January 20, 1990 - A SURVIVOR’S STORY
Srinagar

Sunanda Vashisht (Zadu)

For past couple of months the situation had been extremely tense in the valley. Everywhere there was fear and uncertainty. A lot of our relatives and friends had already fled from Kashmir. My mother and I were still resisting because we had nowhere to go, no home outside Kashmir, no source of income outside the valley. My mother had told me on 19^th January that no one could make her leave her home. “This is my home and my state, I was born here and I will die here, no body can drive me out of here”, she told me categorically. Little did she know that she would have to change her statement in less than 24 hours.  My school had been closed down because of the turmoil and I was restless and fear stricken at home desperately listening to every news bulletin on the radio.

On 20^th morning everything looked normal or so it seemed. It was my grandfather’s birthday. Usually this occasion was a big day for our entire clan. All my cousins and aunts and uncles got together in my grandfather’s house and we all spent this day together with traditional gaiety and tons of happiness. But today was different. Everything was gloomy and sad. We lived about 15 mins away from my grandfather’s house but my other aunts lived far away. For the first time in my life we were contemplating whether we should go to our grandfather’s house or not on this day. My mother was crying since morning. She told me she had never felt so helpless all her life. I had known my mother to be a rock who would face every situation with calm and poise.  ‘If she was feeling helpless something must be terribly wrong’, I told myself.

Around lunchtime my mother told me to dress up in my warm clothes.’ We are going to nana’s house’ she told me simply. I quickly dressed up and we set out. My mother held my hand and two of us walked down to my nana’s house. January is probably the coldest month in Kashmir. The walk to my grandfather’s house had never seemed so long before. My mother held my hand firmly in her hand and we walked, shivering more with fear than cold. We were met with cold stares from policemen and BSF officials who could be spotted everywhere. It must have been quite a sight for them to see two women walking on the deserted road. My mother told me not to look at anybody and we quietly walked. Little did we know that this would be our last trip to nana’s house. My mother told me that we would wish nana happy birthday and come back before it gets dark. Finally we reached nana’s house. For the first time I found their door locked. I don’t remember them ever locking their front door, but today things were different. We lived in tough times. My mother knocked on the door. My grandmother shouted from inside asking who it was. After confirming that it was my mother and I, she opened the door and let us in. The fear on her face was obvious. She was glad that we could make it. She was almost sure that her two other daughters would not be able to make it because they lived little far away and would not be able to brave the situation. Inside the house my grandfather sat at his usual place with hookah in front of him, but he was not smoking today. He looked worried too. I quickly ran to him and wished him happy birthday and he in return hugged me and told me to sit in the blanket because I was very cold. He told my mother to stay over for the night. ‘Your brother will drop you back tomorrow morning.’ My mother agreed and soon we were chatting away and for some time forgot what was happening outside. That night after dinner we sat around the TV watching some old classic movie. After a while I saw my mother get up and suddenly I heard a loud shriek from her. All of us rushed to the courtyard and heard loud noises coming from loud speakers. At first we were too shocked to understand what was happening. All the noises seemed like battle cries and we all huddled together in fear. We were standing in the courtyard and our faces were white with fear. Slowly everything started making sense. All the militants or so-called Jehadis were declaring Jehad from the loudspeakers placed in the mosques. They were coaxing Muslim men, women and children to come out of their houses and join them in the so-called holy Jehad. All kafirs or Pandits were threatened to join them or face serious consequences. In the fifteen years of my existence I had not known what fear really was and for the first time I asked my mother that why was being Hindu such a big crime. The noises were getting louder and louder and we all had blank expressions on our faces. No one knew what all this meant or why all this was happening to us. Later we got to know that all the Mujahideens or simply militants had crowded in Maisuma Chowk and a battle ensued between security forces and militants. That night the government of India had named Jagmohan as the governor of Kashmir and then Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah had resigned in protest. So that night, on 20^th of January 1990 there was no government in Kashmir, no one to control the situation and no one to protect us. My grandfather went around his house like a mad man frantically praying to God to protect his family. Tears were trickling down his eyes and he kept repeating ‘ kabali loot gav, kabali loot gav’ [the kabalis have struck again! (ref to kabali invasion that Pakistan had masterminded in 1947)]. My mother looked at me and said ‘ my child we will have to leave Kashmir, for you I will have to go. You are more precious to me than anything else’

