My grandmother’s Kashmiri dream
Memories of an eccentric, compassionate, self-willed woman who knew no fear
In the second half of October, I travelled to Kashmir. On my second evening in Srinagar, I walked past empty roads, closed shops, empty playgrounds and several barricades, looking for a footbridge that went over the Jhelum.
The evening was cold, dark and lonely with a sense of quiet but uneasy calm. A yellow streetlight lit up in the distance, while a fire burnt by the banks of the Jhelum. I was the only one walking down that road.
As I walked on to the bridge, I took out a red bag from my backpack. With a deep breath, I emptied its contents into the Jhelum. The white flakes scattered in the air over the dark background of the Jhelum. They were the mortal remains of my maternal grandmother. Her ashes.
Prakash Veereshwar, fondly known as Jiji, breathed her last on 8 October, aged 88—the mutiny of her body finally too much for the strength of her will alone. I was by her side. I watched her struggle and fight for the last three days.
When it became clear that it was inevitable, I began to hope that it would happen soon, that her pain would be kept to a minimum. I sat by her side, giving her spoonfuls of water, wiping the sweat off her forehead, wiping the discharge from her mouth. Trying to ease her pain.
A couple of times in the past, she had quietly mentioned to me that she wished her ashes to be immersed in Kashmir, in the Jhelum, if possible. She was not the kind of person to demand a lot. This was perhaps the only thing she had ever asked me to do for her. This too, in a muted manner, with an “if possible". The self-willed person that she was, I'm sure she would have preferred to do it herself, had the laws of nature permitted.
Two days after her cremation—as is the norm—we went back to pick up her bones and ashes. Sometime during those two days I had made up my mind that I would travel to Kashmir to fulfil her wish. I knew I would have to face opposition from everyone in the family because the situation in Kashmir was volatile and not everyone understood Jiji’s attachment to Kashmir.
The plan, as is customary in western Uttar Pradesh, was to immerse her ashes in the Ganga in the nearby town of Garhmukteshwar. But, Jiji never allowed her life to be dictated by customs. I wasn’t about to let that change for her final journey.
While we were picking up the ashes, my mother was by my side. I whispered to her that I wanted to take some of Jiji’s ashes to Kashmir. Without batting an eyelid, she handed me a polythene bag and I collected as much of Jiji as I could. I kept it safely in my backpack for the next 10 days, until our final goodbye at the Jhelum.
Her wish stemmed from a close bond that she shared with the Kashmir Valley and its people. She was born into a Kashmiri Pandit family, but lived most of her life outside the Valley. Her desire to keep closely connected with her roots was powerful.
She would make long and frequent trips to the Valley, often by herself. She would stay with people unknown to her and come back having formed close friendships. Having been a practising socialist all her life, she travelled in sleeper-class trains and state transport buses.
Having been adventurous and a maverick, her trips involved minimal planning. She would hitchhike, and often look for accommodation after having reached her destination.
Once, she ran out of money and was living on the street outside the Kheer Bhawani temple. She pretended to be a palmist and people would give her food in return for her services. I asked her how she was not found out; she told me that she read their facial expressions and body language, and that sufficed.
When I followed in her footsteps and travelled to Kashmir last year, I was able to track down and meet some of her friends. One set was the Khar family (one of the few Kashmiri Pandit families who did not leave during the mass exodus of the 1990s) in the small town of Mattan in Anantnag district. She had stayed with them for a week during one of her visits to Kashmir.
One evening in June 2003, the Khar family found an auto-rickshaw driver at their doorstep. He was visibly perturbed as an old, frail, stubborn lady insisted on getting to Anantnag’s main market.
The roads had been blocked as a gunbattle was on between militants and security forces down the road. The rickshaw driver was having a tough time convincing Jiji that this meant risk. Exasperated, he brought her to the Khar household, the one Pandit family that he knew in the neighbourhood.
He felt she would be safe and comfortable with them. They were extremely kind and hospitable, and she ended up staying with them for a week. They became close friends. She would write to them regularly, send hand-knitted sweaters, plan to go back and meet them, and tell everyone back home fondly about her friends in the Valley.
She also kept the Kashmiri culture alive in our house. Every occasion was marked by Kashmiri dishes—dum aloo, methi chaman, kabarga, roth. Each morning started with at least a round of kahwa. Walnuts were soaked frequently and offered to guests. Navroz was celebrated with fervent gusto.
