. He couldn’t recognize the crossing to his house. We came back, he got a clot in his brain. He got operations.

His memory started fading. He wanted me to get married. He confused things. His speech slurred. He thought I was married. He named my imaginary wife – Chandani. He had to be prompted lines while talking to me on phone.

He started fading. He faded into a world of his own. We tried to get him back as often as we could. We played games with him. We would ask him questions from his past. We would ask him his name. We would ask him our names. Of all the answers, some would be more lucid than the other. He would often not answer at all. But, he would rattle out names of his brothers and dead relatives like they were still alive. Often, all this questioning would irritate him. His brows would raise and nose would twitch. He wouldn’t talk, but one could see it all on his face as he grit his gums. One day, when one granddaughter asked him the routine questions, he just snapped and said, “Why should I tell you the name of my brothers? Who are you?” That’s probably the last time he got angry. I remember, in Jammu, he broke the T.V. set once. He did have an angry streak.

He stopped talking. We placed a radio next to his bed. It played Kashmiri songs all day. He became a child. He would run for cover if someone raised his voice. His wife would feed him and clean him. His bed sometimes smelt of urine. Much to my grandmother’s annoyance, I would sometime lie in it while he was being given a bath. The songs were from home.

He was locked inside the house and not allowed out. He would ask to be let out. Newspapers in Jammu are full of lost old Kashmiri men. All the local shopkeepers were told to keep a watch on him. Inform, if he steps out. One day he sneaked out, father followed him, keeping a distance. He took the route to raddiwalla and managed to reach back home safely. He stopped walking.

He was now often ill. Doctors and hospitals. 

When I received the call. I knew it was serious this time. I wanted to be there when it happened. I was ready to let him go, but I wanted to see him off. I kept flying back to him. In the hospital, I thumb wrestled him. Seeing us fight, a woman from the nearby hospital bed claimed, “Pandit Ji hasn’t lost memory. He is obviously here.” I know, I was just tricking his instincts. Or, may be he was tricking me. I wasn’t there when it happened. I cried in a long time. The last time I had cried, he was fighting my mother over something that now seems inconsequential.

A few months back, a Muslim man from Srinagar called to offer condolences. An old colleague who read the “First Death Anniversary” message in the local newspaper.

I remember the last time my grandfather laughed. In his lost days, just before he stopped talking, he would laugh on a joke my father cooked up. My father would press the long Kashmiri nose of his father and utter an old Kashmiri saying:

“Bragya nas chaey hej”
Stork, your nose is crooked!

Grandfather would reply with a toothless smile:
“Nat kya chu syod“
What is straight in this world?

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The [edited] piece got published at thewire.in, 18/06/2016