Next morning Curfew was clamped in the city. We were at Nana’s place for a week. And then returned to our house. I still remember how sad my house looked that day. As soon as we reached all our immediate neighbors came to meet us and they all were sure that the time to leave their homeland had come. Nobody said anything but they all knew that it was all over. After that we hardly left our homes. We were literally trapped in our own homes. All we could see everywhere were security forces marching up and down. Soon it was almost clear that schools could not run properly in this situation and my mother was concerned about my studies. All our neighbors had fled and we were the only Pandit family in that neighborhood. Militants had also started selective killings of Pandits and one of our close relatives had also become a victim of this manslaughter. By now it had become clear that militants wanted all Pandits to leave Kashmir. The gory tales of their violence spread everywhere like wild fire. My mother was concerned about our safety and well being.   With a heavy heart she woke me up one night and said, ‘ I have decided to go to Delhi and get you enrolled in some school there.’ She was heart broken. We had no where to go in Delhi. We had to start life all over again. My mother would have to look for a job there and it would be a very different life from what we were leading at Kashmir. In about two weeks, we packed just the bare essentials and left our home forever.

I still remember the night before we left our homes. My mother cooked our last meal in the house that we still called our own. She had been quiet the whole day and in the evening as she was serving the food she could bear it no longer. She broke down and told me ‘ I came to this house as a young bride. This house has been a witness to all my good times and bad times and even when your father left us forever, this house protected me against all outsiders and evils. Today I am leaving the security of my house and don’t know where I am going. I cannot pack the moments spent in this house. I cannot pack my memories, why am I being forced to leave my homeland, I have not committed any crime, why am I paying the price for the mistakes of others.’ I was too small then to say anything. I just wiped the tears from the face of my mother and two of us quietly ate our last meal in our house and wept till we could weep no more.

The moment we left our house we were branded as ‘MIGRANTS’ by the Government and so called ‘ALREADY SETTLED’ Pandits living outside valley. For the first time I realized how tough it was to survive in this harsh world. We lived in a rented apartment in Faridabad, near Delhi. The house we lived in had no windows and no fans. For first couple of weeks we didn’t even have a refrigerator. We had to battle against a lot of things outside valley, heat of plains being one of them. God somehow gave us, and many families like us, a lot of strength. We survived and took everything as a challenge. My mother found a job for herself. We started gathering the threads of our life with time.   But strangely enough, the scars have only become bigger with time. My grandfather literally went insane. He could not bear the fact that he was being forcibly made to leave his house. He could not bear that he had left his palatial bungalow and was living in a rented home in Jammu with absolutely no amenities. He soon stopped recognizing people and stopped eating. We lost him soon and the tragedy was that we could not even mourn for him properly. Many more such tragedies happened. Many people have been languishing ever since in the migrant camps and normal life has never been restored for them. 

More than a decade has passed but the wounds are still there. When I see how callously the Kashmir situation is being handled the wounds start bleeding all over again. When I hear of Bamiyan Buddhas being destroyed by Afghan Vandals my wounds become fresh and I am reminded of the vandalism I am a victim of. When I see no one taking up the cause of Kashmiri Pandits because we don’t form the vote bank for any politician my wounds start aching.

Although we are all survivors but something has died in all of us. We are all leading an incomplete life. Our homes have been burnt down, our dreams have been trampled upon, our numbers are decreasing fast, yet we are holding against all odds hoping that one day we will return to our land of ancestors, our home land.

I can only say in the end

‘zuv chum braman ghar ghasha”…..[I am pining to go back to my home]

Sunanda Vashisht (Zadu)

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