‘You should not have left Kashmir’
The shawl seller from Kashmir concluded while trying to show his ware. Something about the statement ticked off Veena.
‘You should be glad my brother’s are not at home. They would have answered it better. No, I don’t want to buy anything. Please, leave!’
-0-
My first Id was at the house of Tabassum, friend and colleague of my bua Veena Didi. I remember eating sevaiya at the house of her friend somewhere in downtown Srinagar . I remember how excited about visiting the house of the famous friend of my dear bua. They would run experiments on rabbit blood. I would ask her if I were to visit her office, would I see rabbits, white rabbits. She promised, I went, but I never saw any rabbits. Her office smelt of hospitals. It was a hospital. That year, besides her impeding marriage, she was excited about the new imported machine in her office. This machine could churn blood at an unimaginable RPM, round and round, separating blood into fine individual components for study. Among her sibling she was the only one to have gone outside the state to study. It was a time she was to always remember fondly. I remember how excited I was about eating real sevaiya. I remember the shops in the area, the pistols, that looked too real and the police holsters, that were certainly real, handing from the roof of those shops. I was obsessed with Bandook that year. Guns were all I could think of that year. Diwali was just around the corner. I wanted a gun that year. The visit turned out to be a formal affair. We were sitting, on floor, in the drawing room of a house that looked newer than the house in which I was born. Tabassum served the dishes. Sevaiya were different and certainly better. And then we left.
-0-
She was the first one to leave.Veena didi finally got married in Jammu in middle of a cerfew over an issue that would roll-ball into what would be remembered as ‘mandal comission’. A year after her marriage, some people from Kashmir paid her new home a visit.
‘Where is Veena?’ That is all the woman at the door wanted to know.
Veena’s mother-in-law was in a fix on hearing this question. At first she was suspicious of the Muslim brother-sister duo that had come inquiring about the whereabouts of her daughter-in-law. Al though her family had a house at Chanapora, she had spent most of her own married life in Amritsar. How do they know? How did they find out? Terrorist? These thoughts filled her up instinctively. But on hearing a lengthy explanation on the nature and depth of relationship, she was convinced enough to tell them,’Veena is at the place of her parents. Perhaps you should come some other time. Sorry!’
‘Okay, take us there. I won’t leave without meeting her.’
Shocked as she was at this unabashed display of emotion, under duress and with a word of advice, ‘Take Care’, she deployed Veena’s husband to accompany the brother-sister duo to the place of Veena’s in-laws.
It was a colony which was in winter filled with ‘Durber move’ Kashmiris. It was the place were I celebrated a couple of more Ids growing up with boys from Kashmir who would bowl like Imran Khan and Wasim Akram. Boys who taught me reverse swing even before the rest of the world knew it.
‘How could you not invite me to your marriage? You thought I wouldn’t come?’
‘How could I?’
With that the two friends, Tabassum and Veena hugged each other. Veena welcomed her into the two-roomed house of her parents.
-0-
I have no recollection of the second event. It’s a story my Bua likes to recall sometime. She went on to teach herself programming just around the time when I first started to pick it up in school. In her exercises to keep herself busy, a thought that filled minds of a few pandits in Jammu, on weekdays she teaches computer science to village kids, who in Summer sometimes bring her offering of Mangoes, and on weekends she spends a lot of her time in the ashram of a Kashmiri Saint freshly relocated to Jammu. I think she misses her imported Beckman machine and the rabbits. She tells me she again heard from Tabassum a few years back. Tabassum is married and in U.K. May on somedays, she too misses that blood churning machine and those white rabbits.
View from rooftop a few months after years 2008 Amarnath Land transfer Syapa. Febuary 2009.
War drums
‘Bhaiya, you won’t believe what we did today. It was such a riot,’ my little cousin sister excitedly informed me over phone. Hearing this, I expected her to tell me how she and her younger sister pulled a fast one on someone, their latest adventure in mischief. As she started to tell me the story, as I laughed, a feeling of deja vu gripped me, a familiar sinking feeling, something akin to sadness.
‘It was evening. We were on the rooftop, reading out books. Suddenly, we heard distant shrill metallic sounds, like some people beating steel plates. Soon the sound got louder, got nearer. Other people had picked up the call. The sound was now everywhere. It was party time. So we too got our self a thali, a chamach and joined in the party.’
