It was an afternoon, I took out the car and was waiting for my father. He took some time but soon he was out, and we headed off to our ancestral home in Baliharn, named by the casual way of speaking as “Gavon Ghar”. What a place it used to be, full of greenery, trees, shrubs, flowers, a river flowing by: deep enough just to let our heads stay out of the water. The place in its prime was nothing short of how I would imagine the paradise to be. Flowers from the royal gardens of Kashmir were brought and planted, walls of evergreen carefully dividing the plot of land into parks, orchards, farms, and wasteland. In the middle of the plot was a grand house. On one side of the house was the park full of flowers and butterflies, on the other side was the orchard. The river and a garden of roses abutted it from the other two sides. The orchard had many trees, mostly apple trees, few pear trees and I guess a couple of pomegranate trees. I remember how we used to climb and play around these trees. Plucking fruits, washing them in the river nearby and eating them. Those are some of the best memories of my childhood. I remember running around in the park; sometimes running after butterflies, sometimes running away from the bumble bees. I the evenings, I would sit in a chair under rose shrubs and gaze the moon. What a clear sky it used to be. I close my eyes and it all seems like a trance. I have this picture of me gliding my hand, caressing the evergreen shrubs along their wave cut design, I am probably running towards my grandfather. It is one of the few memories I have of my grandfather.
We started off from our house in Bemina, I was driving… rather slowly than I used to a few years ago. I feel grown up, I feel responsible, I feel burdened. I remember how I could not bear driving anything but abnormally fast, a few years ago. We talked about a lot of stuff on our forty-minute journey: about the wretched condition of Kashmir both in terms of politics and development, about the days of militancy, about how other drivers on the road were stupid, etc. The reason why we were going there was the death anniversary of my grandfather: Akbar Khawaja. I haven’t spent a lot of time with him; he died when I was around three or four. Yet, I have some sweet memories of him and from what I have heard he was a man as honorable as none other I know. I like to think that out of all the children in the family he loved me the most.
We were almost there, I took a right and crossing the bridge that took almost a decade to be built, we entered the main village. The first house is ours, now named: Ashian-e-Akbar, in the honor of my grandfather. The heavy metal gate of the house was half open, my father got down and pushed the gate wide open for me to drive the car in and went in to check on the preparations for the Kuran-Khan (A ceremony of reciting Quran in the honor of the dead). As I entered the house, I saw the whole place was dug out, evergreens dividing the orchard and parks and farms were now dividing the land into chunks that belonged to each of my uncles. A sentiment of sadness engulfed me, but I tried not to show it. One of my uncles was is Saudi Arabia, other in Delhi, only the remaining one was there for the ceremony. I had had an argument with him the other day about how a cousin of mine should be allowed to pursue whatever career he likes. The argument had taken a little bitter taste and I was feeling bad about it. I drove the car over the undulating path of what was left of it and parked it under a walnut tree. Before I could go inside to see about the preparations, I went around the house as if greeting everything there, the willows, the orchards, the walnut trees, the river, the barn and a small store house. Everything stimulating one memory or the other. I went in and found that we had to wait for the scholars (children) of the local madrassa (Islamic school) to come. My uncle had brought Biryani boxes which we were supposed to give them as a gift rather than a payment, because what they were doing was to them for a religious cause.
While my father, my uncle and their local loyal acquaintances were waiting for the children, I took off to wander around the village and pay a visit to my grandfather’s grave. The graveyard is something striking about the village, for all the things that have changed in the village the graveyard still looks the same except for a few more graves. It’s a hump of land covered with daffodils and some trees, I guess weeping willows. I am unsure about my stance on religion, but I went to the graveyard and looked at the grave of my grandfather with love, and went up to touch it and said the Islamic prayers. Then as I was about to leave something compelled me to say prayers for all the dead in that graveyard, it is supposed to be customary though. I went about from the one end of the village to another trying to cover it all, caressing it all with my eyes. It was like as if I was traveling back in time, memories erupted again. I walked along a long path that took me to a relatively secluded place, it’s called the pump shed. It’s here where the water is drawn from the river into tiny streams to irrigate the vast fields of paddy and rice. When I reached there, I saw an old frail man smoking hookah. It was not the hookah of the rich, but of the poor. Made of copper and with two wooden tubes, one that goes to the chimney you place above it and the other into the mouth of the smoker. As I was standing there lost in my memories, trying to stitch together the past and the present, this guy started feeling uncomfortable because of my weird behavior. So, he asked me what I was doing. At first, I did not know how to respond, but then I told him that I had spent a lot of time there in my childhood and I was just looking how things had changed. This sentence of mine caught him beyond what should be usual. He looked me in the eyes and asked, “Who’s are you?” meaning what family am I from. I told him, “I am from the Khawajas”. He knew us, he knew us more than I knew us and from what it appeared he respected us. He asked me about my eldest uncle who was then in Delhi and then he asked me about my father. Standing there on the levee, we were looking upon the vast fields of land, he told me how all of that once belonged to us. He told me stories of how the property and royalty we once held was lost over time. It was much like we were losing Gavon Ghar right now. I could understand how it was the course of nature, how change was inevitable.
