Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits by Rahul Pandita

possess the cunningness of Srinagar
I still await his response
My friend! Yes, I changed my address
since after your murder
it ceased to exist
the bridge of friendship, this Habba Kadal

    The assault from the mosques continued all this while. We spent most of our time locked inside, venturing out only to buy vegetables and other daily necessities. By this time, curfew had become the norm due to the deteriorating law and order situation. Whenever curfew was lifted, Father and Ma would have to go to work.
    On the morning of March 7, I was playing in the compound of our house. It must have been around 10 a.m., and Father and Ma had left for office. Suddenly, I heard the distinctive sound of gunfire. It rent the air and the pigeons in our attic took flight in alarm. I froze. The sound had been quite loud. Something had happened nearby. In a few minutes, a minibus owned by one of our Muslim neighbours raced up the street. That meant something had gone terribly wrong. A little later Father returned as well. He was fumbling for words.
    ‘Has your mother returned?’ he asked. I replied in the negative.
    ‘There has been heavy firing,’ he said.
    After Father had left with Ma, she had taken a bus upon spotting a colleague in it. Father was worried since the firing had taken place near her destination.
    We waited for a while. But Ma did not return. One of our neighbours said that two soldiers had died in the firing and many were injured. There had been a heavy exchange of fire.
    This worried Father even more. He rushed to our neighbour Nehvi Uncle’s house. Though he did not share his fears with me, I knew exactly what was going through father’s mind. He feared that Ma was one of the victims of the firing. Along with Nehvi Uncle, father rushed to the bone-and-joint hospital in Barzulla where the injured had been admitted for treatment. They looked everywhere, but Ma was not there. They returned home.
    An hour or so later, Ma returned. A cry of relief escaped father’s lips when he saw her. She was walking slowly and her lips were trembling. She sat on the veranda and asked for some water. We were overjoyed that she was unharmed. After she had caught her breath, Ma told us what had happened. Just as she had got off the bus, bullets started to fly. She saw a man get hit in his abdomen, and blood oozing out of it. Everyone ran helter-skelter. She ran and hid behind a shop. Afterwards, she began to walk through the fields towards our home. But she lost her way. And then she saw Latif. He saw her as well, and without exchanging a word, he held her arm and guided her through the fields. After some time they came to the main road where a group of soldiers was patrolling. Upon spotting them, Latif slipped away. But Ma was safe. From there on she knew the way home.
    ‘But I don’t understand why Latif ran away,’ she said after a while.
    We were silent. Father probably knew. And in my heart I knew as well. But I did not think too much about it. I was just happy that my mother was safe.
    A day later, a multi-party political delegation led by the former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi arrived in Kashmir to take stock of the situation. But the former prime minister had arrived with the sole purpose of creating an unnecessary fuss. Upon landing in Srinagar airport, Rajiv Gandhi immediately expressed displeasure over Governor Jagmohan’s not coming to the airport to receive the deputy prime minister, Devi Lal. Jagmohan said he had not been told about Devi Lal’s arrival. Later Gandhi complained that Devi Lal was made to sit on the left side of the governor, which was apparently against protocol. The delegation, which included stalwarts like George Fernandes and Harkishan Singh Surjeet, skipped Jammu altogether to escape the wrath of the Pandits who had already fled their homes and were now refugees in their own country.
    A veteran communist leader, Reshi Dev, who was a Kashmiri Pandit, apprised Surjeet of the situation and asked him to raise