Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir | Review
Sometimes it is best to leave things ambiguous, suspended, so that some hope remains.
An old lady is seated on the stairs of a small temple somewhere in Jammu, she wishes to go back to her home in Kashmir, where she has safely kept the pashmina and shahtoosh shawls her great-grandmother has passed on to her. Cynically indifferent to the hell that has befallen Kashmir valley after the winter of 1990s, the hope to see those shawls and her home keeps her alive through her years as refugee in a tiny one room dwelling in the city.
Kashmir has never been normal. Rather a surging issue, be it any government, be it India or Pakistan. It has been suffering like that for more than 70 years now, its very historic, its very complicated and its very sentimental. And I think that’s enough to make Kashmir worthy of being known and being understood. I was led to this book Our Moon Has Blood Clots from an interview of the author, Rahul Pandita.
As the name suggests, the book is about a boy, who has to leave his home during the mass exodus that took place in Kashmir valley after the month of Januray, 1990. Rahul Pandita, who is a renowned journalist now, has narrated the actual story of his life as a Kashmiri Pandit through this memoir, published in 2013.
In the book, author takes us through the history of Kashmir, starting from eighth century. Kashmir has been home to the intellectuals who came to the valley from Punjab. These people contributed to various forms of performing arts and scriptures and collaborated with travellers form across the world. Later they came to be known as Kashmiri Pandits or Bhattas. Islam made its way to Kashmir in late fourteenth century. Both these identities co-existed peacefully until the reign of Sultan Sikander, after which Kashmir saw periods of oppression, sometimes of Hindus and at other times Muslim subjects.
Moving ahead the author revisits the beauty of Srinagar, his family and childhood which they spent in peace before the insurgents started emerging at around 1987. He mentions the apple orchards, their rituals, the festival of Shivaratri and the new home his father has built with all his life savings. Years after the exodus, he mentions, how his mother still tells everybody in Delhi that they had a big home back in Kashmir, and it has, in fact, 22 rooms.
The author cites how his family begun to see many early signs of the upheaval after the summer of 1989. He remembers the milkman once saying to him that they don’t need to waste money on the house now as they will have to leave for ‘India’ soon. Then again when his father, who was a professor, started noticing regular absence of students in his class. Other times, young people were seen doing physical exercises in various parts of city. And the rumors of youths crossing border to attain the arms training.
As the winter approached, the situation started getting worse with the killings of prominent Kashmiri Pandits. Pamphlets were being distributed throughout the city threatening Pandits to vacate the Kashmir Valley. On the evening of 19th Jaunary, 1990, thousands of people gathered on streets, the loudspeakers on the mosques ran whole night screeching sinful threats and insurgents started burning the houses of the Pandits one by one. There were open murders, rapes in the count of hundreds. The very next morning followed a mass exodus, which continued for the next 3 months. The numbers as large as 3 to 4 lakh fled their homeland and took refuge in camps in Jammu and other parts of India.
The movement was syncronized throughout the Kashmir. The camps received refugees from not only Srinagar but also from Anantanag, Shopian, Baramulla and hundreds other villages around the valley. But the woes of kashmiri refugees didn’t stop there, the author tells about the pathetic quality of life they lived in Jammu and the lowscale treatment of refugees by locals. In his words:
This was mainstream India for us. Our own Hindu brothers and sisters who took out a procession every Basant Panchami to safeguard Hindu rights were turning into our oppressors as well.
Later in the book, author narrates another story by his uncle, who had faced a similar condition during the Pakistan backed Kazhak tribal invasion of 1947. He has also penned down various relaxation & resettlement schemes during PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee & Manmohan Singh’s reign and also the failures most of these scheme proved to be to improve the quality of lives of the displaced Kashmiris. He tells his stories of revisiting valley as a journalist and people’s reluctance of admitting the genocide of 1990s. He takes a jab at still going attacks on the minorities in the valley, a faulty education system which has nearly eliminated sciences & mathematics, and forced the study of Quran in schools.
Our Moon Has Blood Clots is a 258 page book that I completed over a weekend. Book is very intriguing and throws light on an otherwise repressed issue of Kashmiri Pandits. Its not a regular story book rather explains very decently the history of rulers, the invasions, the multiple exoduses, Indian government’s take during the situation and in the years to follow. The overall condition of the valley and the refugees from then to now. This book does an absolute justice to why I picked it up.
Moreover, what I most liked in the book is this part:
On Rahul Pandita’s remark on the killing of Ehsan Zafri in Ahmedabad: ‘There needs to be zero tolerance for such crimes’. Someone said,
‘How can you say that, they have forced you out of your homes, turning into refugees’.
I looked him in the eye and said: ‘General, I’ve lost my home, not my humanity.’
My rating of the book: 4.5/5
