One day in 1989

I enter the classroom.

I find many things written by the students on the blackboard.

In Urdu, some student has written: ‘Pakistan zindabad’.

I rub out everything except these two words. Students laugh; they know that I make them laugh.

That is why I can teach.

You can’t separate love from teaching.

 

1989

There is a bomb blast at the bus stand.

The people run here and there.

There is panic.

Soon the things calm down.

People talk about this blast.

I dismiss it with a laugh.

 

1989

Wife is home by 5 pm.

She tells me: ‘Two students ask me not to talk about the happenings in the school to anyone.

They respect me.

I love them and they feel this love.

They spoke ill of a couple of Pandit female teachers.’

I understand nothing.

I ask her not to pay any attention to this nonsense.

Non-sense!

 

Celebration in Eid Gah

I go to Eid Gah with my daughter.

She is three years old.

Suddenly there is panic.

People start running.

There is total confusion.

I lift my daughter, make her sit her on my shoulder and run like all the others.

Even the chief minister has run away.

I am panting and reach home breathless.

What was the matter?

I can’t even guess.

Nobody knows.

 

1982

I teach at SP College in Srinagar.

One Ali Mohammad tells me: ‘You Pandits have to leave this place Kashmir one day.’

 

1972

It is Bangladesh now.

One Yousuf, whom I know very well, screams at me on the road: ‘We will destroy India.’

The onlookers are watching the scene.

I watched Umar Mukhtar.

Not more than seventy persons were in the hall.

Umar Mukhtar resembles Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah.

Posters and leaflets are distributed wherein the people are asked to watch this movie.

Suddenly hundreds and thousands throng to the cinema hall.

 

1989

There is a strange atmosphere.

People – Muslims and Pandits – feel uncomfortable.

They talk in hushed tones.

Nobody knows what the problem is.

Somebody (a Muslim) has been killed somewhere.

Why?

He was a political activist.

Why has he been killed?

I have no answer.

 

1989

In a matador a Muslim old man says: ‘What is the meaning of all this?’

A young man loses his temper and shouts at the old man.

The old man keeps quiet.

 

December 1989

All shops that give VCPs on rent, bars and the cinema halls have been closed.

The wine shops don’t sell liquor now.

The signboards have been painted green.

There have been many deaths.

Most of my Pandit friends are tense and worried.

The much loved Laba Kaul’s pub has been closed down.

Torn tapestry covering the sofa sets, dirty curtains, cramped space, risky stairs in semi-darkness, two small rooms, walls of no significance, a very small enclosure called ‘bathroom’ and the gentleman at the counter with the bottles standing in the shelves behind him constitute the famous pub ‘Laba Kaul’.

It is a hub for writers, intellectuals, artists and journalists.

One day I found the painter M.F. Husain talking to the Kashmiri artists.

Artists living in Srinagar had invited him to the place.

You climb down the stairs, walk about ten steps and Marina Bar welcomes you.

This bar is quieter than Laba Kaul’s.

And Mir Paan Walla is there.

Actors, filmmakers and other personalities of Bollywood come to him for paans, imported cigarettes and cigars.

 

December 1989

Professors in college are very serious.

Old humour is nowhere.

I hire an auto.

The driver says: ‘I will not cross the bridge.

I will set you down on this side of the river.’

I agree. From Neelam Cinema Hall nobody is walking on the road.

The windows of houses of the people are closed.

The lights are off.

The auto passes through Karan Nagar.

The lights in the houses are off because the Pandits have left.

There is silence all around.

I reach home by 10 pm.

The family members think that everything is not alright.

 

30 January 1990

Wife, son, daughter and I leave Delhi for Jammu.

We reach Jammu on 31 January in the morning.

We go to the Residency Road to stay in a hotel for the night.

A friend, Zadoo, sees us on the road.

He tells me: ‘Call your parents to this place.

Don’t go there with your children.’

I ask: ‘What happened?’

He replies: ‘Nothing happened.

But I can’t describe the night between 19 January and 20 January.

It was simply a horror.’

 

31 January 1990

We four board the bus to Srinagar.

We see Pandits coming to Jammu in taxis, trucks and buses.

There is one young Pandit lady in the bus.

We reach the Tourist Reception Centre in Srinagar.

It is 7 pm.

And it is raining.

The policeman asks all not to leave the premises.

An SRTC bus comes and all the passengers coming from Jammu board this bus.

There is one policeman with a rifle in the bus.

Security.

