A longing for home -- mine and yours
For peace -- and us -- to return to Kashmir, the first step is to rebuild Kashmir and the communities that call it home
Ghulam Mir was a stout man. He had a booming voice and a flowing beard. For the pint-sized me, he was a towering figure who was also many things: my grandfather’s friend; the neighbourhood shopkeeper; and my mother’s spy, reporting her my every transgression.
His family called on us with offerings every Eid, and we visited them with walnuts dunked in sweetened water on Shivratris.
There was nothing remarkable about our interactions; except instances such as him twisting the ears of errant neighbourhood boys who pelted stones on our house when the conch and bells rang during Shivratri Pooja, or when India defeated Pakistan in cricket matches.
One such Shivratri, the stones kept raining. But we did not hear his booming voice outside. When a man stole into our house, and left an empty bottle with a cotton wick inside (a hatchet job at bomb making), he did not come over to assure us. When it was time for my grandparents to leave, in the summer of 1990, he did not bid goodbye, or watch them leave behind everything they once owned.
Ours became a story of loss, longing and anger.
I wanted to know why everyone failed us. My anger was directed at anyone who still had a home in Kashmir while we struggled with scabies rash in the unbearable Jammu heat, and over uncertainties surrounding our return.
It took years to get over loathing of Ghulam Ju (as we called him). It took years to make friends with the people back home -- people who spoke the same tongue but not the same language of those who drove us out.
Over the years, little by little, I have been building bridges with old friends. I fight the trauma of being reduced to a homeless entity, by keeping alive aspiration of returning home that oscillates between the wishful and the possible.
And then came August 5, when the scrapping of the article that gave Jammu and Kashmir a special status was announced. At once, there was euphoria and despair—depending on which side of the Banihal tunnel you were on.
Article 370, which hung like an ugly spectre over Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh, is gone. The scrapping marks the return of that repelling, repugnant acrimony that plays out by pitting communities against each other. Instead of new beginnings, it has become another summer blighted by fears and bloodshed. It’s back to anger and threats of alienation.
While one section is under a lockdown; the other section wants to know: Will this mean going back home after 29 years of waiting and watching an entire generation pass on? Both stare at uncertainty.
Just as it is hasty to pronounce the outcome and impact of abrogating Article 370, celebrations about an impending homecoming are premature too. Home does not exist merely in the crevices of the heart; it is not a notional entity, it needs to exist outside of us.
For peace -- and us -- to return to Kashmir, the first step is to rebuild Kashmir and the communities that call it home.
We will need to erase boundaries that limit the Valley to the unfolding geopolitical events, stop attributing reasons for militancy -- from rigged elections to a governor’s alleged stealth -- and address the realities that made a minority community face the nozzle of the gun.
We have a long list of what went wrong since 1947. What we need now is to lend ears to voices that give peace a chance, pick books over bombs, and not use armed conflict as a ruse for every unmet aspiration.
Arm-twisting and preconditions can’t dictate any attempt to change the status quo; the ghoul of the past needs to be rested if Kashmir has to move forward.
For until that happens, there will be no room with a roof, and no neighbours to welcome us home.
smriti.kak@hindustantimes.com