It was the story of an Afghan street vendor who keeps seeing his own daughter in a five year old girl called Minnie. He sells dry fruits in Calcutta, to make enough money and go back home to Afghanistan. He is arrested for a murder and jailed. Many years later on his release, lost in the abyss of a jail cell, his life frozen in time, he goes to look for little Minnie, only to realize his little Minnie is being married that day. Time didn’t stand still for him or Minnie or his daughter who he had left behind.

A few years later, one December morning, the same young girl was aboard her first flight to a foreign country. The flight was only 2 hours long but she was excited because she was going to the land of the Kabuli Wallah.

A week later, she sat out side one night, the red barren mountains of Kabul glistening with heavy snow in the moonlight, her own knees sinking into the freshly strewn white powder, as she dug a hole to put a stainless steel container full of sweetened milk, “to make ice-cream,” she told her mother.

I still remember waking up the next morning, gleefully digging out the container and eating chunks of that frozen milk with joy. 

My father did a three year stint in Afghanistan as military attaché. I remember living in a diplomatic enclave of Kabul, a city as modern as any capital of the world. The Afghans would import every thing, and export dry fruits and carpets in exchange. 

My mom who has a knack for picking up languages spoke fluent Farsi(Persian) within a few months, while my dad spent three years trying to learn the grammar, and speak Farsi the “ right way”. In the end he would always seek my mom’s assistance to be his interpreter. I remember going on school trips and treks in the mountains, with my class mates, to all the historic places, stroking the Buddha statues, picnicking near the grave of Mahmud Ghazni, making life long friends.

Captain Rahim, a tall handsome man married to the niece of the then President of the country, his two sons. It comes back… those memories of shared love and laughter. They were very close to my parents and we met them frequently. 

The destruction of the Afghanistan I knew began soon after we returned. My parents lost touch with many of their Afghan friends. There were murmurs of murder and mayhem, and then one day Captain Rahim came to visit. His wife and sons had been murdered brutally. He had escaped to Pakistan and now was a Taliban. The tears had been replaced by a darkness of vengeance, the warm heart solidified into an iceberg of hatred, but somewhere a flicker of love for my parents still remained and he came to seek refuge for a few hours in that love, the warm embraces as I tried to recognize the man whose tall and muscular frame had emanated solidity and invincibility for a little girl. I’m still haunted by the large velvet eyes and apple cheeks of two young boys lost so long ago in the flood of political hatred.

We never saw him again.

As a teenager I went back to Kabul. Every evening there was a curfew and no one could step out. The quiet stillness of the night would be shattered by gunfire. The large sports field, whose picture I sit staring at today, was called Kabul stadium where many schools, including mine held their annual sports day. Many festivals were held there. The same stadium became a killing field from the 1990s. I was told that at night corpses were dumped there and then disposed off later during curfew hours.
I never went back to Kabul again.

Reading Rahul’s beautiful stories, my memories of Jammu and Kashmir emerge from their cocoon. I was born in Jammu and grew up in a time when life was filled with scents of jasmine and gardenia, taste of sun kissed, freshly plucked fruit straight from the trees, laughter, my grandmother’s hugs and love for humanity. Days of mischief, when I would hide on the top of our home with my friends and we would bring down any kite that flew over, or dangling a hook and lifting caps off people’s heads and then hiding behind my grandmother as she pacified the irate neighbors, returning a kite or a cap. It was all pretence, because the people, we kids bugged were our extended family.

Unlike today when parents tell their kids no one is trustworthy, until we know for sure, we would eat at one neighbor’s house and sleep at another neighbor’s. My cousin and I would walk at 10.30 p.m. at night on Palace road and through narrow lanes to visit my mom’s cousin and no one escorted us. I was 7 or 8 years old then. Jammu was a city with wide sprawling lanes, where people celebrated all festivals with love-the Hindu priest and the Muslim priest heralded the day with the sounds of Allah –hu akbar, and bhajans(hymns) simultaneously on a loud speaker, at 5 a.m.

The Jammu I grew up in was a land of adventure and love through the summer holidays. Waking up in the mornings before sun rise, all the cousins converging at my grand mother’s house, packing a sumptuous breakfast of aloo parathas(potato filled flour pancakes) and mangoes and walking a couple of miles for a swim in the river Tawi with my grand mother and uncle keeping close watch. The river itself was a strange kaleidoscope of beauty and eerie mystery. On one side was the area filled with swimmers of all ages, and beyond, underneath the looming remnants of a royal Palace the river took a sinister turn. 

