Our Moon has Blood Clots Page 19

  During my reporting assignments I had met Ali Mohammed, an elderly Kashmiri driver. Over several assignments we grew fond of each other. He reminded me of Totha. Travelling with him across Kashmir and listening to his stories on long journeys were like taking a walk through Kashmir’s history. He had so many stories to share of the old times. He spoke fondly of how his Pandit teacher would box his ears because he couldn’t learn a certain lesson; or how he drove the car of the legendary Pandit doctor Jagat Mohini who ran the Ratan Rani hospital right up to her death in 2009; or how he skipped meals at his house to eat at a Pandit’s house because he liked their preparation of collard greens.

  ‘I wouldn’t take any nonsense from anyone,’ he said. ‘But now one has to control one’s temper. The boys have guns now, and they will show no consideration towards the wrinkles on my face.’ Ali Mohammed—most youngsters called him Chacha—lamented the loss of what we once had in Kashmir. ‘The old days are gone,’ he often said, as we sat in his car, sharing cigarettes and our love for the singer Kailash Mehra.

  Whenever I went to Kashmir, I always made it a point to visit the Kshir Bhawani temple. There, I felt connected to my ancestors. A day before, I would tell chacha about my plans. He would arrive early the next morning, and together we would drive to the temple. ‘It is important to be in touch with one’s roots,’ he would tell me. We never discussed money—he would accept whatever I put in his shirt pocket. On many afternoons, he would park the car outside Ahdoo’s restaurant and we would sit like old friends, sharing a quintessential Kashmiri meal of rice, roganjosh and collard greens.

  When going back home became inevitable in my mind, I told chacha about it. Aaesh karith—with pleasure, he said like always. Two journalist friends, Suhail and Zubair, also accompanied me. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Suhail asked when I shared my decision with him. It would be a painful experience, he knew. Two years ago, a massive earthquake had almost brought down his house, and for days afterwards he would speak of nothing else but the cracks that had developed in his house. How could I explain my decision to him, I thought. ‘I need to click pictures, Suhail,’ I said finally. ‘For my mother.’

  So on the morning of a day in September 2007, the three of us sat in Chacha’s Tavera and my journey towards home began. From Lal Chowk, it took us a few minutes to cross the Ram Bagh bridge, and from there we drove on to Natipora. Until then I was all right. But soon afterwards, my heart began to sink. I hoped it did not show on my face.

  Initially, I missed the turn-off for our house. That was the spot where the school bus would drop us, and we would walk the rest of the way home. But now everything had changed. The road had become congested. New shops and houses had come up all over the place. It was only when we reached the last bus stop on the road that I realized where we were, and asked Chacha to make a U-turn. Soon, I saw the deserted temple on my right. A little further ahead, the gurudwara.

  I am now standing at one end of my street, my locality. On my left, Rehman the milkman’s shop is closed. Is he alive, or has the monster of violence consumed him as well? It is 3 p.m. and there is nobody outside. I walk ahead. Suhail and Zubair follow me. My house should be somewhere here. Yes, yes, it is. On my left. I turn. It is in front of me. The huge blue gate is still there. The name Aabshar—waterfall—is still painted on a small board. The apple tree used to be visible from the street. Wait … where is it? It is not there. Is this my house?

  A man walks up to me. ‘Are you looking for someone?’ he asks.

  I look at him. ‘I used to live here long ago,’ I mutter.

  ‘Oh!’ he says; his face softens. He takes a step forward and hugs me. ‘I stay in that house,’ he points to a house. ‘My name is Gazanfar Ali; I am an advocate.’

  ‘It belonged to the Razdans?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes.’

  Then I am standing right in front of my house.

  ‘This is your home as well. Come inside, have some tea.’

  I want to go inside my house, my home, my only home.

  ‘Who lives here now?’ I ask him.

  ‘I don’t know much about them; the man stays with his wife and her parents. He won’t be there, but his father-in-law is always at home,’ he says. ‘The Razdans came here a few years ago. Mr Razdan had requested me to search for a small velvet purse that had belonged to his father. Luckily I found it and handed it over to him.’

