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  A little later, another police party made an appearance. The protestors had been chased away. A paramilitary soldier walked past a fallen motorcycle and smashed its rear-view mirror with a blow of his lathi. ‘They might turn on us now,’ whispered a fellow journalist, a Kashmiri, who had experienced this many times in the past. Another policeman walked by, a little edgy. ‘Are you from Delhi?’ he asked me; and for lack of better words, or perhaps just overwhelmed by emotion, he muttered—‘Mohabbat aur jung mein sab jaayaz hai!’ (All is fair in love and war).

  And now I am back at the university, looking for an old friend of Ravi’s. The botany department is at the end of the road that leads from the university’s main gate. I enter. There is a garden outside. On the ground floor is the zoology department. In the main hall animal species lie preserved in formaldehyde in large glass jars. I climb the stairs to the first floor and walk down a corridor. At the end is a room outside which hangs Irshad’s name and designation. It is locked. There are two classes in progress in adjoining halls. The doors are half open. I peep in. But he is not there. A student walks by. ‘Do you know where I can find Dr Irshad?’ ‘He must be busy with the Science Congress,’ he replies. Science Congress! ‘Do you have his number? I’ve come from Delhi.’ He doesn’t have it. But he gets me the number from another student. I call.

  ‘Dr Irshad?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hi, where are you? I just wanted to meet you.’

  He doesn’t ask me who I am.

  ‘Oh, I am busy. But I’ll be there tomorrow; why don’t you come tomorrow?’

  I should tell him now.

  ‘I have come from Delhi to see you. You wouldn’t know who I am. I am Rahul. Rahul: Ravi’s brother.’

  ‘Oh!’

  There is silence. ‘Why don’t you come tomorrow?’ he asks.

  ‘Ok, I’ll come tomorrow.’

  ‘Till when are you here?’

  ‘I will be around for a few days.’

  ‘Oh, in that case come any time. I will be at the university.’

  The next day I cannot go to meet Irshad. I have to go to Vessu, in south Kashmir, where a few Pandits who returned at the government’s behest live. In 2008, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh inaugurated the country’s longest cantilever bridge in Akhnoor in the Jammu region, spanning the banks of the Chenab River. It was while standing on this engineering marvel that he announced a Rs 1,618-crore package to facilitate the return of the Kashmiri Pandits to the Valley. But no one quite understood why the Prime Minister had chosen Akhnoor to make the announcement. He should have either made it in a refugee settlement or in Srinagar. Many said it was to drive a wedge between the Pandit refugees of the 1990 exodus and those who had fled in 1947 from what is now Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to take refuge in Akhnoor and other border areas. Obviously, his advisors had not advised the Prime Minister well.

  As a part of the Prime Minister’s package, six thousand jobs were also announced for the Pandit youth in the Valley. But because of the fear of being targeted by militant and radical elements in Kashmir, most of these jobs were never filled. However, 1,446 applicants, many of them women who badly needed jobs, took up the offer. They were accommodated in five settlements across the Valley. Most of the jobs offered were as teaching staff in various government schools. Hoping for the best, these candidates shifted to the Valley. One of these five settlements is in Vessu, near Qazigund, on the Srinagar–Jammu highway. About seven hundred employees live there in cheap, single-bedroom, pre-fabricated structures. One such structure is shared by four employees. There is a very small kitchen and all four have to cook their meals there. There is no drinking water facility. The water supply is erratic, provided by tankers, and the residents boil that water for drinking. Otherwise, they go to a burst water pipeline nearby and collect water. The tanker water is so dirty, the few water purifiers the residents had have gone bust. The water situation is so bad that a day before I visited them, the residents blocked the national highway in protest. The previous December, after the schools closed for winter vacations, only a few non-teaching employees were left in the settlement. For the next three months, they had to melt snow on stoves for water. There was no electricity at all.