She would buy presents—usually new clothes—for everyone in the house. Even during her later years, she would call me up in Mumbai and ask me to wear new clothes on Navroz.
I stayed with her in our home town of Meerut for 21 years. For 11 of those years, it was just her, Zulu (our canine friend) and I. Our relationship was never a stereotypical grandmother-grandchild one. Even our storytelling sessions were interactive and we would innovate to fit in real-world happenings into the script of a fairy tale, often making it a not-so-fairy tale.
For most people, I was a quiet and introverted kid. With her, I was chirpy, bubbly and adventurous, with a bit of a sense of humour.
For me, she had always been more like a friend, one I could chat, gossip and be lame with. My parents got divorced when I was 11, and my bond with Jiji—as I realize now—grew stronger. She went from being a friend within the family to, at times, being the only friend and the only family.
Testimony to our friendship is the fact that things were not always rosy. There were times when I was told, in no uncertain terms, to get out of the house because I had broken a window pane while playing cricket. There were also times when I felt frustrated with her stubborn attitude and wanted to tell her to get out of the house.
But those remained feeble attempts as she would retort with a wry smile, as if to say, “Let’s see how you do that." Her brother, who was the only one she would accord the courtesy of a patient hearing in times of confrontation, would often be called in to mediate. At times, even he would fail.
While eccentric, she was also tremendously compassionate. There would often be several students in our house from poor economic backgrounds, getting trained by Jiji for various exams. It helped that she had a doctorate in psychology and was extremely well-read in general.
She would teach the children for no charge and even pay for their school and college fees. There were times when I would end up riled as she would ask me to cut down on the electricity or cable TV spending because she had to support one additional child.
But my opposition never changed her mind. The sense of justice in her mind was absolute, not to be compromised due to emotional blackmail by her grandson.
In March 2006, she felt something was amiss in her eye. She did not tell me anything, since I had my Class XII board exams coming up and she did not want me distracted. As she described later, a cloud had begun to form in front of her eyeball and she could only see dim light from the centre. She could not read anymore, and reading was her life.
My mother and I tried all kinds of treatments. Nothing worked. When the realization finally dawned on me that her eyesight would never improve, I wept. I could not come to terms with the loss and what it meant for her.
She, however, made her peace with it, even found ways around it. Jiji continued to read using a magnifying glass. Eventually, even that was of no use. Then, she would ask people to read the news out to her.
But her hearing was as bad as her vision. From the weak sounds that she could hear and the clouded lip movements that she could see, she would deduce what was being said. Over the years, her hearing and vision deteriorated further. But still she kept herself well-informed.
In December 2014, when I went to visit her, she touched my head and said, “I am surprised that you still have some hair on your head." She could not see it.
She asked me which new films I had watched, and I happened to mention Haider—and so, Kashmir. Immediately, she said, “Drop everything, I want to watch this."
She had not watched TV in years. In the early years, when she was beginning to lose her eyesight, she used to try. But by then she had given up on it.
But Haider, she watched, and even understood most of it, with a little help from me. For Haider, and for Kashmir, her surviving retina and eardrums were brought together by the sheer force of her stubborn and indomitable mind, her only strength.
She was an eccentric, compassionate, self-willed, uncompromising and fiercely independent woman, who held on despite her failing body.
Over the years, she had survived three massive heart attacks, a neurological disorder, frequent kidney-related illnesses and recurrent episodes of pneumonia. In addition, she had to struggle on a daily basis due to her hearing and vision impairments.
But nothing could shake her spirit. Even two days before she died, she insisted on visiting the bank herself to withdraw money. After Jiji passed, a friend said to me, “It almost seemed as if she was invincible, and maybe she is."
She never taught me anything, but I learnt a lot from her: To be independent, fearless, just, compassionate and righteous. But also to be fitoori (to pursue obsessively your passions and desires, sometimes giving the appearance of insanity).
A few years ago, I had this idea of travelling to Pakistan to explore. Thanks to the Pakistani High Commission, the plan never came to fruition. But it had everyone in my family unnerved. My mother even said that she would physically stop me from going.
When I told Jiji about the idea, she said, “I have some papier mâché souvenirs. Gift them to people you meet there."
For her, fear was a secondary emotion, not something you let come in the way of your desires and passions. For me, she will remain an inspiration, and her fearlessness, an aspiration.
Kabir Agarwal is a freelance journalist.
His Twitter handle is @kabira_tweeting
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