Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits (7 page)

While we laughed as well, the story also filled my heart with sadness. And I was sure it saddened my friends as well. They had to live through this every day. But we did not share sadness beyond this. Because then the topic always veered towards the events of 1989–90, and that was the point at which our truths became different. For them, the events of 1990 were a rebellion against the Indian state. For me, these same events had led to exile and permanent homelessness. When I visited we laughed most times, and sang songs, and hugged each other.

Sometimes we just sat quietly, and at times like these, even the crackle of burning cigarette paper could be heard.

At times like these I remembered a girl.

When we were still in the Valley, at home, one of my distant cousins ended her life by jumping into the Jhelum. At first she was thought to have gone missing, and there were rumours of her having eloped with her lover. Apparently, for weeks before she disappeared, she had sat in a corner of her house, listening to a Rashid Hafiz song:

Yeli chhe myonuy maqbar sajawakh, paanay pashtaavakh
Asmaan’ik taarakh ganzraavakh, paanay pashtaavakh

You will repent only when you decorate my grave
You will count stars in the sky, this is how you will repent

They found her bloated body a week or so later in the river waters somewhere far away. Since I was young, I was not allowed to attend her cremation. I had met her for the first time when Grandfather passed away and her family stayed with us through the days of rituals. I had played cricket with her younger brother, and spent hours looking at her in secret admiration of her nail paint, and of the lipstick she hid in the pocket of her pheran, and of her diary in which she had copied verses of Rumi.

Her death left some indelible mark in my heart, some sort of pain—as if she had jumped into the Jhelum to meet me, and I was not there to save her, to rescue her. She must have been very lonely, or in love, or both.

For years afterwards, whenever I thought of homelessness, or when I heard singers at marriage ceremonies, I always remembered her. I thought of the spot from where she must have met the waters of the Jhelum. I also remembered a moment when she winked at me from behind the staircase of my home, where she sat writing something in her diary, and how she then kissed me on my cheek.

Her memory always makes that dull throbbing pain return—the pain of being in exile.

During summers in the Valley, we would shift to the first floor of our house. I didn’t quite understand the logic, but I believe it was to take advantage of the cool breeze that blew during the nights. In Kashmir, no ceiling fans or refrigerators were required. A table fan was good enough. You returned from outside and sat in front of the fan till it dried off your sweat. That was it. On hot summer nights, you kept the windows open and wrapped yourself in thin white bed sheets.

On one such night, I had a nightmare. It must have been 1987. I saw that the space between my uncle’s house and ours—that was where our kitchen gardens were—was infested with sword-wielding marauders who wore sandals made of dry straw. That was how Grandfather had described the tribal invaders who entered Kashmir in 1947. In my nightmare, the marauders went on a killing spree, thrusting their bayonets and swords into people. We were scared, and we tried to hide behind a wardrobe. That was when a few marauders caught hold of Ravi. One of them plunged his sword into Ravi’s abdomen and he shouted for my mother. I woke up covered with beads of sweat. It was morning already, and everyone else had awoken. I was still dizzy with fear and couldn’t get up. Then I heard the sound of a motorcycle and pulled myself to the window. I was happy to see Ravi alive and riding his motorcycle—perhaps to the university. I was so relieved that I shouted out to him. He didn’t hear me and rode on.

Ravi was my maternal uncle’s son. I was very fond of him and, more than me, my mother adored him. Among Kashmiris, the women have a strong attachment to their brother’s children. But in my mother’s case, it was much more than that.

Ravi was pursuing an MPhil in Botany. I never left him alone, and sometimes Ma had to drag me away from his room to give him some privacy. After all, he was a young man. For hours, he would be locked inside his room, a kangri under his pheran during the harsh winter months, listening to ghazals. When I was younger, I would get jealous of Jagjit Singh and Talat Aziz and maul their images on the audio cassettes with the long needle Ravi used to isolate anthers from flowers. He would look at their mauled faces and lift me in his arms, shadow boxing with me. He never complained. Sometimes he teased me by singing a ditty he had created using my nickname—

Vicky ko bhar do dickey mein, apna kaam karega
.

Put Vicky in a dickey, he will do his work there.

I would watch him in fascination as he went about his routine. He would shave, filling water in a while enamelled cup, and I mentally made a note of the
Old Spice
aftershave he dabbed on his cheeks. Like him, I also stuck a poster of the cricketer Kris Srikkanth in my cupboard. Sometimes, he would give me gifts he acquired from his friends who worked in pharmaceutical companies—a plastic cat from Glaxo with an outdoor thermometer fitted in its guts, or a Brufen pocket paper-cutter. He had many friends, and he went out frequently with them. I would see them often sitting at a local provision store—the owner was their friend. But most times he would sit in his room, listening to his beloved ghazals and preparing notes and drawing botanical illustrations in his clear hand. For days, I remember, he tried to teach me how to correctly pronounce ‘geography’, and to irritate him, I would pronounce it incorrectly. It became a joke between us. When I think of those days, I reckon he must have been quite popular among girls of his age. Some of them would visit him every now and then, on the pretext of borrowing his notes or an audio cassette. He always wore jeans under his pheran. When I was a little older and found the traditional checked pyjamas we wore as children quite embarrassing, I understood why he did that.