  But the lack of basic amenities in the camp is the least of the inhabitants’ concerns. The real problem arises, they said, at their workplaces where they face acute harassment from their Muslim colleagues. ‘They treat us like pariahs,’ said one female teacher. ‘My headmistress threw a notebook at me the other day and shouted, “You sixth-grade pass-outs have come now to lord over us!” I wanted to tell her that I have a double Master’s and a B.Ed degree.’ Many in Kashmir clearly resented the return of Pandit employees under the package. ‘When I ask for leave to go and visit my family in Jammu, my school in-charge does not respond at all,’ said another Vessu camp resident. Many women face harassment while commuting to their workplace. ‘I have been pinched so many times on the bus. You are standing in the bus holding the railing when someone comes and keeps his hand over yours. Or someone shouts menacingly, ordering you to keep your dupatta over your head,’ said a female resident. ‘Two of us were in the marketplace the other day when two men came up to us and commented that we were worth three lakh rupees,’ recalled another.

  These troubles have led to serious health issues among many. At least two female employees had to be admitted to the Qazigund hospital after they complained of chest pains and their blood pressure shot up. ‘We are so depressed, I think most of us will leave these jobs in the coming months,’ said another resident. ‘Many women come to me in the middle of the night saying they can’t sleep,’ said a resident medical practitioner. ‘All of them are on blood pressure lowering tablets.’

  But leaving their jobs is not easy. Most of those who opted for them are in dire financial straits. ‘The only other source of income is the five thousand rupee relief my family gets in Jammu. I have two children and this money is not even enough for their tuition fees. Now tell me, what do I do?’ asked a resident.

  Some have brought their children with them. But over the years, many schools, particularly in the rural areas, have switched over to a curriculum that focuses on religion. ‘I put my son in the best school here, but they teach mathematics only twice a week. There is too much focus on Islamic studies; on studying the Koran,’ said a resident.

  But at least inside the settlement they are relatively safe. One woman employee chose to live outside the settlement in Pulwama with one of her erstwhile neighbours. Her father stayed with her as well. One late afternoon, while returning home, she was followed by four men in a car. ‘Come, we will drop you home,’ said one of them. When she refused politely, another told her, ‘Look, I’ve not been able to sleep since the day I set my eyes on you. Let’s marry, let’s conduct a nikaah.’ The woman left her job and returned to Jammu.

  Many Pandit employees told me that they did not even receive their salaries on time. ‘I have not received my salary for two months,’ said one. In Baramulla in September, after an Indian cricketer scored a century, stones were pelted at the Pandit settlement there.

  The Centre-appointed interlocutor on Jammu and Kashmir, Radha Kumar, once came to visit one of the camps. The women employees met her in private and narrated their woes to her. She reportedly told them that she had taught in Jamia (Jamia Millia Islamia University) for many years and that ‘… you have to learn to ignore such unpleasant experiences [of harassment at work places].’ Some of the affected women had written to political leaders including the UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, requesting them to facilitate their transfer to Jammu. One such letter said—

  There is a freedom deficit which all of us are experiencing daily. We have been many times communicated indirectly that our speaking out the truth will bring trouble to us. In this atmosphere many of us chose to keep our experiences to ourselves. We do not have the adequate confidence in the local administration because we are not sure of their maintaining strict confidentiality.


  ‘Each day we leave behind something of our identity,’ one woman said. ‘Yesterday, it was the freedom to sing the National Anthem; today it is the freedom to wear a bindi; tomorrow it could be our faith.’ She broke into sobs.

  They all sat close to each other, on a thin rug, and soon others begin to weep as well. The women feel relatively safe inside the camp; outside, the world has changed. It is no longer the Kashmir it once was. ‘When we became refugees in 1990, our lives became restricted to eight-by-eight feet rooms. More than twenty years later, we are still stuck,’ said another woman. Her mobile rang. Her ring tone was the Gayatri Mantra. She picked up her phone, looked at the number flashing on the screen and mumbled, ‘When I am out, I put my mobile on vibration mode.’