He asks the passengers the names of the localities they are going to.

The driver sets down the passengers accordingly.

We reach Safa Kadal.

 

31 January 1990, 9 pm

I shout and even knock at the door.

Mother opens the gate.

When she sees us she asks: ‘Why did you come to this place?’

A man shouts from the mosque through the microphone and asks the people to enter the mosque.

It continues till late in the night.

The atmosphere is very bad.

People are serious. Neighbours… men and women… ask my wife where she has been, why has she come back.

Interrogation on the road.

The same person asks the same questions to wife, daughter, son and me separately, and then listens attentively to remember.

He weighs the answers.

 

February 1990

Searches and searches.

Deaths. It is horrible.

A Muslim neighbour tells me in confidence: ‘Look here. Listen to me.

I am afraid of my own son.

I don’t talk to him these days because strangers are his friends.

I have never seen them.’

Pandits whisper to one another: ‘There will be an army crackdown.

Run away.’

A Pandit organization asks JKLF: ‘What are we supposed to do in these conditions? Please tell us in ten days.’

There is no reply.

One Pandit is killed.

Is this the reply?

Pandits think about this killing very seriously.

An Urdu newspaper Alsafa carries a news item: ‘Pandits, leave the valley in 36 hours.’

Nazir Gash comes to my home with a copy of the newspaper.

Every Pandit says: ‘We must leave by the 5th of March.’

‘When are you leaving?’

This is the refrain of Pandit conversation.

There is terror in the mind of all Kashmiri Pandits.

Mother comes from the market in the mornings and every time says: ‘Rainas and Dhars and Kauls have left for Jammu.

Their houses are locked.

When do we go?’

She knows nothing about Jammu.

Father has heard that there is a place called Jammu.

He is not interested in this place.

 

Autumn 1989

My son Siddhartha is taking the 10th class annual board examination in Higher Secondary School, Nawa Kadal.

When he reaches home he narrates a horrible experience.

He asks the supervisor to give him a continuation sheet of paper.

The supervisor doesn’t give him the sheet of paper.

He tells him: ‘You revise the answer script first.

I will give you the sheet of paper.’ My son does so.

The supervisor tells all: ‘Time is up.’

Son, Siddhartha is sad.

 

2018, Jammu

My dear Supervisor,

Shame on you.

Recall the day in 1989 when you wanted to harm my son Siddhartha Gigoo who was taking the matriculation examination at the Government H.S. School, Nawa Kadal, Srinagar, Kashmir.

He is an established author now.

 

1990

Curfew for many days.

All are confined to their rooms and houses.

When I reach home I see my 10-year-old daughter rubbing with a pebble the two letters HM (Hazbul Mujahidin) written in green on the tin gate of our house.

I stop her from doing so.

I get a brush and a bottle of green poster colour and correct it.

She watches the scene.

 

1990, 10:30 p.m.

Who are walking in the lane?

Wife and I look.

Two young men are standing near the gate of our house.

They share one cigarette.

They walk a few steps and then come back.

A horse comes.

A horse at this hour?

The two young men walk to and fro.

One hour has passed. They go.

 

1970s

Public Service Commission interview.

I enter the room for the interview.

The secretary of education J.N. Dhar says loudly: ‘This man goes on saying that the members of the Public Service Commission are corrupt.’

And then he leaves.

Others watch him quietly.

I don’t know him; he doesn’t know me.

I am flabbergasted. Why this?

Appeasement.

The Public Service Commission rejects me five times.

Islamia College of Commerce and Sciences rejects me.

University of Kashmir rejects me.

The Jammu and Kashmir Bank rejects me twice. All reject me.

Eleven years have gone waste.

And by the time I am accepted I am a tired man.

Daughter has done MA in English and B Ed from the University of Jammu.

We leave for Srinagar for she has to appear in an interview for the post of a schoolteacher. Service Selection Board, Zum Zum, Ram Bagh, Srinagar, Kashmir.

She enters the room.

When she comes out of the interview room she tells me: ‘The interview went very well.

I talked about Chekhov and Siddhartha of Hermann Hesse.

I told them that I write short stories.’

I am sure that she will be appointed.

When the list is out my daughter, Henna Gigoo’s name is not there.

Muslims die at the hands of the security personnel.

Pandits die at the hands of militants.

When a Pandit is killed rumour is spread: ‘He was an informant.’

Every evening we hear that someone or so many have been killed.

Fazi, our neighbour, says: ‘Uma Shori, Uma Shori, don’t drink water.

