Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits (26 page)

I worked with Shamnath for close to two years. During this time, I developed a deep understanding of medicine.

A few ripples in the waters of the Jhelum decided my next course of action.

One afternoon, not feeling well, I left the shop early to go home. On the way, while crossing the bridge, I felt slightly dizzy, and sat for a while on the stone steps leading to the river. Boatmen went from one bank of the Jhelum to another, carrying green vegetables, flowers, lotus stems and water chestnuts. There were a few pebbles near me, and I threw them in the river.

As the ripples made by my tossed pebbles spread through the water, it dawned upon me that I could lead a life practising medicine elsewhere, far away from the hustle and bustle of Srinagar. I thought of poplar trees, and apple trees laden with fruit. I thought of gurgling streams, and the scent of the earth. The thought of my own small dispensary amidst such scenes felt like heaven to me. I got up and quickly walked back home.

That evening, I told my father about my plans.

‘Have you told Shamnath Tickoo about it?’ he asked.

‘Well no, it just occurred to me while coming back from his shop this afternoon. I have learnt a lot and I think I can start my own practice now,’ I replied.

We sat on rags near the hearth for warmth, while Mother made preparations for our dinner.

‘I have been trying hard to get you a government job. One of my acquaintances, Bhan, is very influential. He tells me that a few teaching positions are about to be created in government schools. He has not assured me of anything, but he has said that he will try his best. So until that happens, why don’t you just keep working with Shamnath? I am sure you can still learn a lot from him,’ Father said. Mother served us our dinner.

I put a morsel of food in my mouth. After I had eaten it, I replied, ‘I am not averse to the idea of taking a government job, but right now there is no guarantee that I will get one. Working with Shamnath is also not a bad idea, but, Father, one needs to move on in life. If I work independently, I will be able to contribute in a major way to the family earnings, and then you won’t have to work so hard.’

And so, in a month’s time I moved to a remote village and established my small dispensary there. As a parting gift, Shamnath gave me many jars of pills. I practised for a few months before Father sent Totha one day to tell me that my job had been arranged. I was to join the Baramulla government school as a teacher.

Time passed by. Much water flowed down the Jhelum. I moved from Baramulla, then moved back. At Ganpatyar, I met Mohini, who would become my wife. Gradually, we rebuilt our lives. We bought a piece of land in a Srinagar suburb. Ravi was born and then we were blessed with a daughter. Father passed away, and then mother, and then Totha left us, too. I worked hard to support my family. The children grew up and I thought that overall our destiny had been benevolent towards us.

I had so many hopes for Ravi. He was such a good son. I remember once, after he was engaged, he was to meet Asha. Not knowing this, I engaged him in a long discussion. But the good son that he was, he did not cut me short. It was only once I had finished that he told me that he had to meet his fiancée. And I was so furious with him, I pushed him out of the house.

In 2009, Ravi’s mother passed away as well. She had been missing Ravi too much. Ravi’s father still visits us. He is still possessed by that restlessness. There are so many incidents in his story that he told and retold me. Many times, he would remember his son and many episodes from his life. But I won’t forget what he told me once when the two of us were alone. We got talking about Ravi. ‘Death is inevitable,’ he said. ‘But there is one thought that won’t let me be at peace—what must he have thought of when he fell to the bullets, all alone?
’

The tribal raid of 1947 destroyed many lives. At Bandipore, a group of tribesmen entered the house of Sansar Chand Sadhu at the behest of a local man who bore a grudge against him. Sadhu ran a business of dry fruits in Gilgit and Skardu. On the evening of November 3, 1947, as the family was celebrating the birthday of Sadhu’s grandson, the tribesmen, led by this man, barged in. Sadhu’s daughter-in-law was holding her son, the birthday boy. The leader of the tribesmen asked her to read the Kalma and marry him. Not only did she refuse, she told the tribesman in chaste Urdu that he was daydreaming. This infuriated him and he shot her, killing her instantly. Then they lined up everyone else and shot them. In all, nine of the Sadhu family were killed that day. Miraculously, the little boy survived. The man had taken his revenge but he was still not satisfied. While leaving, he trampled Sansar Chand’s dead body.

At Langate in Kupwara district, Amar Chand Kachroo was told that the tribal invaders were close and that he should flee. He refused. Somehow, he believed that the invaders did not possess firearms. So he asked his family members and some others who had taken refuge in his house to store stones in the attic. Then he closed all the doors. When the tribesmen came, they were showered with stones and slabs of rock salt. They opened fire, killing Amar Chand and his brother. When one of the neighbours later entered their house, he found a dog licking blood in the compound of the house. It had been dripping from the corpse of Amar Chand’s brother who was shot in the attic.

In Kupwara, Gushi was the last border village and it was also from where people began their annual pilgrimage to the Sharda temple in the Neelam valley, travelling through Muzaffarabad. Here, the tribal invaders killed many Pandits.

Those who survived in Muzaffarabad witnessed brutalities that would leave them scarred for life. Bishambar Nath Sapru, a resident of Srinagar, was twenty-nine years old when he completed his bachelor’s degree in Education. In July 1947, three months before the tribal raid, he was posted to the government high school in Muzaffarabad. Many Kashmiri Pandits were posted in Muzaffarabad at that time. They included the school headmaster, Sham Lal Labroo; the art teacher Kashi Nath Jalali;Sukhdev Kaul, who ran a medical shop;and Shamboo Nath Thalchoor, the sanitary inspector.

