But I know Father misses home. We never talk about it. Not even when he is watching DD Kashmir, when he is humming along with Tibet Bakal singing a Krishan Joo Razdan Leela, an ode to Shiva. Father has never returned to Kashmir since April 4, 1990. I don’t think he wants to. The Kashmir he left 25 years ago has changed. And he remembers every moment of the time that change occurred. So January 19, in his mind, is no different from all those days of fear and trauma in 1989-90. As Robert Frank writes in La memoire des Francais, “That which is sadly memorable is not co-memorable.” Somehow, in my head—and perhaps that is the way it is with every son and daughter—Father has always been ‘old’. But how old was he when we left home? He was 44. Forty-four! At that age, like thousands of other Kashmiri Pandit parents, he had to provide for the family in so uncertain times. At that age, he lost everything he had so lovingly built along with my mother: a home, its red-cemented corridor, its lawn, its kitchen garden, its windows with stained glass, its wardrobes, its false ceiling, its book-shelves. Everything my parents earned for years was diligently put into our home. And, suddenly, one day, your neighbours, your colleagues, your friends, your grocer and your milkman decide that you cannot live in a home that you built with your sweat and blood. They also decide that it is time for you to leave not only your home, but also the land where your ancestors lived for thousands of years. So they burst out on the streets on the night of January 19, 1990, and shout on loudspeakers from the mosques all over the Valley that they want Kashmir to become Pakistan, where only Pandit women (and no men) will be allowed. Oh, that night! How can I forget it! How can any Kashmiri Pandit forget it! But I am still searching for more and more props to remember that night. I want it to be like shrapnel pain. Here is one prop I acquired recently: on that night Doordarshan was playing a V. Shantaram film, Teen Batti, Chaar Raasta. Also, that night, along with frenzied cries for our annihilation, they played a song used in Afghanistan to inspire the anti-Soviet militia: Khoon-e-shahidan rang laaya, fatah ka parcham lehraya, jaago jaago subah hui (The blood of the martyrs has come true, the flag of victory has been unfurled, wake up, wake up, he dawn has appeared). It is now available on YouTube and, sometimes, when a few friends get silly drunk, we play it on and laugh as we imitate the singer’s nasal drone. This is what I believe Michael Taussig called the “normality of the abnormal” in Nervous System, when he referred to the notion of “despair and macabre humour”.
Posted on: Sun, 18 Jan 2015 21:31:12 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015