The Day I Went Back

If Home is where your heart is, then may your Home be blessed …….John McLeod

1990 was the year when my family along with many Kashmiri Pandits left Valley in the so called migration. It was a migration in physical terms and otherwise. I still remember while my parents were trying to put some important things together to be taken along, I was busy trying to pick a dress to wear. I was small to understand what was going on. All I understood was the family was moving somewhere. It turned out to be not for a day or month but years of exile. Before I knew we were in a rented accommodation, what a transition from a big ancestral building to small house.

But as I grew up, Kashmir got more and more close to my heart. All I had was some childhood memories. I grew my thoughts and imagination around them. It was like a fairy tale.

Then the life moved along until this year after few years of thinking to go back to pay visit to Kashmir, we deiced to go back for a week. I was coming back to India for about 10 days to make this trip happen which was long overdue. But before committing to this trip I made it clear to my parents that I do not want to see them getting emotional or anything while we visit various places. It was more like a crash course; visited most of the places and paid the regards at various Temples, Shrines and Darghas.

I was emotionally moved although I had barely lived my childhood in Kashmir. I do not know how my parents managed to control their emotions. Everyday we came back; there was a deep silence for some time – which I knew was their way of expressing their sadness.

We visited our ancestral house; or should I say the place where it used to be. There was a huge dune of clay and nothing else. Quite surprisingly there is a walnut tree or Dune kul at the place. I was thinking may be it grew up from one of the many walnut bags we left back. This reminded me of walnut tree that had its branches gracing out balcony or as we say in Kashmiri “dab” and how we used to pick the green walnuts from it in our childhood.

Traveling through various villages I watched various people working in the fields, some carrying tea in Samawar, kids playing. All these years I used to think we lost twenty years away from our birth place but when I went back most of the villages we passed by were not in good condition either. Villages seemed to have stood still in time, not much development. But all I can say now is that in these two decades people on both sides have suffered loss.

As I fare goodbye to Kashmir; I promised to come back. I hope till then things move towards the betterment of both communities.