THEY say, ‘Memory is a good place to visit, but not a great place to stay.’ If we can learn something from our past, we can also unlearn and start all over again. Not forgetting can help one confront our ghosts from the past, but the idea is to confront them and look ahead. The idea of expressing through this medium is not to refresh my memory, as it never left me, but someone somewhere may see the hopelessness of it after almost three decades.

I was born and raised in Srinagar, in Kashmir. Studied at Burn Hall School and later, at Gandhi College. I was educated in a holistic way, living an inclusive childhood, growing up amongst the chinars, the tulips, the narcissus, playing in public grounds. I always looked forward to the next wazwan, eating in a trambi with my brothers and walking along the boule-vard with my sisters without any fear or threat. A roasted corn on the cob at the Chashma Shahi bend near the Dal lake was a highlight, as was a swim in the Nageen lake.

As a child I was exposed to an outdoor life which perhaps is a luxury in present times. Exposure to international tourists, trekkers exploring the mountains of Kashmir or sunbathing on top of the houseboats along the Dal and Nageen lakes or even on the river Jhelum. Culturally it was a rich society with a long history, a garden overflowing with a variety of flowers, not just one kind.

I had heard the wonderful stories of my mother cycling to the Chashma Shahi gardens and Pari Mahal in her college days; of aunts studying in Amarsingh and SP College where women felt safe at any hour of the day with or without a hijab; watching films at Khayam, Regal cinema or Broadway was a treat and often a commercial potboiler at the Palladium at Lal Chowk. Any child growing up then in the valley would know that it was absolutely alright to make friends anywhere and with anyone.

 

I had a free and a wonderful childhood, one akin with nature where visuals compared nothing less to an Enid Blyton book or even better. My mother, a botanist, was the daughter of the late Prem Nath Kohli, a pioneer of his subject in flora and fauna of Kashmir, a naturalist who was the manager of the private estates of Maharaja Hari Singh of Kashmir. My father, the late Virinder Suri, was in the timber business running a saw mill. I would earn my pocket money selling sawdust during the winter season to be used in a bukhari. Cycling to school without parents being paranoid was a common thing. In fact, I once cycled all the way to Pahalgam, with their permission of course, accompanied by a friend on roller skates.

It all seemed normal while growing up till the age of eleven. I use the word ‘normal’ because the lack of socio-political awareness at that age is not uncommon and is ‘normal’ for a young boy like me, as was a game of squash, a swim in Nageen lake or running up to the Shankaracharya temple from the Gupkar Road side behind my school. Those were my dreams. Nothing else mattered.

I never thought that ‘sports’ would get politicized. It was the 1982 Asian Games hockey match against Pakistan. India had lost to Pakistan 1-7. It was not a normal day at school and for the first time, at the age of 11, that I felt odd while at school along with some other friends. Many of us were laughed at because India had lost to Pakistan. I didn’t quite understand why this had happened. Was I reading some other books? Was I not going to the same school? Was I eating and playing on some other grounds? Was I born somewhere else? Or was it that my name was Sanjay? I dismissed the feeling but something stayed within me, as a gentle awareness of a child. From then on I noticed that every cricket match India lost was celebrated. I was witness to the booing of the Indian cricket team in 1983 when it played against the West Indies at the Sher-i-Kashmir Stadium.

All through my teens I was aware of situations that may or may not have been local, but would deeply impact the valley. I still remember when shutters came down at the news on 17 August 1988 of the air crash in which President Gen Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan was killed. Schools, shops and establishments had to be closed down. I was much older then and felt that all this was being propagated and fuelled by some misled people who were creating mischief. The seriousness of things to come was not anticipated at all, not by me and not by many.

 

As we all know, in 1989 things changed forever and for all. I say this because it has never been the same, for anyone. Since 1989-90 until now, humanity has suffered deeply. So many people have lost their lives, so many homes destroyed, perhaps many generations lost. I wonder if anyone achieved anything, or what will ever be achieved, at what cost and when? As I had mentioned, unfortunate events did take place earlier as well but they were not of the magnitude of what happened in 1989 and onwards. It has been documented and became a part of our history as young 28 years old, the sudden and selective targeting of the Hindu community or even Muslims, if they supported the Indian state.

