Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits Read Online Free Page B

Delhi, or Bombay, or Calcutta, but any non-Kashmiri was a Punjabi for them.
    For many years after their marriage, my parents served in far-flung villages where people were so innocent that some of them believed that the Hindu nationalist party, the Jan Sangh, was a demon that pounced upon hapless people were they to be found alone in the fields. Sometimes Father and Ma would come to the city and watch movies at the Palladium cinema—old films with soulful Mukesh and Rafi songs. One of my mother’s favourites was a song from Awaara , where Nargis wished that the moon would turn its face away from them for a moment so that she could love Raj Kapoor. I often found her humming this song to herself at home.
    I was born at a time when double-decker buses had just been introduced on certain routes and I vaguely remember that a ride from Lal Chowk to our locality would cost twenty-five paisa. My sister had been born six years earlier. The clock tower in the main square in Srinagar intrigued me since it looked so ancient and never kept the correct time. It stood like an old patriarch in the middle of the city. It was next to this clock tower that Jawaharlal Nehru had climbed atop a table, along with Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, and had spoken about India’s commitment to Kashmir and its people.
    In the early eighties, I remember visits to the ancient Shankaracharya temple built on a hill overlooking Srinagar city. The temple was named after the Hindu philosopher-saint Adi Shankaracharya, who is believed to have visited the temple in the ninth century. We also visited the shrine of Kashmir’s patron goddess Sharika inside the Hari Parbat Fort. On Basant Panchami, we would go for day-long excursions to the Ramchandra temple in Srinagar.
    My mother’s sister lived near the cantonment area, and my uncle was a movie buff. Hoping to catch a glimpse of some film stars, my uncle would seat me on the crossbar of his bicycle and ride to the Oberoi hotel, where most film stars stayed. He was so fond of movies that he would often sit all night long in front of the television, keeping the volume low, smoking Panama cigarettes and noting down the cast with a pencil on a wall next to him. I was amazed by his skill in recognizing old film actresses: Nimmi, Suraiya, Geeta Bali, Bina Rai, Nalini Jaywant. It was the time when the actress Tabassum would appear on television with a rose in her hair, hosting a film-based programme. I also remember watching the singer Hemant Kumar on her show, a shawl placed neatly on his left shoulder, his head tilted towards the right as he sang one soulful song after another. Besides these outings and the Sunday evening feature film on television, the only source of entertainment was listening to stories from our grandparents. And then there were family gatherings and festivals.
    Being Shaivites—followers of Lord Shiva—the most important among our festivals was Shivratri, which would be celebrated over a period of one week or so. It falls in either February or March, during the severe cold. Preparations would begin a month earlier. The whole house would be thoroughly cleaned and the larder replenished. Two days before the festival, Father and I would visit Habba Kadal to buy pooja paraphernalia from Kanth Joo, a toothless man who ran a small shop as ancient and mysterious as its owner. From there, we would go to the Muslim potter who sold us earthen pots, and the Shivling for rituals. Then we would make our way to the bridge—one of the eight built across the Jhelum—and bargain with the fishermen for the best rates.
    We would return home, Father and I, while I held his hand and a bag of roasted chestnuts. At home, Father would clean the fish in a basin and scrape off the scales under a tap beside the kitchen garden, while I watched in fascination as he cut open its guts and sliced the fish into pieces. We children would wait for the fish bladders to be extricated so that we could jump on them, making them produce