Valley of memories

He, fair, regal, magnificently built, resplendent in his flowing white robes and cap, perfectly fitted into this enchanted world. With the wisdom of a philosopher and the wit, grace and chivalry of a courtier, he remains one of the most unforgettable men I have ever met. He must have been around 80 then.

He was Baba, our Kashmiri milkman who walked up every day from his village in the valley to our hilltop cottage and brightened up our mornings. He would beam his innocent, toothless smile while we kids and our father prepared for school and work and mother bustled about with our breakfast. I remember him as an integral fixture of the last of my lovely childhood days.

Always a dreamy child, I was jolted into harsh reality by a series of incidents — to me everything seemed to have started up suddenly. A bridge was blown up not far from our house, a youth was caught trying to poison our water supply, two IAF officers weregunned down while waiting for their bus to work, there was a mass exodus of tourists from Srinagar, our school closed down indefinitely and all defence officers’ families were ordered to be evacuated from the Valley.

Meanwhile, winter had arrived in Kashmir and a stark, severe white had replaced the verdant green. My homely mother was troubled at the thought of the forthcoming separation from her husband, father had to spend increasingly longer hours at work, and with no school to occupy us, we kids grew restlessly and fidgety.

Amid all this bedlam, Baba still trudged up the hill everyday with his cans of milk and when he was no longer allowed inside the barbed wire, handed over his cans to the guards posted there. I would often walk over to the fence to meet him. He still had tales for me, but they did not cheer me any more. His son, a shikara boatman was out of work, the carpets and phirens made by the women of his family had a rapidly dwindling market, and his grandchildren now had an erratic schoolschedule.

Life had been totally disrupted, he would muse, but would hasten to assure me that it would all be well next summer, everything would be back to normal. He had seen life and he knew about such things, he insisted with the peculiarly tender and vulnerable tenderness of the very old. His powder-blue eyes, grown soft and misty with age, reminded me of the summer skies and invited belief in his faith.

We were at our breakfast when the sound of gunfire screeched through the still, misty morning. We all rushed out of the house but were immediately ordered back by my father. That afternoon after the exchange of fire between our jawans and the men in the Valley below had ceased, the feeble sun showed a white shapeless bundle on the slope. It was Baba. The villagers hailed Baba as a martyr. A week later we left the Valley.