As I made my way back along the line of willow trees separating the fields and the road, I was much lost in my thoughts. On reaching the Gavon Ghar, I saw that the Koran Khan had begun. I saw my uncle standing outside gazing at the river, I went out and started a conversation with him: told him about that man I had met and then in spite of knowing that I was right about that bitter argument I apologized, and asked him to forgive me. He smiled back at me, gave me the keys to his car, he then asked me to take the Biryani from his car and distribute it among the scholars and so I did. Before leaving I asked my father if I could take a couple of evergreens from there. He said sure and we uprooted a couple of evergreens and a bunch of daffodils from there. I put them in the car, I was to plant them in Bemina and keep them as a memento of a beautiful time of my life.
We started off from our house in Bemina, I was driving… rather slowly than I used to a few years ago. I feel grown up, I feel responsible, I feel burdened. I remember how I could not bear driving anything but abnormally fast, a few years ago. We talked about a lot of stuff on our forty-minute journey: about the wretched condition of Kashmir both in terms of politics and development, about the days of militancy, about how other drivers on the road were stupid, etc. The reason why we were going there was the death anniversary of my grandfather: Akbar Khawaja. I haven’t spent a lot of time with him; he died when I was around three or four. Yet, I have some sweet memories of him and from what I have heard he was a man as honorable as none other I know. I like to think that out of all the children in the family he loved me the most.
We were almost there, I took a right and crossing the bridge that took almost a decade to be built, we entered the main village. The first house is ours, now named: Ashian-e-Akbar, in the honor of my grandfather. The heavy metal gate of the house was half open, my father got down and pushed the gate wide open for me to drive the car in and went in to check on the preparations for the Kuran-Khan (A ceremony of reciting Quran in the honor of the dead). As I entered the house, I saw the whole place was dug out, evergreens dividing the orchard and parks and farms were now dividing the land into chunks that belonged to each of my uncles. A sentiment of sadness engulfed me, but I tried not to show it. One of my uncles was is Saudi Arabia, other in Delhi, only the remaining one was there for the ceremony. I had had an argument with him the other day about how a cousin of mine should be allowed to pursue whatever career he likes. The argument had taken a little bitter taste and I was feeling bad about it. I drove the car over the undulating path of what was left of it and parked it under a walnut tree. Before I could go inside to see about the preparations, I went around the house as if greeting everything there, the willows, the orchards, the walnut trees, the river, the barn and a small store house. Everything stimulating one memory or the other. I went in and found that we had to wait for the scholars (children) of the local madrassa (Islamic school) to come. My uncle had brought Biryani boxes which we were supposed to give them as a gift rather than a payment, because what they were doing was to them for a religious cause.
While my father, my uncle and their local loyal acquaintances were waiting for the children, I took off to wander around the village and pay a visit to my grandfather’s grave. The graveyard is something striking about the village, for all the things that have changed in the village the graveyard still looks the same except for a few more graves. It’s a hump of land covered with daffodils and some trees, I guess weeping willows. I am unsure about my stance on religion, but I went to the graveyard and looked at the grave of my grandfather with love, and went up to touch it and said the Islamic prayers. Then as I was about to leave something compelled me to say prayers for all the dead in that graveyard, it is supposed to be customary though. I went about from the one end of the village to another trying to cover it all, caressing it all with my eyes. It was like as if I was traveling back in time, memories erupted again. I walked along a long path that took me to a relatively secluded place, it’s called the pump shed. It’s here where the water is drawn from the river into tiny streams to irrigate the vast fields of paddy and rice. When I reached there, I saw an old frail man smoking hookah. It was not the hookah of the rich, but of the poor. Made of copper and with two wooden tubes, one that goes to the chimney you place above it and the other into the mouth of the smoker. As I was standing there lost in my memories, trying to stitch together the past and the present, this guy started feeling uncomfortable because of my weird behavior. So, he asked me what I was doing. At first, I did not know how to respond, but then I told him that I had spent a lot of time there in my childhood and I was just looking how things had changed. This sentence of mine caught him beyond what should be usual. He looked me in the eyes and asked, “Who’s are you?” meaning what family am I from. I told him, “I am from the Khawajas”. He knew us, he knew us more than I knew us and from what it appeared he respected us. He asked me about my eldest uncle who was then in Delhi and then he asked me about my father. Standing there on the levee, we were looking upon the vast fields of land, he told me how all of that once belonged to us. He told me stories of how the property and royalty we once held was lost over time. It was much like we were losing Gavon Ghar right now. I could understand how it was the course of nature, how change was inevitable.
As I made my way back along the line of willow trees separating the fields and the road, I was much lost in my thoughts. On reaching the Gavon Ghar, I saw that the Koran Khan had begun. I saw my uncle standing outside gazing at the river, I went out and started a conversation with him: told him about that man I had met and then in spite of knowing that I was right about that bitter argument I apologized, and asked him to forgive me. He smiled back at me, gave me the keys to his car, he then asked me to take the Biryani from his car and distribute it among the scholars and so I did. Before leaving I asked my father if I could take a couple of evergreens from there. He said sure and we uprooted a couple of evergreens and a bunch of daffodils from there. I put them in the car, I was to plant them in Bemina and keep them as a memento of a beautiful time of my life.
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