Of all his friends, the kohl-eyed Latif Lone was closest to Ravi. The whole family knew him. We used to call him John Rambo. He was tall, muscular and always wore jeans and sneakers that he would top with a slim-fit pheran he had had specially stitched in the Bund area of Srinagar, famous for its tailors. Latif was a romantic and a big fan of Mohammed Rafi. He ran a small cosmetics shop called ‘Bombay Beauties’ and an electronics shop. The latter did not do much business, but he still ran it thinking it would fetch him an income someday. Also, it enabled him to listen to Rafi all the time, whose songs he would play amplified through a tall speaker.

I saw him often at Ravi’s house, arguing about who the fastest bowler was in cricket. He also liked a cup of hot Lipton tea. In Kashmir, it was important to say what tea you wanted. Apart from the pink salt tea that most youngsters despised, there was the spiced kahwa. But it was considered ‘hep’ to sip on Lipton tea from bone china cups with flowery designs, just like the English did.

In those days, the state-run Doordarshan television network was quite boring, so in Kashmir we would extend our TV antennas as far as possible through the roof to catch the signals of Pakistan TV. I remember they had some really nice serials, including a few for children. We particularly enjoyed
Alif Laila
, based on the
Arabian Nights
, while the grownups wouldn’t miss a serial called
Emergency Ward
.

During the harsh winters it would snow heavily and in the dead of the night we would wake up sometimes, startled by the sound of a heavy load of snow falling from the tin roof, sounding as if the sky were falling. Sometimes the snow also brought the antenna down. Ravi would then be sent to fetch Latif Lone. Latif would come, survey the antenna and then race up to the attic from where he would climb atop the roof to fix the antenna back into position. While clinging to the roof, he would invoke the name of a Sufi saint:
Ya Peer Dasgeer
. The family would meanwhile watch him from ground level, praying for his safety. Sometimes Ravi’s mother would curse herself for making him do it.

Treth payen Pakistan Tv’eyus
, she would lament. To hell with Pakistan TV.

Latif would ask Ravi to straighten the antenna pole, look left and then right, as if offering namaz, and finally fit the antenna. ‘Now I want a cup of Lipton tea,’ he would say. And so Latif would have his tea while Ravi’s mother and sister sat in front of their TV to check how clear the signal had become.

I would sometimes spot Latif at Lal Chowk with a girl, and sometimes they boarded the same bus as mine. And if I had a seat and they didn’t, I would offer mine to the girl. She would smile and offer to seat me on her lap, but I always refused. I was eleven then, almost a teenager. I wanted to stand, as Latif did; and he would place his hand on my shoulder and it made me proud.

Sometimes I visited his electronics shop to get songs recorded on a cassette. I had no taste for Rafi then, and would want him to record songs from films like
Dance Dance
and
Tridev
. Whenever I tried to pay him, he would take the money from my hand and put it back into my shirt pocket, whistling carelessly and breaking into some Rafi song. He sang them always.

In June 1983, as a seven-year-old, I have vague memories of the Indian cricket team’s winning the World Cup. It was a day–night match; I fell asleep only to be woken later by shouts of celebration. But I remember everything of October 13, 1983. It was the day when the first ever international cricket match was played in Jammu and Kashmir. And the last, too. The Indian team and that of the West Indies arrived the day before the match and were put up in a hotel close to the Sher-e-Kashmir stadium. Ravi had somehow procured two tickets for the match, and we reached the stadium quite early, walking past sniffer dogs.

We took our seats on the freshly painted green benches. The two captains came down for the toss, which was won by the West Indies. They chose to field. I shouted in joy when a few minutes later Sunil Gavaskar and Kris Srikkanth entered the ground to open the batting for India.

And that was when it all began.

Ravi and I sat in disbelief as the stadium erupted with deafening cries of ‘
Pakistan zindabad!
’ Green flags, both Pakistani and the identical Jamaat-e-Islami banner, were seen being carried by people in the stadium. Many in the crowd also held posters of Pakistani cricketers. The Indian batsmen looked like rabbits caught in glaring headlights. On the sixteenth ball he faced, Gavaskar was caught out, having scored only eleven runs. The whole team crumbled in 41 overs for a total score of 176 runs.

Later, as the West Indies team batted, the Indian fielders faced severe harassment. They were booed badly. A half-eaten apple was thrown at Dilip Vengsarkar, which hit him on his back.

Of course, India lost that match.

Years later, as a journalist, I met the cricketer Kirti Azad at a party. Azad was a part of the Indian team that day and had hit two defiant sixes in a lost cause. ‘How can I ever forget that day?’ he told me. ‘It was like playing in Pakistan against Pakistan.’

Returning home after witnessing the madness, Ravi and I had not spoken a word. He tried to comfort me by treating me to a soft drink.

The next morning, I had avoided Rehman. But I also knew there would be no escaping him.

Rehman was our milkman. Every morning he came to our house, announcing his presence by shouting at the door. Most days, I would come out to collect the milk. We would argue with each other, about cricket and Pakistan. It used to be simple banter, but sometimes I would take it quite seriously.

‘Where is he?’ he asked my mother when she came out that morning to collect the milk. I was hiding behind the door.

‘
Pakistan zindabad!
’ he shouted, as if he felt my presence behind the door. My mother smiled.

‘Tell your son that Gavaskar is a lamb in front of our Pakistani heroes,’ he said.

I could no longer hold back. Though I was no fan of Gavaskar’s, I felt I had to defend him. I stormed out to confront Rehman.