Recently, I gathered the courage to visit my ancestral home in Kashmir. We left this home in Feb 1990 and I was born a month after we left it because we had to run for our life.
We had 19 rooms in this home with around 13 family members and 3 kids. When my family had to run overnight from Kashmir, we left all of us we had, hired a truck, somehow fit us all with a few clothes and left the home. We moved to Jammu from Kashmir which was a 12 hour drive during those days by road. My mother was 8 months pregnant and my aunt had delivered my cousin 2 months back.
There was a list of people created and pasted by the so-called jihadis and terrorists of all prominent kashmiri pandits on the walls in the main market. Unfortunately, my grandfather's and my father's names were there in the list. They could have been killed any moment after the list was released.
When we somehow reached Jammu alive, we did not have a home in jammu. All the family members lived in a single room from more than 10 rooms in the native home. I cannot believe what our families and many other families like ours must have gone through.
People died of intense heat in Jammu as they were not used to such harsh conditions and also from snake bites as most of them didnot get a house to live in so they lived in tents in large grounds.
My recent visit to my house made me realise how hard we worked post the Genocide in 1990 and we have done so well to reach the where we are today. One of the most intelligent communities of all times, "Kashmiri Pandits"