In the chilling, wintry nights of January 1990, Kashmiri Pandits received notices demanding their departure from the Valley within 36 hours. This was not the first, but the seventh time in the collective history of Kashmir spanning some 600 years, that Kashmiri Pandits were being forced to leave Kashmir. The first exodus took place between 1389 and 1413, during the rule of Sikandar ‘Butshikan’ of the Shah Mir dynasty. However, the expulsion of the 1990s stands out as the darkest chapter in Kashmir’s history.
Siddhartha Gigoo’s memoir, A Long Season of Ashes, is all about this traumatic experience: the author recounts the trials of leaving home at the young age of 14 and enduring decades of hardship in the relief camps of Jammu, all the time trying to cope with the reality of being turned into a stranger in one’s own country.
A Long Season of Ashes: A Memoir
Penguin Viking
Pages: 304
Price: Rs.799
As Kashmiri Pandits struggled to piece together their lives in cramped, 10ft-by-10ft tenements, another tragedy was unfolding—among Kashmiri Muslims—that this memoir does not touch upon. Its contours are depicted vividly by Kashmiri-American poet, Agha Shahid Ali, in his poem, “Farewell”, dedicated to a Kashmiri Pandit friend:
At a certain point I lost track of you.
They make a desolation and call it peace.
When you left even the stones were buried:
The defenseless would have no weapons.
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The blame for the mass departure of Kashmiri Pandits was placed on Kashmiri Muslims, who faced overwhelming hostility from then on. The stories of communal harmony and peaceful coexistence between these two communities that form the essence of Kashmir, seemed like fairytale with the spread of divisive sentiments. While the daily worries of a Kashmiri Pandit living in the camps involved things like whether he would get his monthly ration from the government store or whether he would be allotted a more spacious tent, a Kashmiri Muslim stepping outside his home in Kashmir feared whether he would be able to return at all. So, both the communities found themselves suffering on either ends of a long, dark tunnel, with no light in sight.
“It has been over 30 years since Kashmiri Pandits were forced to leave. In all these years, successive governments, both at the Centre and the state, have not been able to facilitate their homecoming despite profuse promises and assurances.”
Gigoo talks of his grandfather (Babuji), who had to undergo the trauma of exile at the fag end of his life. As he slipped into the twilight zone between memory and forgetting, the only person he remembered was Salama, a Muslim tongawala with whom he had spent most of his life in Kashmir. While reading this, I wondered why, in the story of almost every Kashmiri Pandit, a Kashmiri Muslim is either a tongawala or a milk-seller or a tailor. Babuji reminded me of my own grandfather, another Kashmiri who too is rapidly losing his memory: the only flashbacks he has now are of curfews, hartals and killings from the 1990s. The eviction deeply affected all Kashmiris—Gigoo brings this out skillfully through the story of his grandfather.
Cover of A Long Season of Ashes: A Memoir | Photo Credit: By special arrangement
The book’s narrative structure is both unique and challenging. It comprises letters exchanged between Gigoo and his father, interspersed with diary entries and first-person commentary. This non-linear approach can be a bit confusing for readers, who might expect chronological progression while reading a diary entry from, say, 1987, but are instead presented next with a letter from 1996 or even the 2000s, creating a sense of disarray.
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It has been over 30 years since Kashmiri Pandits were forced to leave. In all these years, successive governments, both at the Centre and the state, have not been able to facilitate their homecoming despite profuse promises and assurances. Kashmir remains incomplete till they come back. As Agha Shahid Ali says in another couplet from the same poem:
In the lake the arms of temples and mosques
Are locked in each other’s reflections.
In this situation, what is needed are sincere efforts to facilitate their return rather than communal polarisation drummed up by playing one community against the other. Through vivid storytelling and reflections, Gigoo takes the reader through the complexities of displacement, loss, and the enduring search for identity. His memoir serves as a powerful testimony to the resilience of a community torn apart by conflict, reminding us of the human cost of such upheavals and underlining the necessity of healing and reconciliation.
Saleem Rashid Shah is a non-fiction literary critic based in Kashmir. He tweets at @SaleemRashid176
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