(Dec 27, 8:49pm)

My Happy Birthday on 1st January... and no preparation to celebrate it.. sigh.. For the first time probably!

2012 birthday was particularly great.. Had thrown a big lunch and get-together at my place..

And I myself had just returned to Patna after a week's holidaying at Srinagar a few days before my b'de on Jan 1st, 2012..

XXX

Went out for case studies for my first story... yesterday interviewed a noted academician and expert on conflict issues.. Prof Gul Wani..

The piece is about the deplorable condition of ex-militants who were lured into returning to India..

Hope it turns out well, and hope I do enough justice to a piece of such great human interest...

XXX

Oh, between... tomorrow I am meeting somebody over lunch.. ***a, the fiancee of the Kashmiri ex-brother..

She is trying her best to agree me to allowing the Kashmiri ex-brother in the lunch too.. But I'm not relenting..

XXX

(Dec 25, 11:44pm)

The Kashmiri friend, the once-upon-a-time brother I really admired and trusted, is making every effort to reinstate the friendship...

But are friendship and trust institutions? A corridor of power? That may be reinstated with the application of reinvigorated diplomacy?

XXX

Though I do not doubt his simplicity of heart and of mind..

Which is common to most Kashmiris.. having grown up in violence, but never having renounced the instinct to be kind to others!

XXX

He noticed me last Wednesday, when I was in bike with another friend, marketing arduously to furnish the house I have rented..

He immediately found out his number and tried to reach out to me... This friend, though, lied to him I was already traceless, having shifted to my place and without a mobile phone number..

That was followed by a touching, apologetic email..

After which he frantically sms-ed this another friend to get my number... and when the efforts failed, he involved his fiancee to mediate with me..

***a, who made me her brother, at the sacred Hazratbal shrine two years back.. the day after Christmas, while I was in tour here.. and was putting up in this very Kashmiri ex-brother's place!

XXX

By now, he had figured out my number, address, and the office I had joined.. which anyway is adjacent to his office...

Newspapers in Kashmir are all located in small make believe newsrooms in a quaint building nestled in the heart of Press Colony..

He knew I wouldn't possibly ignore him in the presence of my editor and colleagues, who, anyway, he is acquainted with well enough...

XXX

Taking good advantage of workplace decorum, that is obligatory on everybody anyway, he got me into handshaking him, talking to him, hugging him as I left..

Two years back, this same day, we had had a glorious Christmas together with three other friends in Gulmarg... Oh, that reminds me, I have to greet you!

Merry Christmas!

XXX

He followed me into the now dimly lighted lane..

And pressed on me to speak to his mom and dad, a loving old couple who doted on me when I had stayed with them, this time around in 2011..

I didn't..

XXX

(Dec 24, 8:42pm)

The weather is getting harsher in Srinagar...
But Kashmir is a wonderful place...

I met the eminent journalists Mr Naseer Ganaie and Mr Peerzada Ashiq today.. Ganaie had taken me over for tea in this very cosy restaurent in MS Mall, where we also met MLA Engineer Rashid..

XXX

Ganaie is such a humble and learned man.. and of cheerful disposition.. and very decently humourous... People here are so much simpler..

They don't utter the word *uck, two thousand times a day... and nobody wears dresses so short as may be rather regarded invitation for promiscuity...

I love the place, consequently... one day, freedom and civilisation, and the false allure for glamour and liberty-without restraint will corrupt it all!

XXX

You have to be in Kashmir, to understand that simplicity too have glamour... that modesty is indeed comforting...

And that a kindly disposition and an affable smile, will always be above the razzmatazz that consumerism has made you able to afford today!

XXX

(Dec 24: 12:05am)

This is a re-post from December 23, 2011, 6:36 pm..

XXX

It was December 23, 1992..I was young...very young..
but, the memories are clear like marbles..

Since the Gods knew our days were numbered, they had given me sharp memory. They needed to prove they were kind.

XXX

The Babri had just been pulled down, and anticipating the riots, we had left our sprawling cottage-house in Sultanganj, and moved to this place where Muslim population was thin..

Grandmum had tough time convincing mumma, who was above such things.. For her, the blood was red in every vein... interestingly, even the day we "fled" the place, she had summoned her Muslim driver and other guys for escort!

XXX

I despised the house...but since it offered me a view of the main road, from where i could keep a watch for mumma to return, i had agreed to it as periodic arrangement..

XXX

So, there i stood in that terrace that afternoon, under the radiant sun... my thoughts wandering as i looked aimlessly at the street below.."Look its almost four now, she said she'd come by 2," I told my brother annoyingly.. we had already played the ludo many times, and there was nothing new to do now.. 

XXX

Every year, after our schools had closed for winters on December 3rd or 4th, we waited desperately for 23rd to arrive..Mumma's last working day!

