Just two days after Dad and Uncle had been rescued from armed militants, on an early morning one of the young men, part of the group who had earlier kidnapped them, suddenly appeared in our courtyard calling for my Dad.

Dad looking out of the sitting room window, walked up the path which dissected our lawn in the middle, meeting the young man there, halfway towards our main gate. Dad made it a point to stop the man there, potentially blocking him from coming close to our home.

The militant in jeans and an oversized thick shirt seemed very upset. In the distance, from the verandah near the main door, my family could hear the two talking in rushed tones, without making out what it was.

Dad was nodding his head while the young man kept shaking his hands and raising his voice in defiant refusal to what Dad was saying.

Soon it turned out that the lone militant had barged in to demand money from Dad, claiming that he had split from the previous group. In most probability he had either got less (or nothing) from their previous kidnap earnings, or maybe he had been emboldened by the payment of ransom money to the group leader days ago.

The rouge was asking for twenty thousand rupees, Dad insisted he did not have even twenty rupees to give him. The previous event notwithstanding, Dad had made up his mind to resist any such attempts and draw a line.

On the first appearance the militant appeared to have come unarmed, with bare hands.

Our neighbor Basheer sahab lived right opposite our home and we shared a low wall between the two houses, so low that the two families could see each other from their respective verandas. When the militant started to shout, Basheer Sahab and his family hearing the commotion rushed to their front verandah. The intruder further raised his pitch to Dad’s clear refusal and started to draw his hand towards under his shirt. In no time Basheer sahab and his son leapt from over the low wall that separated the two houses.

The militant drew a pistol that he had concealed behind his loose-fitting shirt, tucked away under the belt. He quickly unlocked the pistol, aiming at Dad, but while unlocking the chamber got stuck somehow, jamming the weapon. In no time Basheer sahab along with Dad leapt on the lone militant and pinned him to ground. Mom had already rushed barefooted to the path, in despair standing close to Dad. The militant lay on the path with his face pushed towards the flower bed, that had been trampled by his weight and the rushing footsteps. His hands had been locked towards his back with Basheer Sahab and his son holding them while Dad pinned him down with his knee. The pistol had been pushed away towards the lawn. The militant moaned, struggling to be freed, while the elders held forcibly in an uncertain silence for a few moments.  

Realizing the gravity of the situation, Dad started taking politely to the militant, releasing his pressure gradually, then looking at Mom ‘Get some water for the young man please. These are like our own kids’.

This reconciliatory tone from Dad, and later Basheer Sahab, was intended to offset any further harm the militant, or his group, could have caused to the families. You walked a very thin line during the peak of turmoil in Kashmir, between wanting to live safely and maintaining a safeguard against excesses. Most often than not, the safe line existed in withdrawing to obscurity, in pretending to lack of your existence even when you existed in a nothingness of our own assumed and imaginary confines, those could often be trespassed by violators at their own free will.

Soon the militant was helped on his feet and walked up to the verandah where he sat dispirited. He was offered water, while Dad explaining that he actually had no money to give and that his intention of refusal was not to hurt him but out of a material fact. Basheer sahab then gave him his own comforting words, the militant silently pretending to listen and understand to all of this, which those around understood these words went beyond his comprehension. He then looked at the jammed weapon that lay on the lawns, reflecting on the courage displayed by these two old men in overpowering him.

Sensing the militant had been deprived of his bravado, Basheer sahab lay his arm around the militant walking him back towards the path, slipped two hundred rupees into his hands, whispered “treat me as your uncle, son”.

The militant picked up his jammed weapon from the lawn and was escorted by Basheer sahab, Dad and few other people towards the gate, bolting it again after his exit. He fled, failed and bruised, melting into an oblivion outside. While our families shrunk back to their uncertainties.

The fear of a repeat of such violent violation continued to haunt us.

Sometime later we migrated from this place, further up north.  

~ S ~

11th July, 2012