  I look at Zubair and Suhail. They watch this silently as if from the sidelines of a film set. ‘Stop by at my place once you’ve visited your home,’ Ali says.

  We enter through the gate.

  The lawn is just like we had left it, except that the grass has worn away. The small fence still runs around it, but it is broken at many places. The apple tree is no longer there. It was probably cut down.

  ‘Will you knock at the door?’ I ask Suhail. Two gentle knocks. A man appears at the door. Wanyu, he says. Tell me? I don’t know what to say to him.

  Zubair clears his throat. ‘Actually, he used to live here long ago,’ he looks at me.

  The man stares at me; he doesn’t know how to process this information. ‘Come inside,’ he gives up finally.

  I steal a glance towards the top right-hand side of the door. The fish-shaped doorbell is still there. But it is not functional now. I can see the wire protruding from its belly. I still haven’t looked towards my right, towards what used to be our kitchen garden, beyond which used to be Ravi’s kitchen garden, and then his home.

  I am led inside, to our living room. An elderly woman—she is the man’s wife—is lying on a carpet. She gets up, embarrassed, adjusting her head scarf. She looks at her husband. She is smiling a particular smile, which in Kashmir one does when one cannot ask a question but nevertheless expects an answer. ‘They used to live here,’ he tells her. Suddenly I realize Zubair and Suhail are not with me. Where are they? ‘One minute, please, I’ll just go and see where my friends are!’ I say as I leave the room. It is probably a good thing to do, as it will give them some time to discuss me. I open the front door. I find Zubair and Suhail outside. Suhail’s back is towards me, but I understand. He is weeping helplessly, at the thought of a man knocking at his own door, finding someone else opening it, and then seeking permission to enter his own house. I hold his hands; we embrace. It takes him a few minutes to compose himself. I lead them inside.

  We sit on chairs. The woman is looking at me. I don’t know why, but I think she is hard of hearing. I JUST CAME TO TAKE A LOOK. IT’S BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE WE LIVED HERE. WE LIVE IN DELHI NOW. WE HAVE OUR OWN HOUSE. WE ARE SETTLED THERE (Yes, settled!) I JUST WANT TO CLICK A FEW PICTURES AND SHOW THEM TO MY PARENTS. THEY HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO RETURN SINCE 1990.

  Her smile changes. It’s a different smile now. It is devoid of that question mark. It’s a smile of relief. YES, DON’T WORRY, I KNOW HOW IT FEELS—THE THOUGHT OF SOMEONE COMING AND CLAIMING YOUR HOUSE. IT IS YOUR HOUSE NOW. I HAVE JUST COME TO PLACE IT IN MY MEMORY.

  Tea arrives. We drink it silently. There are a few questions about what I do and where I live. But my mind is elsewhere. I remember there used to be a cupboard behind where I sit now, with glass doors. We used to call it the ‘showpiece almari’. It held small decorative items—six small clay statues of a military band, photo frames, a dancing girl who gyrated gracefully when nudged, a wire cycle, a big star filled with blue gel. None of it is there now.

  ‘The house was in very bad condition,’ the man says. ‘When we shifted the walls were crumbling; we had to spend a lot of money on renovation.’

  Sir, quote a price and I will buy it from you right away. Bad condition! Do you, sir, even realize what it means for me to be sitting in this house? This house built with my father’s Provident Fund savings and my mother’s bridal jewellery; this house where my mother sat on her haunches and mopped the long, red-cemented corridor each morning; the house we left forever to become refugees and court suffering and homelessness.

  Every memory comes back to me. The boys who had a
ssembled on the street below on that cold evening in 1990, distributing our houses among themselves; that taxi ride to Jammu and that man showing us his fist and wishing us death; truck after truck of refugees under that tarpaulin, that woman’s blank eyes; the heat and other horrors of those one-room dwellings; mother’s tears and that young man holding the remains of a wedding feast on a plate outside our room; the humiliation of a door-less toilet; the ignominy of suffering landlords.