People were beating utensils as a form of solidarity with cause, in protest. So my little sisters too had taken part in it, the agitation. And they were not alone. She went on to tell me how neigbours would visit our house looking for my Uncle, seeking attendance of at least one family member in the daily rally. The rallying call apparently was: ‘Pandit Ji, this is for you too. All of your loss. No more loss. Now we stand. Together.’ My Uncle went along a couple of times, but most of the times only Rotis rolled out by my aunt and grandmother went out to the agitators.
My cousin who was back then in 8th Standard, ended her story on an even happier note, ‘Do you know we haven’t been to the school for about two month?’
We walk along a line on Möbius strip of time and memories.
Back in 1990, I was in 3rd Standard and lost an academic year because schools in the small city of Jammu had no space for hordes of new “migrant” kids arriving from Kashmir. And once I got admission, I again sat through a class that I had already mastered. Back then, I realized school could be a violent place. Unlike schools in Kashmir, school violence in Jammu was epidemic. Every second day, you could watch someone have his skull smashed by a brick, every third day you could hear about some student getting knifed, and every forth day was a holiday or a half-day due to bomb blasts. Post a bomb-blast came shutdown, bandh and a long walk back from school to a one roomed rented place called home. Maybe I exaggerate, but then my memory association with events of those early years works in a way that may someday make sense to someone who grew up in blast ravaged Karachi or Lahore or Islamabad of year 2010, or any blast prone area of any era.
Television premiere of Chalbaaz on Doordarshan, day the deadliest Matador blast happened. I imagined a snub nosed green matador, a muknas. Everyone of it must have been listening to the 4-tracked stereophonic ‘welcome to Jammu’ anthem, ‘Dil Diwana Bin Sajna kay Manay Na’. It must have been a usual hot day and every one in the bus must have been wet with sweating. Thinking of heat and wetness of others, someone must have sat near the seat next to the missing door, the conductor seat. Just below the seat, next to the cranky speaker, any one could place the bomb. It could be anywhere and everywhere. Release of Karan Arjun, blast in Apsara theater. Three days after Republic day blast, a head of a victim found on the rooftop of government apartments next to Bakshi Stadium. Blast at Raghunath temple, three school mates cut shot their ‘school-bunk’ adventure, sneak back to class room laughing, they were sitting only a tea stall away from the blast site, they thought it was a tyre-burst. Listening to tyre-burst, sitting on a wooden bench scrawled with ‘Poonam+Nikhil’, I was hoping it was a bomb blast, and praying the school goes off. Reading messages in buses about ‘Agyat Vastu’ and finding them funny. Hearing stoic announcements in Metro about ‘Unknown Objects, radios, transistors ‘, I assume we are already well trained, we are ready for what is coming, ‘unknown’, trained for life by death.
I was in Jammu a couple of months later. Things were back to what is deemed normal. Happenings of previous few months had left little remains, only a ‘Andolan’ graffiti here and there, and echos. At home, the Gujjar milkman had picked a new habit of frequently ending sentences with, ‘You people were right. They are wrong.’ He must have been repeating it, having himself heard for last couple of months now. Old Massi, our Gujjar neighbour was still looking after her growing household and house, number by number, floor by floor, sq ft by sq ft. Her progenies were now running a playschool-cum-creche, and one of her grand-daughters was now a Dentist. Her two grand-sons from her daughter too didn’t turn out too bad. When the kids were young, Massi got then a Mudarris, a Koran teacher. The boys grovelled, recited back, cried, recited back, picked their nose, recited back, ran helter skelter, recited aloud. Massi, the designate observer of their afternoon study session, profusely apologizing to the teacher would usually get them by their ear and back in front of him. But some days she too found their antics funny and would laugh her guts out. Funny faces behind teacher’s back is always funny. Now these kids had have grown up. Although I suspect their grades in school were still low, their politeness score had gone high. ‘Kab aaye Bhaiya!Aur…’ an infrequent visitor never gets unacknowledged. Massi seemed content, content enough for you to imagine her offering a grey teeth blaring smile carrying a heap of fresh green grass on her head for the young goat tied outside her kitchen, her hair henna-dyed hair, burnt brown, peeking from the corner of a fluorescent pink dupatta covering her head, held in place by her one hand, the other hand carrying a dhrati.
