Of Broken Windows and Papa’s Atlas Bicycle: Memories From Kashmir

Dilapidated houses of Kashmiri Pandits still manage to withstand the test of time although the inhabitants have left

“Papa, why did they leave?” I asked my father while passing in front of a dilapidated batte makaan Kashmiri Pandit house standing in one of the narrow alleys of the old town. “You will find out one day,” my father replied, pedalling his Atlas bicycle while I sat on a small customised seat in front of him.

I have seen many places and heard many stories sitting on that small seat. When I was in class 9, I was given a bicycle of my own. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I enjoyed that little seat on papa’s Atlas.

As a child, I was always fascinated with old buildings and the stories around them. We used to live at Khanpora, on the other side of old town Baramulla across Jhelum. Right outside my house was an old house made of stone and mud.

The Alleys Still Reverberate With ‘Azaadi’ Slogans

“Faatmaas and her family lived here before they moved out,” my mother used to tell me every time I enquired about it. We used to call it purani haveli and even re-enacted the famous Purani Haveli film scenes in that house.

Now when I go back to Khanpora to revisit my childhood memories, I can no longer find the house. It collapsed in the 2005 earthquake. A new house took its place which looks nothing like the old four-storey stone and mud structure.

Every day on my way to school I used to cross the lane in front of the old house. Its windows hung from the last rusted hinge. The craftsman who hand-carved the florals on the wooden windows may not have foreseen what will happen to them.

Some of the bricks were also missing, like parts of a jigsaw puzzle.

The town and its old houses made of small bricks carry the marks of the history of this troubled land. Some dilapidated and abandoned ‘batte makaan’ houses of Kashmiri Pandits still manage to withstand the historical ups and downs although their inhabitants have left. The small alleys which used to reverberate with ‘Azaadi’ slogans still do so, only the old generation has been replaced with the new.

Nothing much has changed in this part of the world. From the balconies and rooftops of these old houses, numerous funeral processions have been witnessed. The beautiful mosques and shrines have seen endless curfews and crackdowns. The scars of decades-long conflict are still visible at the heart of this town. The wooden doors may still carry marks of gun butts under multiple coats of paint.

“A Child of War”

“Tche chukh jung poot (You are a child of war),” my mother teases me when I behave a little rough. I was born in the mid-summer of 1990. It was the same year when armed struggle started in Kashmir with full intensity.

It grew in sentiment after the heavily rigged Assembly elections in 1987. “I have voted only once in my life,” says my mother about the elections.

“Everyone voted for Qalam Dawat,” she recalls. Qalam Dawat was the party symbol for the Muslim United Front before Mufti Sayeed’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) later adopted it. People voted overwhelmingly for the MUF and they still lost because of the heavy rigging.

“It was a hot summer that year,” my mother recalls. I can imagine what it would have been like. A hot summer with a politically charged atmosphere. What followed was an endless cycle of violence. Both the Kashmir struggle and I grew up together.

After 26 years, I have a better understanding of the world and Kashmir is a changed place with the masses now driving the movement.

It has been seven years since I came to Delhi as an educational refugee and have been experiencing the madness of city life almost 900 kms from home. I grew up in a beautiful mountainous landscape. My mornings started with the chirping of birds and the evenings ended with overlapping Adhaans from nearby mosques.

Until I was 12, I never travelled alone to Srinagar which is 56 kilometres away from Baramulla. I must say I have come a long way.

GIFs: Susnata Paul

(A page from my personal diary.)