  And you, sir, say this house was in bad condition! Do you know the comfort of lying under quilts in the room adjacent to where we are sitting now? Do you know the touch of the breeze that flows by when you are reading in the room upstairs, watching the apple-laden tree swaying gently? Or the joy of watching those blooming roses in the lawn? Or enjoying the sun on the rear balcony?

  And sir, the house was in bad condition because those who looted our belongings also ripped off the taps and the water seeped in everywhere.

  The tea is finished. Can we go upstairs, please? I climb the stairs. Can we go into that room? The shelf where we used to keep our books—there are no books. The shelf is filled with onions and garlic. Oh, how it breaks my heart! From the window I look out onto the kitchen garden. There is no kitchen garden—there is no mountain mint, there are no rose shrubs. Ravi’s house stands silently. A motorcycle is parked in the front, just like his used to be. But it belongs to the new occupants of the house. I feel like opening the window and whistling the way Ma used to when she wanted to speak to her brother, or mother. I imagine Ravi will peep out from the window and sing that ditty to me teasingly—Vicky ko bhar do dickey mein, apna kaam karega.

  I click pictures furiously. The BSF camp is no longer behind the house. Their campus is now a forest of unkempt grass and wild bushes; some houses have been built there as well. The rear wooden balcony has collapsed. I am still thinking about our books. What happened to them? Were they sold to a scrap dealer, or were their bindings ripped off and their pages torn into shreds in some frenzy?

  The man is getting a bit restless now. He is done showing me around what happens to be his house now. I still want to go to the attic and check if something is left of my huge collection of comics and Enid Blyton series, many of which I won by collecting lucky coupons from packs of Double Yum chewing gum. There is also the ‘best deodar wood’ that Father had procured just before we had to leave. For years he lamented over how that wood had been left back home.

  I step out. I climb down the wooden stairs and hold the baluster for a moment. I want to retain the memory of its feel. I sit on my veranda and tie my shoelaces. The water works board stating our connection number is still there: 44732. A piece of driftwood a cousin had lovingly mounted on the wall is there as well. The looters would have thought nothing of it. I shake hands with the man. I look at the spot where the apple tree used to be. I remember how Dedda used to sit there, or how Totha would take me there and try and keep me busy playing with pebbles. I’m reminded of one Sunday evening when a cousin and I were watching television and lightning struck suddenly. It struck a tree near the mosque and then passed through our antenna and we watched in fear as burning debris fell into the BSF camp. Ma was so angry that we had switched on the television set in that dreadful storm, against her advice. For days, we couldn’t watch television since the antenna could not be replaced immediately.

  ‘There used to be an apple tree there,’ I point with my finger.

  ‘Oh, we got it cut; it was occupying too much space.’

  Ghulam Hasan Sofi’s voice rings in my ears—

  B’e thavnus chaetit’h tabardaaran

  Yaaro wun baalyaaro wun

  Chh’e kamyu karenai taavei’z pun?

  I was split apart by the woodcutter

  My friend, my beloved, tell me:

  who has cast a spell on you?

  In The Murderers Are Among Us, Simon Wiesenthal writes—‘However this war may end, we have won the war against you; none of you will be left to bear witness, but even if someone were to survive, the world would not believe him.’

  Over the years, the narrative of what led to the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley has been changed. A series of untruths have been spoken so many times that they have almost become the truth. One major untruth is that the Pandits were made to leave Kashmir under a government design to discredit the Kashmiri secessionist movement. One of the scapegoats chosen for this untruth was the former governor of the state, Jagmohan.

  ‘The Pandits were encouraged by Jagmohan to leave so that he could deal with us firmly.’ One kept hearing this. Initially, I didn’t care. But now I seethe with anger whenever I come across this propaganda. I have become determined—to paraphrase Agha Shahid Ali—that my memory must come in the way of this untrue history. Another problem is the apathy of the media and a majority of India’s intellectual class who refuse to even acknowledge the suffering of the Pandits. No campaigns were ever run for us; no fellowships or grants given for research on our exodus. For the media, the Kashmir issue has remained largely black and white—here are a people who were victims of brutalization at the hands of the Indian state. But the media has failed to see, and has largely ignored the fact that the same people also victimized another people.