  Later, I also visited the Sheikhpora Pandit settlement in central Kashmir, where some miscreants had recently thrown a carcass of a calf killed apparently by jackals. In August 2012, the residents of the settlement received a threatening letter sent by ‘Jaish-e-Mohammed’, triggering the fear of another exodus. The police dismissed the letter as a prank. The settlement is home to forty Pandit families who fled from various places in the Valley due to security issues. Many employees who returned under the Prime Minister’s package live there as well. Though the building structures are much better than those in other settlements, issues of safety remain. ‘I have asked them (the residents) to take even small signals of trouble very seriously,’ Sanjay Tickoo told me later. In many ways, these settlements are ghettoes. And the lives of many Pandit residents are restricted by the boundary walls. In Sheikhpora, a woman who has been living there for seven years says she has been out of the settlement only thrice—once to visit her relatives in Jammu, and twice to visit the Kshir Bhawani shrine.

  ‘Dil chhum fatnas aamut—my heart is about to burst,’ she said.

  The next day I call Irshad.

  ‘Yes, I am here,’ he says.

  ‘Ok, I am coming.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I am near Lal Chowk. It should take me thirty or forty minutes to reach.’

  In thirty minutes, I am at the gate of the University. In another five, I am climbing the stairs past the large glass jars. I walk down the corridor. Irshad’s room is locked. He must be around. I wait. I walk up and down the corridor. Maybe he is teaching a class. But the classrooms are empty. Moreover, he would have told me if he had a class. I decide to call him. The phone rings but he does not answer.

  I sit on a small bench. I wait. I look at the large board hanging at the entrance of the department. His name is there next to the subject he teaches: Ecological Botany and Reproductive Biology. I read other names as well. He will come. Biosystematics. He must be around. Biological Invasions and Biodiversity. Maybe he is stuck somewhere. Cytogenetics and Plant Breeding. He will surely meet me. Plant Pathology and Nematology. I call again. No response. The last time I call, he disconnects the call. It is clear: he does not want to see me.

  I don’t know why it is here that I am reminded of the young girl I had met at the Relief Commissioner’s office in Jammu. When I came out of his office, she was waiting outside. ‘What happened, why were you crying?’ I asked her. She told me her name was Supriya Bhat and she was studying in class eleven (so she was roughly the same age as I was when the exodus happened, I thought). She said she lived in the Jagti Township and each morning she took a bus to her school with her younger brother. A few days ago, the driver had suddenly applied the brakes due to which her brother’s head banged against the windowpane. ‘The driver scolded my brother badly. We pay him two hundred and fifty rupees per month for each student,’ she said. I asked her why she had come to the Relief Commissioner’s office. ‘I came to request him to reprimand the driver,’ she said. ‘Value should be given to life, not materialistic things.’

  Oh yes, child, value should indeed be given to life. I am overjoyed. May be our story will not come to an end in the next few decades. Maybe some of us will still be nicknamed Sartre. And did you notice, I am saying to myself, how perfect Supriya’s elocution was? How assured her command over English? And Hindi? She spoke in Hindi as well. There was no problem of ‘ba’ and ‘bha’, ‘ga’ and ‘gha’. She was so confident. God, she was so bright. God bless you, Supriya Bhat.

  I also remember how I felt during a theatre performance, where two friends recounted the story of the celebrated Urdu writer, Saadat Hasan Manto, whose forefathers were Kashmiri Pandits. One of them quoted a line used by Manto’s contemporary Krishan Chander to describe him—

  By virtue of his disposition, temperament, features and his spirit, Manto remains a Kashmiri Pandit.

  Hearing this buoyed me so much, I felt like whistling the way the front row audience sometimes whistled in a cinema hall.

  And so, at the Kashmir University, I take out my notebook and write a short note. I hand it over to a lady in the administration department next to Irshad’s room. ‘Please give this to Dr Irshad,’ I tell her. Then I leave.

  ‘Chacha, cigarette,’ I ask Ali Mohammed. ‘Aish karith—with pleasure,’ he says.

  Dear Irshad Bhai,

  It seems we were not destined to meet this time. I came here on a personal journey, to walk through the corridors where many years ago you and Ravi must have walked together, brimming with youth and dreams of the future. Maybe if the catastrophe of 1990 had not struck us, you would still be together, perhaps teaching in the same department both of you graduated from. It makes me so happy watching young men and women in your department, looking at notice boards, carrying charts, and bent over their microscopes. It also gives me immense pleasure to see your name displayed so prominently on the staff list, along with your qualification and designation, and the subjects you teach. I wish all of your students the best for the future, and I wish you all good luck. I will come again. I promise there will come a time when I will return permanently.