Poison has been mixed with it.’

There is gloom in the family.

Some persons shout from the mosques.

There is firing from many guns in the lane adjacent to our house.

Father sits in the corridor.

Daughter Henna rests her hand on his head.

Takai’s family is one of the gentlest in our locality.

They are poor but nice and soft-spoken.

The news reaches that the son of Takai has been killed by the security officer.

There is terror when the dead body is brought home.

One woman shouts: ‘May the seeds of Pandits perish.’

I dare not move out of my house.

When Maulana Farooq is killed the same woman shouts: ‘May the seeds of Pandits perish.’

How are Pandits responsible for the deaths of Kashmiri Muslims?

 

1990

My father is running the Imperial Clinical Laboratory at Maharaj Gunj in Srinagar.

He is a highly respected man in that locality.

Today he has come home with a microscope in his hand.

He is perspiring and nervous.

He sits and after drinking water he says: ‘All women asked me to go home.

I will not go to the laboratory now.’

I have never seen him so tense and terror-stricken.

I ask Hafiz to arrange any kind of transport for us.

He says: ‘Go home.

A matador will come to you in twenty minutes but don’t talk to me on the road henceforth.’

A matador driver comes with a young boy.

Four young boys enter the courtyard.

They shift the beds, the bedding, the trunks, the utensils, etc. from the rooms up to the vehicle.

They are very quick.

The matador reaches Indira Nagar, a safe locality, where my cousin has his own house.

The cousin is in Delhi with his family.

I find hundreds of Pandits in Indira Nagar.

My wife is very tense.

We put whatever we are able to lay our hands on in the matador.

One almirah of old books belonging to my grandfather remains untouched.

I will come some day and salvage these books.

These are rare books which my grandfather bought in Italy, Turkey and other countries.

I hand over the key of the gate of the house to Ismail and his wife.

Zarina comes to say goodbye.

Musa Banday enters the courtyard and is silent.

Through the window the daughter-in-law of a neighbour, Mohi-ud-Din tells me: ‘Forgive us.

Go wherever you want to go.’

She is weeping.

‘May God protect you.’

We reach Indira Nagar and keep the luggage in the cousin’s house.

Father is a shattered man.

Pandits talk fearlessly here about everything.

Son Siddhartha is in Delhi.

I want to go to my abandoned house and salvage grandfather’s and my own remaining books, my collection of stones, the latticed window blades (that I had purchased), the portrait of my great-grandfather painted by A.N. Dhar, the books and other things of my son Siddhartha.

Nobody allows me to go there.

One Pandit Bazaz went to Habba Kadal and was shot.

 

11 September 1990

Father, mother, wife, son, daughter and I board a truck and leave for Udhampur.

All the things have been kept in the truck.

We reach Udhampur in the evening and enter the two-room lodge which a man gives us on rent.

Father doesn’t know what to do.

Wife has lost her teaching job in Kashmir.

Mother misses her relatives and father misses his laboratory.

I join the Camp College for Migrants.

We are all frustrated.

Nobody is able to reconcile to the new ugly truth.

Father writes letters to his friends – shopkeepers near his laboratory.

He gets letters from them.

One day I find him weeping.

I don’t tell him anything.

In spite of his stoic attitude to-wards life he is unhappy, uprooted, alienated and miserable in an alien land.

 

And then one day

‘Why did the dog bite Sanju (Siddhartha)?

He has concealed this thing from all of us.

A black dog bit him,’ father says to me one day.

‘Babuji, no. You are mistaken.’

‘Where are the seeds?

I want the seeds.’

I get the seeds of the flowers from the shopkeeper for my father.

He puts all the seeds in one place on the ground. He is perspiring.

‘I want that white cloak.

And I want that wireless.’

I don’t wait.

I take father to a doctor in the evening who says: ‘This is mental degeneration.

It could be Alzheimer’s.’

Medicines and medicines which father always hated.

‘Who taught you to fly airships?

What did you find on the moon?

The sun shrank, became a dot and entered into me.

I want the watch with the wireless.

I have to talk to Sadaam.

Kakaji took away all my money in crores and the white robe.

Where did the doctor get that cigar from?

Kuwait. Sadaam, Saadam, where are you?

Get me Salama, the tongawallah.

Get me Ghulam Ahmad.

Where are they?

I owe Sofi five rupees.

Who will pay him?

I will do that myself.

You should also sleep with them.

You have my permission.

