Where Are You, Shugufta?

That day was an April, just like today: peach blossoms jostling almond. Your valley was all pink and white, and yellow too with endless fields of mustard. Inside a little musty schoolroom, they invited me to set shop. A rickety table, a little patient stool filched from the Health Centre next door and a wooden students' bench.You were my interpreter and this bench was for you. I don't remember whether it was you who had smiled first or whether it was me, but I know that it was a smile which had cracked the ice. All through my day you deciphered illnesses for me, from your Kashmiri into my Hindi, a little broken, peppered with an occasional speck of English. And when they brought in the samovar, you poured for me the golden kehwa, into two small cracked China cups. Then in that saffron scented recess, we spoke, you and I, spoke slow and long as the tea at first warmed our chilled palms and then itself grew cold. I remember your eyes; they were kohl lined, large, luminous and you tipped your scarf-covered head to one side, looking at me with such indulgent awe. I marvelled in turn, at your porcelain skin, the two spots of apple pink on your cheeks and your endless eagerness to rise in life. It was not that there were no walls between us. Your spotless white hijab. My vermillion sindoor and big maroon bindi. Your Kunan and Poshpora. My town's wailing widow draped over a Tricoloured casket. Your streets barricaded by wooden faced soldiers with pointing guns. My home's soldier mother, in vigil before her silent phone.Your screaming brother dragged away into the silence of the night. My hospital overflowing with ambushed soldiers, reeking of death and dying. But that day we did not speak of these things.We pushed them away, pushed these sad things far away, back into the deep recesses of our minds. Instead, we unzipped our souls and talked, of light and laughter and living. You told me you were Shugufta.That you wanted to be a doctor, just like me. Asked me the best way to clear the entrance examinations. We talked about the best place to graduate. You told me you would enrol soon at a college at Anantnag. The day grew old over many, many cups of kehwa and yet our talk was not done.You asked me for my address but I couldn't give it to you. I should have taken yours but I didn't, big fool I. Went back home and wrote your name in my diary so that I wouldn't forget, 'Shugufta of Traal!' But I needn't have worried about forgetting, for even today, a cup of kehwa redolent with saffron takes me back to you and your kohl-lined eager eyes.

Who is that little girl in the picture, Shugufta? So tiny and so frail. She reminds me of you, Shugufta, so much like you yet so much unlike you. Will she be able to hold all that anger and resentment within her little body? I'm so terribly afraid that she'll simply get blown away, like straw in the wind or explode into nothingness.......
What does she want, Shugufta? Does she at all know what she wants? Does she not want the same light and laughter and life, like you and I did then? Can you not teach her to push dark things away, shut those unhappy, unhinged voices of hate that whisper in her ears, just like you did then? Can you not teach her to break walls like you did then, with saffron scented kehwa and a smile exchanged sans old hurts? Can you not teach her your magic, that ageless magic with which you bound me for life? Where are you, Shugufta? She needs you, this little girl. She could be your daughter, Shugufta. Just as she could be mine.