  Yours,

  Rahul (Ravi’s brother)

  … I will return permanently. I don’t write it. That I say to him in my head.

  TIMELINE

  1846: Kashmir is bought from British colonialists by the Dogra Maharaja Gulab Singh who adds it to Jammu and Ladakh region to form the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

  1931: Mass uprising against the Dogra Maharaja Hari Singh. A mob of the majority Muslim community targets the minority Hindus, known as Kashmiri Pandits. Property destroyed, several killed.

  August 1947: India attains independence. Partition takes place, Pakistan is formed. Maharaja Hari Singh is still undecided about Kashmir’s accession to either India or Pakistan.

  October 1947: Aided by Pakistani army regulars, tribesmen from Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province attack Kashmir in a bid to occupy it. Hundreds of Pandits and Sikhs are killed, and their women raped and taken as slaves to Pakistan. Thousands are forcibly converted to Islam. Pandit families living in border towns are forced to flee and take shelter in Srinagar and elsewhere.

  Maharaja Hari Singh signs the instrument of accession with India. The Indian Army lands in Srinagar and the tribesmen are pushed back.

  In the 1941 census, Kashmiri Pandits constitute about 15% of the Kashmir Valley’s population. By 1981, they are reduced to a mere 5%.

  February 1986: Major anti-Pandit riots break out in south Kashmir’s Anantnag area. Pandits are beaten up, their women raped and several houses and temples burnt down.

  July 1988: Two low-intensity bomb blasts rock Srinagar.

  September 1989: Pandit political activist, Tika Lal Taploo is shot dead by armed men outside his residence.

  January 1990: Massive crowds assemble in mosques across valley, shouting anti-India, anti-Pandit slogans. The exodus of Kashmiri Pandits begins. In the next few months, hundreds of innocent Pandits are tortured, killed and raped. By the year-end, about 350,000 Pandits have escaped from the Valley and taken refuge in Jammu and elsewhere. Only a handful of them stay back.

  March 1997: Terrorists drag out seven Kashmiri Pandits from their houses in Sangrampora
village and gun them down.

  January 1998: 23 Kashmiri Pandits, including women and children, shot in cold blood in Wandhama village.

  March 2003: 24 Kashmiri Pandits, including infants, brutally shot dead in Nadimarg village.

  2012: Thousands of Pandits still languish in refugee settlements. After more than two decades, the Kashmiri Pandit community has still not been able to return to their ancestral land. They are dispersed all over—from Jammu to Johannesburg.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My heartfelt gratitude, first of all, to Ramachandra Guha, who mentored this book in many ways and chose it for the New India Foundation Fellowship.

  In Mumbai: to Anupama and Vidhu Vinod Chopra, for making me remember long-forgotten stories of Kashmir; and to Abhijat Joshi, the most humble storyteller I’ve ever known.

  In London: to Meru and Patrick French, the first believers of this book.

  In New York: to Heather Gail Quinn, for her unflinching support and friendship.

  In Kashmir: to Dr T.N. Ganjoo, Sanjay Tickoo, Suhail Bukhari, Zubair Dar, and Ali Mohammed, the quintessential Kashmiri.

  In Jammu: to Dr Ramesh Tamiri, who allowed me to dip into his brilliant research material; and to Anuradha Bhasin, for instant access to Kashmir Times archives.

  In Delhi: to Dr Shashi Shekhar Toshkhani; and to Geetika and Rashneek Kher, and Aditya Raj Kaul and Pawan Durani, whose belief in the book remained unwavering even during the fiercest of ideological face-offs. To Vinayak Razdan, whose splendid blog ‘Search Kashmir’ triggered off so many memories of home. To Richa Sharma, for sending talismans for this book. To Ajay Bhardwaj, whose film Ek Minute ka Maun kept me alive in Delhi in the beginning.