This profession has a good mission.

You should join the mission…’

I listen to all this for nights and days. My mother, wife and daughter are spectators. I manage patiently.

One day he forgets the way home.

I search for him in the town.

By 2.30 I find him sitting in a corner by the road.

He doesn’t recognize me.

He is violent at home. Injections.

He sleeps.

It is 2.10 am.

Father enters my room naked.

Wife watches the scene in silence.

He tells me: ‘Come on, we will go for a morning walk.’

I say: ‘It is night.’

He doesn’t agree.

I engage him in conversation till it is morning.

Then I clothe him.

Things are very bad.

Father is confined to bed now.

He is admitted to Medical College Hospital.

He remains there for 11 days.

Bed sores. Can’t be cured.

Home.

One day I try to straighten his earlobe.

The earlobe remains in my hand.

Tubes and tubes. Injections and medicines.

And then death.

The whole thing continued for three years and nine months.

One day mother tells me weeping: ‘I make you pay for each drop of milk…’

Father is no more.

Death is deliverance for him.

I inform his Muslim friends in Maharaj Gunj, Srinagar.

They feel very sad.

I don’t know where Habib and Ghulam Ahmad are.

When we left Ghulam Ahmad wept bitterly.

Father was a very simple man without any possessions and money.

He loved cleanliness and order and his transistor set.

He was addicted to the evening news.

Muslims were his best friends.

He was comfortable with them.

 

2006-2007

I saw the worst in Kashmir and I saw the worst in Udhampur and Jammu.

I have written down more than 500 cameos.

I selected 180 for publication.

The Ugly Kashmiri (Cameos in Exile) is now published.

I introduced cameo-writing into Indian writing in English.

 

Jammu 2004

I purchased a two-room house from a builder. Mother, wife, daughter and I live in it.

I don’t feel like going to Kashmir.

Elderly and old Pandits live in Jammu.

The youth are scattered throughout the world.

Jammu is an ‘Old Age Home for Pandits’.

I find unhappy and frustrated old Pandits all around.

They talk about Kashmir endlessly.

Sunstroke and snakebites killed thousands.

We aren’t used to this scorching heat. Pandits have started constructing their own houses.

Many have purchased flats in Chandigarh and other places.

 

Jammu 2018

There are camps for Pandits.

In the beginning it was tents.

Then it was the one-room tenements. Horrible.

Now it is one-room flats in the camps.

The largest camp is at Jagti in Nagrota in the Jammu province.

The condition of the Pandits living in the camps is bad.

Most of the other Pandits have their own houses now.

Many are living in flats in Jammu, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Bengaluru and other places.

We have forgotten about Kashmir.

Children born in 1989 and after know nothing about Kashmir.

They haven’t seen the Kashmiri Muslims, the snow, the gardens, the various tourist places, the famous Tulip Garden, the lakes and other places, the downtown, the old Srinagar city and other places.

Most of the Pandit boys and girls can’t and don’t speak Kashmiri.

The story of Pandits and their migration from Kashmir to the plains and other countries is over.

Thousands of articles and hundreds of books have been written on this migration.

Meetings and seminars are still held where Pandits talk about returning to the homeland, Kashmir and other aspects of the migration.

Pandits write articles, poems, memoirs, essays and other sort of writings about their condition in and out of Kashmir.

A new genre of writing has emerged known as Literature in Exile.

Poets, essayists, novelists, short story writers go on producing fiction and non-fiction about the plight of Kashmiri Pandits.

Even non-Kashmiris living in and outside Kashmir have written books about the past and present of the Pandits.

The children of Pandits don’t speak Kashmiri.

Most of them are working as engineers in multinational companies.

Thousands of boys and girls are working abroad.

Old men and old women feel neglected and ignored.

A sense of insecurity is writ large on their faces.

What will happen to the Kashmiri Pandit community, its culture and philosophy and allied things?

Nobody can predict.

This community produced philosophers, aestheticians, artists, in the past.

Now the community seems to be on the verge of extinction.

Social, cultural and political organizations of Pandits are trying their utmost to save the Pandit community and its culture.

Radio Sharda is doing wonderfully fruitful work in this direction.

Time will decide the fate of the Kashmiri Pandits and their identity.

 

* Arvind Gigoo is the author of The Ugly Kashmiri: Cameos in Exile (2006); Gulliver in Kashmir: A Book of Cameos (2017) and co-editor of From Home to House: Writings of Kashmiri Pandits in Exile (2015).