Where I have been when Kashmir exodus was taking place!

For the last many years, I have faced a constant question, that where I have been when Kashmir exodus was taking place! And this question pops up now and then when I raise my voice against any injustice happening today. I assured them I used to question governments earlier too, and this is not the first time I am speaking against injustice around me. And yes, this is the beauty of democracy. But, to some extent, I started taking the question in its literal sense. In fact, I really don’t remember at all, the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus. I only remember a question of general knowledge, which my teacher gave me to memorize, the full form of JKLF! The acronym and its full form raised a question in my mind, why JK Liberation front? India won its freedom from the British in 1947 itself, why then an organisation is named Liberation front? That remained a dead question, and no one replied to this question of mine then. My father was a regular listener of BBC Urdu and Hindi Radio services, therefore, I had heard names of a few countries; Iraq and Iran were fighting, Soviet had waged war in Afghanistan and Chechen guerrillas were terrorising Soviets, I thought these guerrillas were the wild animals, who were like those jackals and the boars which often roamed in our sugarcane fields. Please don’t try to fix a chronology for these events, this is how I remember the things. Haphazard, little surreal and sometimes insane. The knowledge of home front was more of a micro level, for me, my village and the qasba where I was growing, and later the district town were planets of my universe.


I have decided to recount the days of my childhood until I find the answer of the actual question, that what I was doing when the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus was taking place, now I know when if you do not know then Google it! I am not promising you when I will tell you what I was doing then but yes you will get a chance to peep into my life. I know what you are thinking, yeah, I know I am not a great man that you would like to listen to my personal story. I am not asking you to listen to my story, instead, you will get to know the story of a Muslim boy born in 1980. A lot was happening those days, my first memory is of the day, when Indira Gandhi was killed (nobody from my family believe that I remember this! they think I must have heard sometime later and committed to memory as of my own!). I was sitting in front of my house on a charpoy and a neighbour of mine came and announced, ‘have you heard something, Indira Gandhi mad gayee’ (Indira Gandhi died)! I have no further memories of the event. The second memory, which I recall to this day that General Zia of Pakistan died in a plane crash and Benazir Bhutto distributed laddus. I was wondering why that lady was distributing laddus? the shock was obvious, we used to get laddus when our school distributed it after unfurling of the national flag in Independence Day. These were the initial memories. My memory, in fact, begins from the time of the Rath Yatra of Advani! I still remember the date 9-11 December, ‘Shila Pujan’, when, one of my father’s raiyyat told him on his face, that he will repay all the loans he had taken after 11th of December!