Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits (30 page)

‘And then once everyone else left, it became too difficult to leave after that,’ says Vinod. In 1992, when they felt threatened, they decided to leave once again.

‘We tried selling our properties, but certain elements within the village prohibited others from buying them,’ says Vinod. He remembers how they had given up after that.

‘My father said Jammu was very costly and we wouldn’t be able to survive there,’ recalls Vinod.

Shortly afterwards, an army camp was established near their village. It made them feel secure. Life moved on. They tilled their land, bought provisions from neighbouring shops and restricted their religious activities to a small temple near their house.

In 1996, however, the army camp moved. And Vinod recalls how shortly afterwards, armed militants began to be seen in the village. The small group of Pandits always tried to steer clear of both the army and the militants.

On the afternoon of January 25, 1998, Vinod Dhar ventured out after feasting on a lunch prepared by his mother. A meal of rice and turnip and lotus stem curry, he recalls. He went to a nearby field to play cricket with some friends. He returned after sunset. Inside, it was work as usual. His mother was preparing dinner and his father was enjoying a cup of tea. His brother was asleep upstairs. He had just entered when a group of armed men barged into their house. Even in the dim light, their rifles glistened. Vinod’s father addressed them. They made themselves comfortable and asked for tea. Vinod’s mother rushed to make tea.

After drinking tea, the group went outside. Vinod remembers that one of them carried a wireless set and soon after they left, it began to crackle. After a few minutes, Vinod heard gunshots outside. He rushed to his mother and held her hand. Together, they tried climbing up to the first floor when his mother was shot from behind. His brother, who rushed down after hearing gunshots, was shot as well. Vinod reached upstairs and hid himself behind a heap of cow dung cakes, used as fuel. The group of terrorists shot dead twenty-three people that day. They were shot and then dragged into the main compound of Vinod’s house. After killing everyone, some of the terrorists came upstairs. Vinod held his breath. One of them poked his rifle through the dung cakes, narrowly missing Vinod’s face. And then they left. Their mission was accomplished. Vinod stayed where he was.

It was the night of Shab-e-Qadr—‘Night of Destiny’—the night of Ramzan when the first verse of the Koran was revealed to the Prophet Mohammed by Jibreel.

After midnight, Vinod slowly came down the stairs. He looked at the bodies that lay outside. It was freezing cold. He looked at them for a few minutes and then went back inside. One by one he dragged out heavy quilts from his house and put them over the bodies. Then he went back and hid behind the cow dung cakes.

In the wee hours of the morning, an army patrol entered Vinod’s compound. But he did not venture out, because he had seen the terrorists wearing similar military fatigues. It was only when he saw a police party that he came out and met them.

‘My mind was absolutely numb,’ he recalls fourteen years later. ‘The realization that I had lost my entire family did not dawn upon me at all.’

After the civil administration authorities arrived, the people from the village started pouring in. Vinod remembers the exact words he uttered to the officer in charge upon spotting his Muslim neighbours.

‘I told him:
“In mein se koi haraami inhe haath nahi lagayega.”
None of these bastards will touch the bodies.’

We are still sitting in the coffee shop and it is now lunchtime. Many Muslim employees are there as well. There is no vacant spot available, so one of them sits next to me. He is eating a patty. As Vinod says this, he shuffles his feet uneasily. There is a pause. The Muslim walks away.

I remember some of the reports I had read of the massacre. One report described how Muslim women were seen wailing over the dead bodies of Vinod’s family members and others.

‘I will tell you something,’ Vinod says, ‘when the gun shots were being fired, the people of the village increased the volume of the loudspeaker in the mosque to muffle the sound of the gunfire.’

Nobody came out of their homes the whole night. They only came out later, after daylight had broken.

‘They wanted to shed
magarmacch ke aansu
—crocodile tears,’ says Vinod.

All twenty-three pyres were lit by Vinod. Later in the day, the then prime minister, I.K. Gujral, arrived at Vinod’s village. Vinod was so young, recalls Sanjay Tickoo, a community leader who was there, that he wanted to take a ride in Gujral’s helicopter.

Vinod was later shifted to a BSF camp in Jammu where he completed his schooling and later his graduation in commerce. After he lost his family, Vinod was harassed by his relatives who wanted a share of his ex gratia settlement. ‘They would beat me up for money,’ he recalls.

Vinod now works as a clerk with the state government. ‘I wanted to study more, gain more knowledge. I am pursuing a Master’s in History, but I haven’t been able to clear it so far.’ As proof of his knowledge-seeking, Vinod throws a Bernard Shaw quote at me. ‘Where wealth accumulates, men decay.’

Vinod lives in the Jagti refugee settlement for Kashmiri Pandits, outside Jammu city. When he is in Srinagar, does he ever feel like returning to his village? ‘I don’t go anywhere when I am in Srinagar. I don’t want to return to my village. But sometimes I go to the Kshir Bhawani temple and sit in front of the goddess. I used to go there with my mother,’ he says.

Vinod is alone. ‘Why don’t you marry?’ I ask him. He is not looking at me, he is lost in thought. ‘You know that night, I sat hidden the whole night, I did not cry, I was like a stone.’ And then he looks at me; he has heard my question. ‘I cannot marry; I’m too insecure. What if she doesn’t like me tomorrow and decides to leave me? Then what will I do?’

‘I have never been to Delhi, or Bombay. I wonder how it would be to go to Europe. You live in Delhi? Life must be very fast there. How much do you earn? Do you get time to eat? If I come to Delhi, will you meet me?’