During the peak of militancy in the valley, during the mass displacement of Kashmiri Hindus, at the time when azadi slogans and inflammatory speeches were made from the pulpits of mosques, when public address systems meant for prayers were used to create fear, it was also a time when walls were plastered with handbills and posters, fatwas ordering Kashmiris to strictly follow the Islamic dress code, prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcohol and imposing a strict ban on all video parlours and cinemas.

 

Killings, kidnappings, incidents of throwing acid on women who refused to wear a hijab or burqa had begun to happen. Warnings and notices were pasted on doors of Hindu houses asking them to leave Kashmir within hours or face death and worse. ‘Kafiron bhaag jao’ was a common threat I heard many, many times. I personally had to grow a beard to avoid confrontation on the road while going to my college which was in the interior part of the city. It came like a tsunami. This could not have happened overnight. All this had been simmering and someone knew about it. This kind of sustained militancy wasn’t an act of provocation and road rage, but a seriously planned, well prepared and executed attempt to take control of the valley at gunpoint.

19 January 1990 is remembered as the day of the Exodus. But my father never left; he never wanted to at any cost. Those days some people would get a warning over the phone to leave lock, stock and barrel within a few hours or be ready to face dire consequences which meant death. But we never got that call.

Someone knocked at our door on 1 August 1990 and it became personal. Earlier it had happened to someone somewhere, but now it had hit home and it hit hard. My very Kashmiri father, a loved man, popular among friends and family, a well wisher for all, was brutally killed at point-blank range, three shots pumped into his chest, at home, by three unidentified young boys, leaving my mother a widow. She ran after them bare feet shouting, ‘Maar gaye maar gaye.’ Understandably, no one came out from the colony for fear of their own lives. The reason for killing him? Perhaps a soft target to create panic for many more to leave the valley. The same questions came to me again, ‘Was I reading some other books? Was I not going to the same school? Wasn’t I eating and playing on the same grounds? Was I born somewhere else? Or was it that my father’s name was different?

 

Unfortunately they made a communal selection for a family that was, and still is, extremely secular and peace loving. My grandfather, then alive, said to his oldest son’s corpse, ‘Son, you were brave, you never left’, as he never wanted to leave. Many we knew had already decided to leave but he refused. Life changed from there on for all of us. A woman lost her husband, her home, her identity, a family uprooted for no fault of theirs. For my mother, it was the second time she had been uprooted; the first was during the Kabaili raids in Baramulla in October 1947 where my maternal grandfather lived with his six daughters. They had to flee as women were being raped and men killed by the invaders.

I used to hear stories from my Nana about the horrific times people had to go through at the time of the Kabaili raids. And now in 1990, the numbers were in their hundreds of thousands displaced, living in refugee camps, relatives homes for years until they rebuilt a life of some dignity if they ever did. Humiliation of all kinds was common. I still recall an officer in Jammu asking me, ‘Bring proof that your father was killed.’ I was nineteen, full of anger and hurt, but I still understood that he was doing his ‘due diligence’. Being in his 40s, he didn’t know what and how it felt and how to handle situations like these. There were many stories about people living in orchards and now in 5x5 ft tents, in a camp. Some managed to leave and some lost their lives.

 

Time has moved on and today an entire generation in the valley has changed. An entire generation of people born post 1990 were probably too young to understand what happened. I sometimes do hear them saying, ‘Kashmiri Hindu yahan se bhaag gaye’ (Kashmiri Hindus ran away from here). I also captured that emotion in my National Award winning film ‘I AM’. It is the lack of information or rather, huge amounts of misinformation. I really cannot question an ignorant kid on the road but this statement deeply disturbed me many years ago. The question should have been answered by an older generation who was witness to all this during the early nineties, during the largest displacement seen post Partition. It is not to blame anyone but it is their duty not to distort history as recent as this truth and educate the youth that the violence resulted in suffering for all and continues to do so. Many were forced to run away and many more continue to fall prey to the business of war, even today, within the valley.

There has been no day in the last 28 years for me and my family that we don’t think about Kashmir. Lots of water has flowed under the bridge but I strongly feel that ‘bridges can be built again over a burning Jhelum’. There has to be a strong and sustained will to do so from all the people of the valley. People of all faiths have suffered, innocent lives lost, a culture wiped out. An eye for an eye will surely make the world blind and it’s happening right now. I hope and pray that all humanity is not lost.