In photos: A Kashmiri Pandit walks through the home he couldn’t have
On January 19 1990, tens of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits migrated to different parts of India under duress. In this photo essay, a young photographer from the community describes the feeling of loss and longing.
Almost every evening, before going to bed, my mother would tell me a story about her childhood in a land beyond the mountains called Kashmir. She would gently stroke my hair and describe the green meadows, lakes and rivers and then tell me about how she was raised among the warm and loving people who lived a simple life surrounded by the sounds of cows, chickens and sheep. Hearing all that, I often asked myself: why couldn't I have had the same childhood?
By the early 1990s, my mother's homeland, Kashmir, was burning with violence as armed separatists challenged Indian rule. Several hundred Kashmiri Pandits, who were a minority in the Muslim majority state of Jammu and Kashmir, were targeted by various militant groups. They killed many Pandits in cold blood, and forced most of the community out of their homes in the middle of a harsh January winter. My mother and her family also left behind their home, taking with them only the memories of a time and place, which later became a fairy tale of sorts for their children.
Photographer Anmol Kachroo's mother longs for her home away from home.
Every night, I went to sleep with my mother's stories in my head, and my heart would coil itself more tightly to this fairytale world. It could have been my reality, had she not been forced to leave. Although Kashmir continues to be my motherland in my heart, it's still a home that I have never had.
An abandoned home in Kashmir that belonged to a Kashmiri Pandit family prior to the exodus.
I was born in Jammu, a district at least 200 kilometres far from my real home in Kashmir. It was 1999 and the 20th century was coming to its end with another human tragedy -- the erasure of the Pandit community from Kashmir.
Walking through the lanes of Downtown Srinagar, I came across a Kashmiri Pandit house, which was in ruins. In one of the house's dilapidated corners, a 30-year-old calendar hung on one of the walls. I asked a passerby who the owner of this house was. ‘It’s been so many years that I don’t even remember now,’ he said.
As the years passed by and the symphony of the tales grew fainter, strangely, my affection for Kashmir grew. It eventually pulled me back. I went there in the summer of 2020. My emotions, shaped by my mother’s stories of love and longing and despair, made my strides unsteady.
On a bright autumn day, as Basit and I walked through a cluster of Chinar trees, I randomly took a picture of our shadows. Later, the picture reminded me of one of my father's pictures with his two friends, which was taken more than three decades ago.
As I landed there, I visited one of my close family friends, where I met Basit. He was as old as me. He was the personification of a life that I was destined to have but didn’t: my fairytale, due to the exodus, had never been realised. He was living the life that I could only ever dream about. He was raised in Kashmir and knew the place inside out.
Basit showed me some canals of Dal Lake, the places I had never been to before. I saw people taking food and other supplies through shikara (a traditional Kashmiri boat) from one place to another.
Some of my Kashmiri Pandit friends had asked me if I could get some pictures of their parents’ houses, so Basit took me to Rainawari, a neighbourhood that was full of life before the 1990 exodus. We sat for tea at a stranger's house, who was welcoming.
"When I'm feeling low, I usually come here," Basit said. From the very start of my visit, I visited Dal Lake to enjoy the sunset and talk to locals. Some of them would smile hearing me fumble with Kashmiri words.
Kheer Bhawani Mandir in Tulumul Ganderbal, a district in Kashmir, where people celebrate the famous Zyeath Atham every year.
We went to the Kheer Bhawani Mandir, a sacred place for Kashmiri Pandits, to witness one of the most prominent festivals of Kashmir: the Zyeath Atham. We saw people from all around the world participating. Like me, so many were residents of more ‘affluent’ places, but we all had one thing in common: a piece of our hearts was firmly locked inside Kashmir.
Dodhpathri, a tourist resort in Kashmir, where Basit came for school picnics in his childhood.
I visited the places where my mother was destined to grow up but couldn’t. I saw the gardens where she used to take her daily strolls — the pastures where they used to milk the cows who were treated like family. I loitered around the wilderness where she used to go every day to fetch firewood.
A walk in the wilderness of Kashmir. An everyday thing for my mother, 40 years ago; a thing of marvel mixed with a tinge of sadness that it was not in my destiny to grow up here.
The moment I saw this temple in ruins, I began to think what it would have been like to be inside before the tragedy of exodus and lack of maintenance pushed it to extinction. Each time I look at this photograph, I feel homeless.
On the other side, with a lump in my throat, I saw the remnants of temples that would have once bustled with worshippers. Three decades ago, they would have shown up with folded hands and would ring the bells in devotion. Now in ruins and abandoned, these houses of Gods have been swallowed by the earth.
Basit told me how the landscape of Kashmir has changed, and I saw it too. I saw barbed wire fences on every other street corner. I saw checkpoints at every edge of the road, and alert, on-duty soldiers standing next to them.
My mother often reminds me that, "When Harud (Autumn) comes, we used to bring red chillies out in sunlight for drying up". I felt blessed to witness it in Kashmir's Anantnag district, my ancestral hometown.
I was awestruck by the sheer beauty of Kashmir. It felt like a dream come true. Although it is bruised and haunted by the conflict, there is still a lot of beauty in it.
Before taking my leave, I sat on the shore of Dal Lake, thinking if I could stay in Kashmir a little longer -- but not as a tourist but a local Kashmiri just like my forefathers lived.
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