‘So, who did you vote for?’
‘BJP, of course.’ My Uncle answered, a bit surprised at the stupidity of my question.
‘And so did everyone from our family, including you.’ He added.
View from the roof was tinted saffron. There was a BJP flag fluttering on the roof of my Jammu house. There were flags fluttering from the rooftop of every second house. I started to open the knots of the threads that tied the flag firmly to a television antenna.
Later back in Delhi, when the results of the election came, I was in for a surprise. BJP had the seat lost from my area.
Aftermath.
‘It’s all funny business. I remember when I was a kid, this one time I had a big fight with my father. He had voted for Congress. And I was a BJP kid. He reason he gave was that the guy he selected had done lot of good work in the area. I would have none of it. BJP back then was the best thing that could ever happen to a school going kid. BJP was the Chutti Party.’
‘Chutti Uncle,’ I inadvertently interrupted my Marwari friend’s monologue triggered by my stupored monologue. I was back in Delhi talking about my experience with two of my friends.
‘What?’
He didn’t get it. There’s no reason why he should.
‘Nothing. Continue. Continue.
‘Listen, Kashmiri. So BJP was naturally the greatest party in the world for me. Every second day they were on street enforcing ye Bandh, wo Bandh. So no school. And on top of it, they were going to build The temple. They were alive, electric, like tube light, other dead or old, like Bajaj Bulb. All shiny. Apparently that wasn’t enough for my father. So we fought. I may even have been a bit embarrassed of his action. It was a crazy time. I now see his point. I was too young to understand all this back then. He has worked hard all his life. Coming from a village and making a life in this city.’
Every once in a while, my friend goes back to visit his village, a place called Behal in Rajasthan. His ancestors were village grocers. They have a family temple in the village. They still have some land holding, taken care of by local guys tied to his family for generations. Poor local guys who in death are mourned like a death in the family.
‘At least you guys get to visit your village as and when you like. You have a place to go back to. In our case…’
‘In your case what? Don’t start again. What is your case? You too are here right now drinking beer. Happy. Listening to some ‘Bhawgwan knows what’ song by a Chinki band.’
‘It’s a Diamonds and Rust. Baez. Manipur.’
‘Talking nonsense. I think BJP still is great. Everyone in my family votes for it. Everyone once in a while we need to push the chain and flush the system. They are do’er while others are all duffers. Talk and more talk.’
My other Marwari friend finally had had enough of our drunk talk. A distant cousin of my monologue buddy, he too traces his origin to Behal, only his ancestors moved to Jorhat near Guwahati in Assam where they have land holding leased out to companies for years. His family moved to Delhi when he was a kid because of ULFA condition but mostly because of his then, strangely enough, Asthma condition. Why would anyone move to Delhi to cure Asthma? I once tried to get an answer but he ended up talking about ULFA. For every JKLF story that I would come up with, he would come up with a ULFA story. I knew what was coming. He too wanted to be listened.
‘You think you have seen everything. How do you thing ULFA lost its teeth? My father knew all the guys who went on to be local ULFA leaders. It was all business. This one time…’
By the end of the year, friend of mine moved back to Guwahati where he now sells iron at almost thrice the profit margin at which my Marwari friend is able to sell in Delhi.
I understand the math.
-0-
Photograph was taken using the camera lent out to me by my friend from Jorhat. This was my first D-SLR camera.
Somehow it didn’t come as a surprise. It made sense, in a way. Yet it felt strange. This eager assimilation. Jagrata a day before Mendiraat ceremony! Jagarata may well be a common social event for most North Indian Hindus but I guess for Kashmiri Pandits it is a new way of expressing old religiosity. Cousins weren’t very excited about it, even a bit disappointed.’We have seen enough Jagarata in Delhi. We came for a Kashmiri Mehendi Raat.’
