The Tragedy Of Being a Kashmiri Pandit

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The tragedy of being a kashmiri pandit Even now I remember the day vividly it was an hot and sultry April afternoon, the ringing school bell indicated that it was time to pack your bags and leave towards the amniotic safety of a heaven called Home. As I stepped out of the mammoth black gate of my school ‘Army school Damana’ I saw an old lady sitting on a log of wood on the other side of the road. Her face was all smeared with wrinkles, her dainty hands placed firmly under her chin and a pair of deep set blue eyes looking aimlessly nowhere. I went to her and asked her in my not so fluent Kashmiri why she was sitting all alone in such hot summer afternoon? To which she politely replied that she was waiting for her grandson who studied in 3rd standard in my school. I asked her where she lived; "Purkhoo camp" was her answer almost as an afterthought. For next half hour that old lady showed me a picture of KP migration to which I was never exposed. Being born and brought up in Jammu I was spared of a gruesome atrocity inflicted on Kashmiri pundits called the migration of 89-90.But talking to her for next half an hour brought me face to face with the bitter picture of our exodus. Her voice had a deep but perpetual undercurrent of pain as she mentioned the sleepless nights she along with her family spent in hot and humid conditions of migrant camps, of which they had no before hand experience. Her eyes welled up with emotion while she told me about the loss of her husband to sun stroke who couldn’t survive the cruel and unforgiving summer of Jammu and Kashmir’s winter capital. She said that she dies a thousand deaths every day to see her post graduate son leave for a non descript carpet factory in bari brahmna where he works as an accountant. She lamented that with the kind of education his son has had it is such a shame that he has to do such a meager job to

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