In Muzaffarabad, the young Sapru, who had recently married, rented a room on the first floor of a house. On the night of October 21, Sapru was awoken by the sound of something hitting the tin roof of his house. He was paralysed with fear. Earlier in the day, Prithvi Nath Mazari, a schoolteacher posted at Danakcheli, twenty kilometres from Muzaffarabad, had rushed to Muzaffarabad and told the Dogra administrators that he had seen a group of armed tribal invaders. The administrators dismissed his report as a lie and he was punished for ‘spreading panic’ by being tied to a tree for a few hours.

A few minutes later, two bullets hit the window of Sapru’s room. Then a noise erupted in the street below. ‘Run to Gopal Chowk,’ someone shouted.

When Sapru reached the square, he saw that about three thousand Kashmiri Pandits and Sikhs had already assembled there. There was the sound of gunfire all around. The whole night, the crowd stayed in the square. In the morning, the firing stopped. But one row of houses near the square caught fire, forcing the crowd to flee for safety.

Sapru hid in a deserted house and waited there. An hour or so later, he heard someone shouting in the street—

‘You are our brothers now, you have accepted Pakistan.’

He came out and saw a group of tribal invaders. They were armed with rifles and they wore belts of bullets across their shoulders and around their waists. Upon spotting Sapru, one of them pushed him into a crowd of people comprising Pandits and Sikhs. The raider put a piece of green cloth around Sapru’s neck and asked him to say ‘
Pakistan zindabad
’. By this time, the crowd had swelled to ten thousand. More than a hundred armed tribesmen had surrounded them and were herding them along.

In the crowd, Sapru saw his colleague, the art teacher Kashi Nath Jalali. He was extremely unwell and came up to Sapru. ‘I cannot walk any further; my knees have given up. I want to leave,’ he whispered. But Sapru urged him to keep going since any attempt to leave would anger the raiders. But after a while, Jalali gave up. He tried running away but one of the raiders shot him dead.

Sapru kept walking, but after a while, he looked around. Nobody was watching him. He began walking slowly towards the edge of the crowd and then just took off. He felt something hit his back. A raider had shot at him, but luckily he was out of range. The bullet had hit his coat but had not penetrated. He looked behind—the raider was chasing him. Sapru spotted a big house with its door open. He ran inside and hid. The raider followed him, but could not locate him.

Sapru remained in hiding for some time. Then he decided to look around the house. Maybe there are ladies in the house and they will take pity on me, he thought to himself. On the first floor he came upon seven Kashmiri Muslims seated in a room, eating. Sapru recognized two of them. One of them had studied with him in college and hailed from Baramulla. Sapru had met him on many occasions in Muzaffarabad, and every time his friend had embraced him. The other person he knew was with the police.

On spotting his friend among the group, Sapru felt relieved and walked up to him. ‘The raiders almost killed me,’ he said.

But the man started hurling abuses at him.

‘Oh, you probably don’t recognize me; I am Sapru,’ he said.

‘You have sucked our blood,’ the man replied.

The man dragged Sapru outside and began kicking him brutally with his army boots. Sapru lost consciousness. Presuming him to be dead, the group left. It was hours later that Sapru regained consciousness. There was no one in the house now. Sapru weighed his options. If he ventured out, he would definitely be spotted by the invaders and killed. So Sapru dragged himself to the attic and hid there. Through a small window in the room, he had a good view of the bridge across the Kishanganga River.

From that window, Sapru saw the procession from which he had slipped away reach the bridge. The men among the Sikhs were segregated, shot and then pushed into the river. The women were bundled into buses—Sapru counted more than thirty buses—and taken away. In some cases, children were snatched from their arms and thrown on the road.

Sapru also saw many women jumping to their deaths from that bridge, to save their honour.

Later that day, he heard footsteps approaching the attic. Sapru got very scared. A man entered, but he did not look like a raider. He turned out to be the servant of the house’s owner. His name was Kalu Khan. Sapru begged him to save his life. Kalu Khan had worked at a Pandit’s house in Srinagar, where he had been well treated. He promised to help Sapru. He told him that the raiders had come from Waziristan and other areas, and that some Kashmiris, like those who had been in the house earlier, were acting as their guides. Kalu told Sapru that the owner of the house already knew about the attack and had sent his family to Peshawar. Out of compassion Kalu brought him some food and a little tobacco.

Sapru spent ten days in the attic. From the window he watched the raiders round up Sikhs, shoot them on the bridge and throw their bodies into the river below. Sapru did not venture out at all. He would even relieve himself in the attic and throw his excreta out from the window in the darkness of the night. Often, he heard noises coming from the house below. Men camped there all the time and they slaughtered cattle robbed from those who had been killed or had fled.

Ten days later, Kalu told him of a house where fifty-six Pandits were hiding. The house belonged to a lawyer who had been killed along with his daughter-in-law. With Kalu’s help, Sapru was able to shift there.

One night a few men appeared at their doorstep and asked for the headmaster, Sham Nath Labroo. He muttered god’s name as they took him away. Everyone thought he would be killed. But he returned after a while. The men only needed a certificate from him for one among them who had been selected for a job in the forest department. He had asked Labroo to issue him a certificate stating that he had passed his matriculation examination with a first division.

After a few days, the invaders rounded up all the Pandits in the house and put them in a prison. One day, a few invaders asked Sapru to hand over all his money. He said he had nothing. They then asked him to part with his shirt and pants. Before leaving, they dragged in six women and raped them in front of Sapru. The captive Pandits spent seventy days like this, watching women being raped and men killed in front of their eyes.