Shailaputri, the Daughter of the Mountain

She is the manifestation of Mother Earth. She is the Hills
and Vales. The Water and the Air. She is the Force. She
is Forever.

Shailaputri, © 2018

I devour the newspaper, searching furiously for some mention of the situation in Kashmir. Nothing. It is like the world has forgotten my beloved home. I have no idea what is happening there, but the lack of news suggests a normalcy we have never known. Am I hallucinating? Does Kashmir really exist, or is it something I imagined?

Kashmir certainly exists. At least in my memories.

I remember the summer holidays at my grandparent’s house in Pahalgaun. All of us cousins together. Running through the orchard, picking up the fallen fruit. Sometimes, shaking the trees, so the fruit fell, because we were not allowed to pluck fruit from the trees. As a special treat, we were sometimes loaded into my grandfather’s jeep and taken to the saffron fields. How I loved those purple flowers; those delicately ugly flowers!
Those were the days of fun and laughter. Carefree days when we would run through the meadow. We would gather wild flowers. We would take off our shoes, and dip our feet in the icy cold water of the stream. We dared each other to cross the stream, but the current was too strong, and none of us was brave enough. We were Nature. We were the Hills, the Air, the Stream.
One day, Zara announced she would cross the stream. We got scared, and tried to stop her. But she was determined to try. Taking one careful step after another, she made it across to the other shore. She must have got overconfident on the way back ,she slipped and fell into the water. Luckily the water was shallow, and she was able to get up. But her pheren was drenched. We wrapped our arms around her, but her teeth were chattering before we managed to get her home. We told our grandmother she slipped into the water, but that was the last day any of us were allowed near the stream.

How well I remembered Kashmir. How well I remembered Zara.

Brave Zara. Always the boldest of us. After marriage, she settled down in Kashmir. Her husband was a trader and was often away on tours. They say her son fell into bad company. I do not know; he was always very polite to me. One day, he went to school and never returned. Picked up by the Army, they said, on charges of being an informer. Apparently, he escaped, but we will never know. He never contacted his family. Poor Zara; she was never the same again. Even today, she waits for her son to return. She mourns her daughter who committed suicide soon after, but it is her son she waits for. Waiting. Endless waiting.

I have been trying to call Zara, but the calls don’t get through. I have no way of finding out how Zara is, and the rest of my cousins in the Valley. My daughter’s friend is a journalist. I wanted to ask her to try and get news of Zara. But how many people will she try to contact?i will just have to keep trying to contact them. If something happened, I suppose I would come to know; the Valley cannot be completely cut off. Or can it?

I pick up the newspaper again. No news of Kashmir. It is like we have suddenly dropped out of the map, like we never existed. There are people there. My people. If things are normal, why are we not allowed to speak to them? Just yesterday, my niece purchased medicines for her mother, and had them sent through someone. Have you spoken to your mother, I asked her. She hasn’t, but she knew the stock has to be replenished so she did.

My daughter tells me not to worry. That things must be fine. But I can see from her face that she knows how lucky she is that I am with her. She doesn’t have to worry about me the way her cousins are worrying about their parents.

“We must do something”, I tell my daughter. “We can’t just sit here and wait for people to completely forget about Kashmir.”
“But what can we do?”, she asks. “Nobody cares. Just nobody cares.” Her voice broke, she nearly dissolved into tears.
“You care, and I care. That is enough. As long as even one person cares, Kashmir cannot be wiped out of memory.”
I will not allow Kashmir to be forgotten. Navratri is coming up. I will go to the celebrations in turn, and stand at the entrance with a tape over my mouth, holding a banner that says “Kashmir” in my hand. Old people are invisible. But old people doing unexpected things stand out. People will notice me. They will understand. They will do something.

I look out of the window and stare North. On clear days, I like to think I can see the beloved mountains that I call Home. On days like today, I can’t see a thing. But my Home is there. I have work to do. Someday, I will return, and Zara and I will cross that stream again.

I am Shailaputri, the Daughter of the Mountain, the first manifestation of Nav Durga. I am every woman who refuses to accept an injustice.