“ Don’t go there,” , my grand mother would say, “they do voodoo and perform black magic and will take you away.” One day my curiosity got the better of me and I dragged my reluctant best friend Ravinder, to come with me to the “other side”. We reached there and saw bloody red powder, some strange writings and a couple of skulls and bones..I turned and ran-I think if I had been of age to participate in the Olympics, India would have won its first gold medal in athletics. Luckily grand mother had been busy with the other cousins and didn’t notice our flushed faces and horrified expressions. My friend had nightmares for a few days. I was made of tougher stuff and would sneak up every day to the woman who came to wash our clothes, and ask her what was happening “on the other side” of the river. She in turn regaled me with stories of ghosts and jinns in hushed whispers.

We would also walk our way to a religious hot spot “Vaishno Devi,” the home of the goddess who fulfills all wishes. The roads in those days were treacherous and hilly. There were ravines on one side; stories of people falling to their death as well as some saved miraculously by the goddess would float around. We would listen wide eyed to each new story every time we made a return trip. A narrow hole through which people had to go in and come out from the other side, was a stony testimonial to how good you were. Our grand mother would say.. “Now only if you are good will you be able to wriggle through the hole. Many fat women and men went through but if there was some one who had been mean, no matter how skinny they were, they would get stuck and had to beg forgiveness and wriggle back.” Needless to say all of us were at our best behavior for the days prior to the trip. As soon as we wriggled out of the hole, the punching and shoving would start.
The entire route was so beautiful- shiny cobbled stones, the path edged with beautiful flowers, trees laden with fruit, and us sinking our bare feet in the water snaking past in streams, munching on a snack bought from the traveling vendors all through the route.

Today when I go home I see a Jammu, choking and stifled by bomb blasts and terrorism on the main highway, a heart broken Kashmiri community struggling to put together the pieces of their shattered lives. I’m all grown up but my dad gets mad if my brother brings me home after 9 p.m., because it is not safe. Those by lanes of my childhood are no longer accessible for me. Two bombs have exploded in my brother’s office, seriously injuring his staff. He was luckily not there, but it doesn’t lessen the sorrow. The land of the Goddess is now no longer under her power but the jurisdiction of the local police. Those exciting hilly paths of my childhood have been razed into a concrete street you can drive your car on. Gone with the razed hills are the tales of my wide eyed imagination.

Kahmir..the valley of flowers..of lush chinar trees, of Dal Lake, and royal architecture, where my grandfather would rent a house boat and mom and her many friends would live in that boat through the summer. All my childhood years were spent away from Kashmir. I preferred spending my summer vacations with my grandmother and my cousins who converged to her home every summer.

I finally went there, a few months short of my 18th birthday when my father was posted there. We were driven at night so we could not see what Kashmir had become, and taken to Rampur, a sensitive military area that was out of bounds for civilians. It was untouched by terrorism and I had my first taste of the beauty of the valley at its richest. I would wake up in the morning, sit in front of our home, a beautiful wooden 2 bedroom cottage, surrounded by gorgeous flowers of all shades and sip my hot chocolate as the sun rose, over the tall trees, on the mountains. The river Jhelum, looking like a silver snake weaved its way below me and my mother’s stories of Kashmir being a heaven on earth came alive before my eyes each morning. My dad made my birthday a memorable one and spent a fortune having my favorite ice cream flown in from Kashmir. If only all my memories of Kashmir remained as sweet.

Today when I go home and my brother says come spend a few days in Kashmir with me, I know it means going for walks with armed guards, being stuck inside the house most of the time, and I refuse. Today the Kashmir of my dreams blossoms only in old Indian films shot in the valley and my mother’s golden stories.

I look again at the picture, and memories of Afghan men dancing on the streets of Kabul, playing the mandolin, apple cheeked little boys running from the hill their kites flying behind them during the season when kites colored the sky in many hues, come rushing back. So much has changed-from Kabul to Kashmir.

I realize today how important it is to live with love and in the present moment, because tomorrow may not be the same color as your yesterday.
All the best 2006!

To listen to the sampler and to purchase “ Raastey’ go to Kavitachhibber.com