  It has become unfashionable to speak about us, or raise the issue of our exodus. But I have made it my mission to talk about the ‘other story’ of Kashmir. Like the tramp in Naipaul’s In a Free State, I have reduced my life to names and numbers. I have memorized the name of every Pandit killed during those dark days, and the circumstances in which he or she was killed. I have memorized the number of people killed in each district. I have memorized how many of us were registered as refugees in Jammu and elsewhere.

  Another untruth that leaves me fuming is the assertion that nobody touched the handful of Pandit families that had chosen to remain in the Valley. In a Paris Review interview, holocaust survivor and acclaimed writer Primo Levi is asked, ‘Are they still strongly anti-Semitic in Poland today?’ ‘They’re not any more. For lack of material!’ he replies. That is roughly what happened in Kashmir as well. Some of us would return once a year to celebrate a festival at Kshir Bhawani and murderers like Bitta Karate, who nurse political ambitions now, would visit and hug elderly women and pictures would be taken and published prominently in local newspapers.

  While I know there are many among the Kashmiri Muslims who want us back, I am also aware of what happened to some of us who chose to stay back. That is why meeting Vinod Dhar was very important.

  It is very difficult to get Vinod Dhar on the telephone. The first time I call him, he picks up the phone after the first ring. It is evening, and there is absolute silence on the other end for a few seconds before I hear two ‘hellos’ in quick succession, the second more impatient than the first.

  I speak to him in Hindi. For months, I’ve been struggling to get in touch with people whose family members were killed by militants, to record their stories. The problem is that no one really says ‘no’. But everyone is evasive.

  ‘Yes, yes, come over any time. We will have lunch. My home is your home, after all.’

  ‘Any time’ is the problem. So I take a deep breath.

  ‘So when can I come?’

  Same response. ‘Any time.’

  ‘How about tomorrow morning?’

  ‘Ah, well, the thing is, there is a wedding in the family. So we won’t be here tomorrow. You know this is wedding season.’

  ‘Ok, so when then?’

  ‘Give me a call on Monday. We will surely meet then.’

  On Monday I call. There is no response. I call again on Tuesday. The phone is answered.

  ‘Hello, hellooooo, yes, who do you want to speak to … Oh, yes, yes, how are you? Yes, we are back. Let me call you this evening, and then we can meet.’

  The call is never returned. The next morning I call again. The phone is not answered. I try five times. Ten times. No response.

  Those who agree to meet are keen to talk about th
eir mastery of the history of Kashmir. ‘You see, according to Nilmat Purana …’

  Out of respect, I listen to them for a while.

  ‘Sir, I was asking you about 1990 …’

  ‘Your tea is getting cold. Here, have a biscuit. You will stay for lunch, won’t you?’

  ‘Sir … 1990?’

  ‘When are you here next? We can sit at ease next time and have a long chat.’

  ‘But, sir, I heard about Nilmat Purana for thirty minutes …’

  But the conversation is over by that time. One more biscuit, one more conversation about lunch and you want to escape badly. Dead end.

  With Vinod Dhar, I know I have to be more persistent.

  ‘Vinod ji, I want to meet you.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I’m writing a book and I was hoping to meet you.’

  Long silence. ‘Hello, Vinod ji, are you there?’

  ‘What will it achieve now, speaking of those days? I am trying to forget it all.’

  It sounds as if Vinod Dhar has jumped into a well and speaks to me from there.

  You cannot argue with the act of forgetting. Trying to forget. Perhaps I don’t understand the importance of forgetting. Perhaps it is important for Vinod Dhar to forget. For someone who lost his entire family in the matter of a few minutes one cold January night, it is important to forget. For someone who is the lone survivor of a massacre that claimed twenty-three members—from his family and extended family and neighbours.

  I spoke to him about how I understood why he did not want to talk about it, but how important it was to talk about it. I quoted Milan Kundera: The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

  ‘Call me tomorrow,’ he finally says.

  The next morning, Vinod Dhar does not answer his phone. An hour later, I call again. This time it is switched off. Two hours later, someone else answers the phone.