And with bro's b'de the next day, she'd hurriedly come back from college, dress us up, get us a brunch, and we'd be off for shopping...we bought the jackets, we bought the shoes..pairs of denims, santa caps, wind-cheaters..gloves and mufflers to match..story books, toys..the cake, the meat-balls...the list would be endless, because mumma, before she'd come to pick us up, would have encashed whatever was left in her bank that day..

XXX

23rd December 1992. 
Bro still was waiting for mumma.

XXX

But, I was waiting for the culprit.

XXX

Light slowly began to fade, and darkness and despair set in like unsought guests..i was more and more sure she had failed us.. Yeah, she'd turn up, but without the money.,

Grannie had told me about our crisis only the previous day..how Mumma had first squandered everything, her arrears, her deposits, her NSCs...then indulged in relentless charity..and this magnanimity as if so intoxicating, she hadnt even bothered to draw her salary between..

XXX

So unless it was by a repertoire of magic, we wouldnt have any money for the year end (Her salary would come only on Jan 2nd, when the university reopened)..

Fingers crossed, we waited. 
We prayed. 
We implored upon the Gods to be kinder..
Else bro's birthday would be wasted. 
Christmas too. 
And my b'de, that fell on new year.

XXX

But she would not turn up. "Why is she taking so late. Is her salary credited. Why did she have to go looking for it the last day. why dint she draw it three months? And why did she spend all her money away?" I asked irritatingly.

"May be it's credited," bro suggested, not willing to give up.

"In that case she'd have come already."

"May be she is shopping," he tried to reason.

"Without us? No way." I dismissed.

XXX

And then with careless abandon to how it might upset him, I asked him again, "Will she come?"

"Not again," he stooped me midway.

"Will she..."

"Will she what," this time he didnt beat around the bush, "She is not dead. Nobody dies just suddenly. But if you believe she has, do it all to the Goddess, please."

XXX

He left.

XXX

I felt better. His outburst had somehow convinced me mom was not dead. So i was back the tyrant again. Awaiting the culprit.

XXX

It was a long wait.
The sun God bade me goodbye, and the moon came to befriend.

XXX

XXX

XXX

From the crossing, she appeared.. With grace in her walk, and a smile to beam...and with a kind of lovingness that in one second undid all the wrongs that i had been all this while listing.. 

XXX

Who'd say she had been so long into the 40s...
Except perhaps the laugh lines.
But, that appeared only when she laughed heartily.

XXX

I had warned her against that.

XXX

She was wearing the pure-silk saree.
It was finest silk. Grannie's testimony to mumma's indulgence.

XXX

The story goes that in the late 1960s, decent pure silks were available for Rs 120. The classy ones for 200. But if you wanted the bride-hunters do talking, you wore a 300..to upset would-be brides, a 350...and to left men gasping, a 500.

And upon such times, i am told, mumma had bought this sari for 900.
Even professors were paid 800 then, aunts had added.

XXX

To be continued....

XXX

(Dec 16, 2:07pm)

In Srinagar.. Would be here around for a month.. Unless, of-course, the weather and the piercing winds do not force me out...

It's really, really cold, and guess what? They are telling me "Sardi to bees tarikh se shuru hogi.. (winters would be here from 20th)!!!!

Now if it hasn't yet started, what am I in for once it does?

God save me!

XXX 

(Dec 13, 11:43am)

It's not nearly as cold in Delhi as I imagined..
Did you realise, X-mas and New Year is approaching?

Most of us would not.. life's become really fast...

In the good, old 1990s, after the schools were closed for winter vacation by the 6th or 7th of December, we'd be counting days for the new year!

XXX

There was no cable tv, no laptop, no other big means to keep yourself occupied.. so we'd read books, which we'd have bought from the book fair, which was usually upon the first to second week of December..

Or we'd read the special columns or write-ups about the new year season in the English dailies and weeklies..

Sometimes when we liked some article very much, we'd read it once again at leisure time.. normally the cold, long afternoons.. and share that with grandmom when we visited her...

XXX

Sometimes, there would be a good X-mas movie, which we would watch with great relish.. and after making sure that we had informed all our relatives, family friends and others, that there was a good movie on such and such day, such and such time.. so that they may not miss it..

I also remember few family friends dropping in at this time of the year.. it was meant for home-to-home socialising in those days... the schools having closed, and the boys pressing on their parents to take them out..

XXX

(Dec 7, 10:34am)

A train to catch tomorrow...

Of-course, I'm feeling uncomfortable... I hate journeys...

Even when mom would do all the packing and get someone to see me off, escort me to my berth in fact, I'd be tense..

Now, I fret more of-course... I need to not only do all the above business on own, I have to lock the house, pay the servants, arrange a care-taker.. and that is all so annoying..

XXX