‘Suppose I go to a five-star hotel in Bombay to have tea. How much will it cost me?’

I reply to his every question.

Finally, we rise to leave. I take out my wallet to pay for coffee, but like an elderly uncle, he holds my hand. ‘No, you are my guest, I will pay. When I come to Delhi, then you pay,’ he says.

We are at the entrance of the coffee shop. I ask him what he misses most. His eyes well up with tears. ‘I miss my parents. When you are young, you get to learn so much from them. I couldn’t do that,’ he says.

We shake hands. As I turn away, two men wearing skullcaps and holding a large green cloth approach Vinod for alms. ‘What is this for?’ he asks.

‘
Yateemon ke liye hein
.’ This is for orphans.

Vinod takes out a fifty-rupee note and drops it into the cloth. And then I can no longer see his face. He walks towards the Secretariat.

A year and a half before the Wandhama massacre, seven Pandits were taken out of their homes and shot dead in Sangrampora. It was March 21, 1997. That night, Ashok Kumar Pandita slept early. In 1990, when the exodus happened, the Pandita family and a few others had decided to stay behind. The families depended on farming for their sustenance. During the day they tended to their fields. Often groups of militants would pass through their village. Ashok’s old father was a wise man. He had one piece of advice to give to his son—No matter what happens, don’t venture out of your house after sunset. That night, Ashok was woken up by a noise coming from downstairs. His aunt called out to him. But he remembered his father’s advice and didn’t venture out. She called out to him again. This time Ashok had to come out. The woman was worried about her son who had stepped out after hearing a noise. ‘Go and see where Pyare Lal has gone,’ she begged. Ashok came down and saw nine heavily armed men. They had brought with them four Pandit men from neighbouring houses. They had Pyare Lal as well. The men were carrying a list of names. ‘Bring Avtar Krishen,’ they demanded in chaste Kashmiri. Avtar Krishen was another cousin of Ashok’s. On his walkie-talkie, they heard the chief of the militant group say, ‘Major sahab, we are coming.’

One of the Pandits, Sanjay, started to plead with the militants. ‘Please leave us; we have small children. What have we done?’ he begged. One of the militants hit him with his gun and shouted, ‘Don’t try to be clever. Just keep your mouth shut.’

Then, led in a line by the militants, the men were made to walk a mile or so. At one spot, they were asked to remove their clothes. It had begun to drizzle. Ashok Pandita kept his watch. It had been gifted to him by his father. Then Avtar Krishen spoke up. ‘What is our fault? We have always stayed here; we did not leave for Jammu. Why are you doing this to us?’ he asked.

The militant abused him. ‘Who asked you to live here, you infidels!’ The Pandits began to cry. The militants cocked their rifles and began shooting. Eight men fell. The blood from their bodies mingled with rainwater to turn into pink puddles. Before they disappeared, the militants kicked the bodies to check if anyone was still breathing. They missed Ashok Pandita. He had been shot in the leg and had held his breath as he lay with his relatives, now dead.

In Habba Kadal, Sanjay Tickoo has lived with his family for the last two decades. Over the last few years, Tickoo and some of his friends who live in the Valley have been compiling a list of every Pandit who died in the nineties at the hands of militants. ‘But not only that, every Pandit who died due to sunstroke or a snakebite is also a casualty of war,’ he told me when I visited him at his house. Tickoo has also been instrumental in chronicling the damage to hundreds of temples and it is due to the efforts of his organization, the Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti, that many temples have been renovated and attempts to sell temple land at various places have been thwarted.

On the morning of March 24, 2003, when Tickoo woke up, his wife told him that something had happened in Nadimarg village in south Kashmir. His wife’s parents lived in a nearby village and she feared for their safety. Tickoo left immediately for the village with one of his friends. The scene when they arrived was grisly. Twenty-four Pandits, including women and children, had been shot dead by militants, helped allegedly by a party of local policemen. The previous night, the Pandits had been made to sit on the floor in a courtyard and shot in their heads.

I remembered speaking to one of the survivors, Mohan Bhat, many years ago in Jammu. He had lost his entire family to the massacre. He told me how the militants had shot a toddler who was crying.

‘I was numb when I saw those bodies,’ Tickoo told me. He composed himself, and asked his friend to hold a bowl of water. One by one, he lifted the shrouds from the faces of the dead, and as per Hindu rituals, put water in their mouths with a spoon. His friend, who was holding the bowl, ran away after Tickoo lifted the shroud off the third body. He couldn’t bear it any longer.

Later, Tickoo asked a doctor to bandage the heads of the dead. And over that bandage he drew their features—eyes, nose, mouth, and ears—with vermilion paste. And then the bodies were consigned to the flames.

It is the spring of 2012. Shivratri is two days away. Every year, my father visits INA market in Delhi to buy puja paraphernalia. This year I tell him that I will buy it myself. I carry with me an empty rucksack to fill things in. I buy everything on the list father has prepared, and take the metro to return home. No sooner have I entered the coach than I start feeling uneasy. My heartbeat goes berserk, and there is a strange tingling sensation in my arms. I feel a sudden rush of heat in my stomach and I am dizzy. I get off at the next station. I put my bag down and slowly sink to the stairs. Ten minutes later I feel better. What happened to me? I ask myself. Was it a heart attack? But how can it be? I am physically fit. On reporting assignments deep in the jungles of central India, I walk for hours without any complaint. I do intense cycling over the weekends. I pick up my bag, slowly climbing the stairs to the main road, and call a friend who is a doctor and whose clinic is not far from where I am. It shouldn’t take me more than twenty minutes to reach him.