The event was hosted by most political Uncle of mine, ‘Stupid-Liberals-Glory-Be-Our-Culture’ kind, a kind now assumed to be quite common among Kashmiri people. Back in Kashmir, this Uncle of mine was thick with guys who went on to be the local representatives of JKLF. Thickness of this relationship can be measured by the fact that he even went for business partnership with some of them. He and these guys bought a Gypsy together which they would lent out to anyone in need. It must have been a profitable venture as this partnership didn’t last very long. After his partners short-changed him, relations turned so sour that his old mother had to intervene and get back his investment amount from these guys. Kashmiri Pandits and Kashmiri Muslims, it seems interacted based some unwritten principle of chivalry or bonhomie or whatever it may be called Kashmiriyat, Sanjha Chulha…whatever. ‘Why else would they have paid back the money at all? They could have turned the woman away! They could have taken over property without having to pay a single paisa.’
But by the end of 80s, principles were put to real test and people failed.
‘He had applied for Police service some years earlier. Made it to the training. It didn’t work out. His nose had a bleeding problem. It wasn’t meant for him.’
‘Is that why his name figured in that local Hitlist? Or was it because of his interest in politics, because of his writings or because of the kind of friends he always managed to find?’
‘Who knows? But he was on that bus out of Kashmir with your Veena bua when… ‘
‘The bus met with an accident near Khooni Nala and his front teeth got chipped. I know the story. Badi Mummy, back in Kashmir made Taher to thanks Gods. I know the story.’
After spending a decade in Bangalore where he took active part in community affairs, my Uncle came back to Jammu and was soon forging new friendships and reporting on Pandit affairs in Jammu for community magazines,
Musicians called for Mehandi Raat were the same Dogra musicians, the same Jagrata crew but this time center stage was held by a woman. For a while it was interesting to watch a Dogri woman shuffle between Kashmiri songs, Punjabi songs, Sufi songs and film songs, trying earnestly to get some kind of mojo going, but after sometime it became a drag, after all this is not what one expects from a Menzraat. The woman left just before mid-night but before leaving she apologized to the host’s old mother for her rendition of Kashmiri songs, ‘Mataji Mujhay Kashmiri nahi aati. Try kiya.’.
The old woman blessed her,’Ahee! Ahee! Bahut Acha Kiya!’
Later in the night, Bhabhi, my uncle’s old mother was on stage herself singing along with Sunny Bhaiya, a nephew of my uncle. Sunny Bhaiya sang a crowd favorite Kashmiri song about Jammu as Kashmiri Pandits first saw it. ‘Ye che Jem’ich Matador.Ye che Jem’ich Matador’ is a satire on Tata Matadors of Jammu, the common mode of transport in that city. Someone back in those dark found humor in crammed existence of community in Jammu. This ought to count for something. ‘Very humanizing, indeed.’
Next he sang a funny song about a woman who weighs in her options on the kind of guy she can marry, ‘Mummy’yay be Be Kyuthi Ghar’e Kariye’. Of course she rejects all kinds, some are fat, some are lazy, some are poor, some are lame…stuff like that…
‘He is a really great guy. Great job. Good nature. Decent. He could have easily married. Only his legs condition…’
I remember Sunny Bhaiya from our Panjtarthi days in monkey infested old Jammu city. We were putting up in the Durbar Hall of some Dewan’s Kothi. We divided up the hall into rooms and kitchen using bed-curtains. There were at least seven other Pandit families living in other room of the ‘Palace’, but all sharing one latrine. We had space. Sunny Bhaiya’s family was living nearby. He was always full of life, never let his ‘leg condition’ dampen the spirit of something like Holi celebrations. He would come charging in, all painted red and green, ready to tear people’s clothing on Holi.
‘It’s surprising how these ill-tuned amplifiers are in fact capable of transmitting real music. He can really sing.’
Next he sang a song about Kashmiri Pandit’s and their loss of Chinar Shade, ‘Ase Chu Rovmut Boonyi Shejar’ or something like that. Everyone, old, was singing along, everyone was pensive.
‘That’s a Panun Kashmir anthem. Do you realize that?’
Next day, on the day of Baraat, I got into a light conversation with Sunny Bhaiya. I don’t know how it happened but soon we were discussing massacres.
‘It never happened. It’s all a Muslim lie. 20000 people. Is that possible? All propaganda.’
‘It did happen. It was terrible. People did die,’ intervened my Uncle’s Dogra neighbor who must have overheard our heated discussion.
