Reviving raabta: How ‘90s of Kashmir stole Lovely Aunty from us
A few hundred metres away from our home, a small single-storied house sat coyly at the corner of an apple orchard. Surrounded by a large chinar tree and the distant snow-capped mountains, it was an image straight out of a postcard. Lovely Aunty and her husband Jawa Lal had shifted to the village in the late '70s and built the house on a small patch of land. Located at the cusp of two mohallas, it stood out from the rest as a quaint little home, the kind that we drew in our sketch books.
Curious about how it looked from the inside, I would often peek in whenever the main gate was left open. I managed to go inside for the first time, when I was asked to run an errand by one of my younger aunts. At the entrance of Lovely Aunty's house, there was a neatly trimmed green patch the size of a small bedroom. It was fenced with a row of wooden planks on one side and a row of rose bushes on the other. Two cane chairs were placed in the shade of the mulberry tree at the corner. A narrow-pebbled pathway, lined with beds of flowers on the sides led to a small kitchen garden at the other end. It was their beautiful nest, one they had kept with a lot of love and care.
I faintly remember her face, but there was something else about Lovely Aunty that made her stand out. Perhaps, it was her tenacity and a strong will to overcome the odds. My grandfather often talked about how Lovely Aunty had struggled and built the house, literally brick by brick. For many years, she ran a play school and a flower nursery from the house. A friendly person, she was known to everyone in the village. I would often see her stop by to talk to my grandmother or some other neighbour, on her way back from the bus stop.
My grandmother, who considered her to be worldly wise, would often take her advice on domestic issues, even though Lovely Aunty was much younger. She would save some haakh and vegetables from the kitchen garden for her. Jawa Lal, on the other hand, was a soft-spoken, unassuming man. He was a quiet person who very few people knew in the neighbourhood.
Their world revolved around their twin daughters, Simple and Dimple. My first memory of them is when Jawa Lal and one of the girls had had an accident near our house. He was trying to teach her to ride on his new Rajdoot motorcycle. I remember the two as confident outgoing girls who I would often see playing cricket with boys, riding bicycles or wearing jeans. Both were very friendly and, despite the differences, they would easily blend with the rest of the village girls. Dimple was the garrulous one, her eyes would sparkle as she talked endlessly. Simple was a little shy and the quieter of the two. Lovely Aunty and the girls also used to act in popular TV serials aired on the local Doordarshan channel. As a kid, I would eagerly wait for the shows, and the next day at school boast about knowing them. They were the first celebrities I knew.
Early '90s changed all of that. I would often meet Lovely Aunty on the bus, on my way to tuitions. She would try to hide the worry lines on her face with a smile. She too had become quieter. It was a dry, gloomy winter and the harsh cold winds would change our tiny neighbourhood forever. Like most of the other Pandit families in the villages, Lovely Aunty's too left one night in the dark. The house was now empty and desolate.
The door of the main gate was now always open, as if waiting for the family to return. How would it deal with the loneliness? I would imagine it crying silently and trying to hide, scared of the gathering dark clouds. Then one day, I saw it crumble. The small brick wall, on the side where the mulberry tree stood, had broken. The wooden fence was broken too and the flower beds had dried up. One of the windows to a room was open and few boys were inside.
Curious, I too went in through the broken window. There were note books, some stationery, a reading lamp, a few colour boxes and white sheets of paper strewn on the floor. Somebody had scribbled “Freedom” in black on the red wall. A broken chair quietly sat in one corner. It was like a destroyed dream. I couldn’t muster courage to walk into the next room. After standing there for a while, I rushed out through the window and ran till I reached home, unable to fully comprehend the loss.
My grandfather, who was standing near our main door, perhaps realised something was amiss. When he got to know what had happened, he flew into a rage and slapped me. He was upset with me for trespassing into the house and, perhaps, about things beyond our control.
Many years later, when he was being treated for cancer in Delhi, he wanted me to find out if Lovely Aunty and Jawa Lal had migrated to the city and lived close by. He wanted me to find them. I couldn’t. I still haven’t.
The house too is no longer there.
(Raabta is a small endeavour to help search and reconnect Kashmiri Muslims & Pandits who were old friends, neighbours, school mates, colleagues, families who haven’t heard from each other in the last 28 years. People we grew up with.)