Memoirs: Another short story from the archives

I have resisted the strong urge to edit some very awkward sentence construction in this story, and a few terms (esp. “leftists”) which I seem to have used without knowing what they meant! I think the word can be replaced by “extremists”. I wrote this around 2004, when I was 15 or 16, it’s interesting to go back to old writing and see how, hopefully, you evolve!

Déjà vu

Things have changed. A lot. Who would have thought Kashmir would become independent? It is still hard to believe that now there is no POK or IOK.

Twenty years after Kargil, when the UN Media wing picked me to cover the Kashmir story, I had mixed feelings. I did feel a little apprehensive at first. People like me grew up listening to stories of terrorist attacks and bomb blasts in Kashmir. Once in a while, I would get to hear my parents or some other elderly couple from the N.Y. Tamil Brahmin Society heave a sigh, and wistfully describe their Kulu-Manali honeymoon; how they had never been to The North before: how they hunted for handmade sweaters smuggled from Tibet, because they had none of their own.

But then we would go home to the Indian e-newspages, and scrolling down them, spot another familiar-looking headline with a number next to it, to tell some distant and unconcerned NRIs how many died in the Valley that day.

But I was never really involved with Kashmir otherwise. Not until I met Alok. Even though after the 2017 Autonomy Act terrorist activities were not quite so rampant, the UN Security Council decided it was necessary to send a segment of the Pre-Emptive Forces Volunteers to Kashmir.

And so we met in Jammu. Alok was a volunteer, of course. And I was just the in-house Press. It is funny how our differences never kept us from mailing each other every day, and talking for hours on the phone every night when we got back to the States after our year-long stay in Jammu. He was an immigrant Kashmiri who had moved to D.C. only because his parents didn’t want him to stay on in Kashmir, fearing for his life. I was a second-generation American with my roots in some vague village in Tamil Nadu whose name I didn’t remember. And somewhere along the line, the daily mailing became weekly visits. We were forever hopping flights between New York and D.C.

I have a photograph I always keep in my handbag. A picture of us at the registration office, the marriage certificate in our hands and moony grins on our faces. And on the back, Alok’s scrawled words: “Best Day Ever – 21st September, 2018.”

When I was with him, Kashmir didn’t even feel dangerous. We managed to stay apart till November, and arrange a trip to Kashmir in December, giving the Personnel Wing the excuse that we wanted to record the people’s condition two years after Partition. I was too thrilled to speak when he led me up some old cobbled steps to a cottage in the heart of Jammu, and whispered that we would live there someday. His grandmother had left it to him, knowing that his parents wanted nothing more to do with Kashmir.

March came to the Valley, and brought spring with it, and we were still there, painting the walls ourselves, picking burnt shells out of the weeds in the tiny garden. But at the fag end of March, the natives began to complain of no development in the country; and somewhere in the midst of the brewing confusion, leftists started saying it was the Pandits’ fault – that they did not want for Kashmir to be identified with the Muslims, and so suppressed their interests. But it didn’t even end there. By May, the Islamic fundamentalists were all for declaring Kashmir an Islamic state.

We were stuck in the middle of all this. Alok, impulsive as he was, joined in the Hindu protests, much to my dismay. One Sunday morning he was, for a change, free from the rallies for a while. He was sitting, as I clearly remember, on the bed, clipping his toenails, with an old newspaper under his feet to catch the clippings. It was just then that the call came from HQ, N.Y. The PEF was on its way. Within the hour, the chartered Concorde landed; and we, even myself, a mere reporter, were supplied with bullet-proof vests and ammo. But the crash course in firearm handling did nothing to make me feel less insecure or afraid.

Before I knew it, the Team actually had to go out and physically stop the leftists from killing every Hindu in sight. I took the red sticker-bindi; which my mother insisted I should wear; off my forehead, and removed from the bookshelf the Bhagwad Gita which I used to recite from, uselessly; trying as NRIs say, to “preserve our culture”. But now I had our lives to preserve. I burnt the book, and along with it all other signs of our being Hindus. I would have to just leave everything else as it was and join Volunteeers. But in the meantime, I found, another segment had been flown in from Geneva; and I, inexperienced as I was, was designated as “Reserve”. I would only be sent out when ten or more had been lost. Alok had been with the PEF for six years. He was told to lead.

Two days later, we cheered when we heard that the first segment had been successful, and the leftists were calming down, preparing for negotiation. But we all fell silent, because their success was not the only news. Four men had been lost. Shot through the head, killed instantly. And as I listened to their names, I had a feeling of growing dread. It was announced then: “Our friend and partner of six years. A native. Alok Kaul.”

I remember telling the others I needed to be alone for a while, and walking back to the house. I unlocked the door and stepped in, my eyes bloodshot and my head throbbing. By the door, I found his shoes. Those ridiculous soccer shoes with spikes on them, And next to them the old toothbrush he used to clean them with. I walked to the small round table where we did everything from cutting vegetables to planning fantastic and impossible holidays. There was a large white handkerchief on it. Folded and ironed, He hadn’t taken it with him when he rushed out. I picked it up, only to find that silly picture of me in a baseball cap, warped by having been in his wallet so long. And on the bed was an old newspaper, and on it the toenails Alok had clipped. I cried all evening.

Two more months and I was back in N.Y. On the flight back from Delhi an American stewardess looked at me, smiled, and politely asked, “How many months?” I was startled. It took me a few seconds to understand what she had just asked me. The fact that I was pregnant was probably the last thing on my mind then. I absently replied that she was due in September.

Things had changed. A lot. Who ever thought last December that a year from then, I would be back in Jammu. Without Alok. I took the Concorde from Delhi, and spent an entire two days in Jammu only because there was a flight only alternate days. I had done my homework. In N.Y. itself, I had found someone interested in buying the house, especially since the riots seemed to have died down again. All I had to do was sign on a few dotted lines. The estate agent did the rest. I stepped up those old cobbled steps and ran my hand over the walls we painted, the window-panes we polished – and I took off my shoes and felt, for the last time, the cold mosaic.

On the flight back from Delhi, an American stewardess looked at me, remembered, and smiled. She asked me how my baby girl was doing. I smiled back. There was no point, really, in telling this enthusiastic kid the baby had been stillborn. She was curious to know what I had named her. “Kashmir”, I said. She smiled her plastic smile and said, “That’s a really pretty name. Kind of gives you a déjà vu.”

And when I got off that plane, I was sad. And I knew Alok would have been too. Because finally, that is what Kashmir is now. A pretty name and a déjà vu.