‘Our family came from the other side of LOC that time around. There was in terrible bloodshed in 1947. Who do you think ran Kashmir back then ? Take a guess. It was Dogras. We lost a lot. We were rich…’
And then he went into glorious past. I was back to wondering how in popular memory of India the golden question was ‘How come Kashmir was peaceful in 1947 when the whole country was burning?’ I guess Gandhi is partly to blame for this simple assumption, after all he did ask rest of the India to take lessons of brotherhood from Kashmir. And now no one cares about testaments of people who back in 1947 were moving into what is today ‘Indian Held Kashmir’ from what is today ‘Pakistan Occupied Kashmir’. Our minds held and occupied by cosy inconsequential pneumatics of conflict
‘It’s all propaganda. Maybe something happened. But 20000. I know handle these lies.’
It turned out Sunny Bhaiya spends a lot of time online fighting Kashmir trolls. Think Rediff forums, comment section of newspapers and Youtube videos. I tried to explain to him how actually fighting an online troll essentially makes a troll out of you too.
‘I make my bread and butter based on my ability to understand behavior of people online. Listen. I make social games. It’s a game you play. It’s a game you don’t want to play in real life. You are deadlocked in a game-play that doesn’t have any logical out in any case.’
‘You have grown up.’
‘You can really sing.’
On the day of reception, other guests arrived. There was head of one section of Panun Kashmir and there was poet-writer-father-of-a-writer exilee.
‘Come take a picture.’ I was called to take a group photograph. Through the viewfinder I saw more than a dozen people.
‘No everyone will come in the frame.’
‘Go back a little more. Everyone should come.’
My uncle was with his colleagues (or should that be ex-colleague) from Kashmir. These were his old Kashmiri Muslim friends from work. And I counted a couple of women too. It seem the entire department had come. It was an open invite and all of them had come to attend the wedding of my ‘Stupid-Liberals-Glory-Be-Our-Culture’ Uncle’s daughter, the youngest of my cousins, the last of them born in Kashmir.
Among this group, I was able to identify at least one face from my memory of Kashmir. He used to visit our house a lot to meet up with my Uncle. This was my ‘Stupid-Liberals-Glory-Be-Our-Culture’ Uncle’s best buddy from office.
In case of Kashmir, this inverted part of the world, I think it would be better if people start preaching what they actually practice.
Papilio Polytes, Jammu. 2010.
A butterfly that mimics the appearance of
an unpalatable  butterfly so as to protect it self from predators.
‘Where are you? What’s going on?’
‘Office. Nothing.’
‘Okay. Guess what. I am right now crossing Jhelum on a boat. Â The traffic on the bridge was a bit too much today. So, I thought why not. So here I am crossing it on a boat. Just like old days. I thought I should call you. ‘
‘Do you have the camera with you?’
‘No, I forgot.’
‘What? How can you?’
My father got a bit irritated by my demands.
‘Is a man supposed to carry a camera on him while going to work? There is nothing here that I have’t seen. Be Chusa Tourist yeti. I am not  a tourist. Anyway, get back to work. I will try to keep it with me next time. There is always next time.’
I pull the mobile off my ear, place it in my pocket and stair back at a computer screen that for a moment still remains illegible. Envy was soon replaced by something else, perhaps not soon enough. Perhaps a wish, a longing, a regret. In that moment, I knew it was indeed turning out to be a deliciously difficult year.
At the start of year 2010 my father, nearing retirement, found himself back in office in Srinagar. In the run up to it he spend hours on phone discussing the ‘Ardar‘. My mother and sister found it a worrisome prospect. ‘Adar hasa drav, voyn kyah karav!’ (Order is on the way, what will we do now!) I had romantic notions about it. First thing I did was to ensure that he buys himself a camera. ‘At least, do not return empty handed.’ All this ‘Dangerous Place, Kashmir’ talk is so often repeated, it all is probably half made-up ghost stories to lull the civilized people to sleep, to just close their eyes. At the end of it, I thought, his adventures in an alien Hindu plains may outshine his adventures in his native Muslim valley. Imagine getting your head smeared with vermilion while being proclaimed a ‘Hindu-Brother’ by a bunch of drunken louts in a seedy Beer bar in Aurangabad. ‘Phikar knot, Pandit Ji! Now you are in Hindu Maharashtra. In this land, proudly sport your tilak, without fear.’
‘India Bahut Bada Hai, Becho-Becho, Yaha Shamshaan ki rakh bhi bikti hai’, Â is the mantra he has been chanting for last twenty years. It remains one of the few mantras on which I agree with him.
The decision of going back was sealed by him with, ‘Woyn Gasav Kasheer ti.‘ (Now, I will go to Kashmir too). Economics always wins. So he packed his bags and reported back to duty in Kashmir after a gap of around twenty years. I must mention here that, I am in awe of my father’s packing skills. Experience has made him expert. Even twenty years back, on some-days, he was packing his bags in Srinagar and reporting to duty in a place called Handwara, working on irrigation canals. Later, he packed bags in 1990 and left for Jammu. Two decades later he packed bags and left for Delhi. Always with family. A few years later moved to Hyderabad and Aurangabad, alone. Now, he was going back to Kashmir.
‘I have taken you to that place…Handwara. You won’t understand. You were too young when we left. You probably don’t remember.’
‘No I do.’
‘Really! How is that possible? You must have been only…’
‘No, I am just kidding. So what’s going on. Howz KASHMIR?’
‘Hmm…I saw a Katij Ool (a Barn Swallow’s nest) a couple of days ago.’
‘What’s a Katij?’
‘Ye cha na aasan ek bird. (It’s a bird). It arrives in spring. Flies in a really peculiar way. When I was a kid I used to sit on a high window and watch it for hours while it tried to outpace and outmanoeuvre the buses plying on the road.’
‘What’s so special about this Ool?’
‘You have to see it to believe it. The one I saw recently had built a nest under a Hanji’s houseboat on Jhelum.
‘What do you mean below it?’
You remember the Zero-Bridge. Well, while talking to a boatman there I asked his whatever happened to Katij. If  they still arrive. The man lead me to his boat and showed a recently built nest.’
‘Did you take a picture?’
‘No, I didn’t have the camera with me.’
‘Again! Did you buy it just to photograph yourself cooking Roganjosh in a hotel room? What am I supposed to do with fifty photographs having a bunch of Uncle Jis, who I just do not know, all holed up in a room eating your hand cooked mutton?’
‘Those are for me. I was cooking because the hotel staff here, for some strange reason, just does not know how to cook meat.
‘Isn’t the staff Kashmiri?’
‘These kids are from Chamba or Garhwal, besides all sorts of Biharis. What do they know about cooking meat?’
My father at a ‘Pandit’ Hotel, the kind around zero bridge, the kind often run by a reformed former militant, the kind that houses Hindu government employees during Durbar move to Srinagar. He shared his room with three or four other Pandit employees caught in a similar situation, the situation faced by a dwindling tribe of Pandit government employees, the situation of the employees who are suddenly asked to report back to job after a gap of twenty years, the situation of Rip Van Winkle. Only there was Rip Van Winkle-Panti from government side too.
‘I pretty much started my career in the same way. At Hiranagar near Jammu. From the train, on way to Jammu, you can still see the water channels I worked on.’
‘Not boasting, but you can see the things I built online.’
‘Online-Shonline. Cement and Iron are real. My fist in your face in real. Not this software thing.’
‘It is funny. I am here sharing a room with a bunch of guys and you are there sharing your room with a bunch of guys.’
‘The people here laugh when I tell them I have seven houses.’
The Muslim guys in the office would often ask him, ‘Tohi Keetah Ghari Pandiji’. (How many houses do you have?)And my father would reply, ‘Me Che Voyn Sath Ghar.’ (My one house in now divided in seven). They seldom understood the meaning of the claim. Instead, my father spend too much time getting dragged into arguments over things like, “Isn’t world Beautiful? Surely, someone created it. So, Pandit Ji…you think evolution is a fact? Why do your gods have 5 heads and 10 hands? And what about the stones in your home?”
Post script: Less than a year later, another order arrived sending my father back to Jammu (but sent to Doda, again hundreds of kilometres away) and onto his retirement. Someone in his office, an old friend was too bothered by his presence. A few months later another fresh round of violence started in Kashmir.
