House in Jammu, Home in Kashmir, The Unfinished Sentence of a Shared Loss

House in Jammu, Home in Kashmir, The Unfinished Sentence of a Shared Loss

Syeda Afshana’s poignant essay, “House in Jammu, Home in Kashmir,” is not a news report, but it contains a truth more profound than any headline. Published in a Kashmir newspaper, it is a quiet, devastating, and essential piece of current affairs—a current affair of the heart and the memory that defines one of modern India’s most protracted and painful human tragedies: the Kashmir conflict and the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandit community in the early 1990s. Afshana, a Muslim academic from Kashmir, steps into the living rooms of Pandit friends in Jammu, not as a journalist on assignment, but as a bearer of shared history. What unfolds is a masterclass in empathetic witnessing, deconstructing monolithic narratives and revealing the complex, enduring anatomy of loss that afflicts both those who left and those who stayed. This article expands upon her reflections, framing them within the broader political, social, and psychological landscape to argue that until this shared loss is acknowledged in its full, human complexity, the idea of “return” or “normalcy” in Kashmir will remain an incomplete sentence.

Part I: The Architecture of Memory – “Breathing” vs. Merely Living

Afshana’s central, haunting revelation is captured in a single, corrected word. A Pandit gentleman says a reunion feels like “living our golden days again.” Another gently corrects: “Not living… Breathing.” This distinction is everything. “Living” implies routine, survival, the mechanical passing of days. “Breathing,” in this context, signifies an organic, unthinking, vital state of being—a symbiosis with one’s environment so complete it requires no conscious effort.

This “rhythm” they describe—of familiar sounds, soft seasons, uninvited neighbours, intertwined lives—is the essence of home as opposed to house. A house is a structure; a home is an ecosystem of belonging. The Pandits in Jammu have built houses, careers, and resilience over three decades. They have legal domicile. Yet, as the refrain goes, “We live in a house here. Our home is in Kashmir.” This is not mere nostalgia; it is a diagnosis of a profound psychosocial displacement. Their bodies inhabit the plains of Jammu, but their existential rhythm—the pace of their breath, the seasonality of their emotions, the map of their social selves—is calibrated to the Valley. Afshana notes the physical cost: bodies that never adjusted to the extreme, “unfamiliar skies” of Jammu, health that weakened, ageing accelerated. The displacement is not just geographical but physiological and temporal.

The meal of nadru te daal, gogji te maaz, haakh te chaman is thus a sacrament of memory. It is not just Kashmiri food; it is edible topography, a sensory return. Each smell, each taste, is a “sentence from a language spoken without words”—the language of a shared cultural grammar that transcends religion. In that shared silence over the meal, “something softened.” The past became “close,” not heavy. This moment reveals that the memory of home, for the displaced, is not a museum piece behind glass, but a living, breathable reality that can be momentarily accessed, a room in the mind that can still be entered.

Part II: The Dual Geometry of Loss – The Exodus and The Endurance

Afshana’s crucial contribution is her refusal to create a hierarchy of suffering. She delineates, with aching clarity, the “different loss” borne by those who stayed.

• The Loss of the Exiled: For the Pandits, loss is centrifugal—spinning outwards from a center that is no longer accessible. It is the grief carried “into new walls, new streets, new climates.” It is the loss of a world entire, a cosmos. Their suffering is one of rupture, of a clean, violent break followed by a lifelong project of building a life on unfamiliar soil, all while tending the invisible, umbilical cord to a homeland that exists now chiefly in memory and longing. Their narrative is often framed as one of “victimhood,” which, while true, can ironically freeze them in time, reducing a rich, ancient community identity to a single catastrophic event.

• The Loss of Those Who Stayed: For Muslims in Kashmir who witnessed the exodus of their neighbours, friends, and classmates, the loss is centripetal—collapsing inwards. They did not lose a place, but a fabric. They lost “neighbours, rhythms and shared laughter.” They lived, and continue to live, “among absences that were never filled.” Afshana alludes to the violence that ensued—”Young lives disappeared too soon. Mothers buried sons, not dreams.” The Kashmir that remained was not the Kashmir of the “golden days.” It became a place of fear, militarization, conflict, and profound social distortion. The shared cultural grammar was vandalized; the symphony of coexistence was replaced by a cacophony of suspicion and grief. Their homes, too, “changed shape,” filled with the ghosts of missing friends and the constant anxiety of conflict.

This dual geometry creates a tragic mirroring. The Pandit in Jammu lives in a complete house missing the essence of home. The Muslim in Kashmir lives in a home that is physically present but whose social and emotional architecture is scarred by absence and violence. Both communities are united by a “familiar ache”—the loss of “a way of being together.” This loss is not quantifiable. As Afshana insists, to ask “who suffered more” is “senseless” and “leads absolutely nowhere.” It is a competitive dead-end that perpetuates the conflict.

Part III: The Political Commodification of Pain and the “Quiet Normalisation of Loss”

The tragedy Afshana identifies goes beyond the initial events of the early 1990s. It is the subsequent “quiet normalisation of loss.” On a macro level, the pain of both communities has been instrumentalized, politicized, and turned into rhetorical ammunition. The Pandit exodus is often cited as a singular, isolated tragedy to delegitimize political aspirations in the Valley, while the ongoing sufferings of Kashmiris are ignored or justified as collateral in national security discourse. Conversely, within some narratives in the Valley, the Pandit exodus is sometimes minimized or misrepresented, creating further alienation.

This political commodification has a paralyzing effect on the human dimension. It teaches people “to carry [loss] without asking questions. Without seeking answers. Without hoping for reparation.” It fosters a grim, resilient acceptance—a “learning how to live without what once made life whole.” For the Pandits, the official discourse of “return” often feels like a political slogan, empty of the nuanced emotional and practical logistics Afshana observes. Their return, they tell her, is “not as a plan, but as a feeling.” It happens in memory, in food, in language. The state-sponsored plans for rehabilitation, focused on concrete colonies and jobs, often fail to address this deeper need to “breathe together” again, to reintegrate into that lost rhythm.

For Muslims in Kashmir, the discourse of “normalcy” imposed from outside feels equally hollow, ignoring the psychological and social wounds of three decades of conflict, the erosion of trust, and the lingering trauma. Coexistence, as Afshana’s friends recall, was once lived “easily, naturally, without effort.” Today, it is presented as a difficult, politically charged “ideal,” a project to be managed rather than a lived reality.

Part IV: The Grammar of Remembrance and the Possibility of a Shared Future

Yet, Afshana’s essay is not without hope. It is found in the micro-moments of human reconnection. “When old friends meet,” she writes, “something remarkable happens. Laughter returns briefly. Food tastes fuller. Stories flow without caution. For a few hours, people breathe together again.”

This is the revolutionary core of her testimony. It proves that the shared cultural grammar—the “language spoken without words”—though suppressed, is not dead. It survives in personal memory, in culinary memory, in the spontaneous syntax of old friendship. This is the substrate upon which any future must be built, not on the brittle foundations of political rhetoric or securitized policies.

The path forward, as illuminated by Afshana’s encounter, requires several shifts:

1. From Monoliths to Multitudes: The state and civil society must stop treating “Kashmiri Pandits” and “Kashmiri Muslims” as monolithic blocks with uniform opinions and experiences. Afshana shows us individuals—some yearning, some resigned, all carrying unique shades of the same pain. Policies and dialogues must make space for this diversity of experience within communities.

2. Valuing the “Soft” Infrastructure: Beyond bricks-and-mortar rehabilitation, there must be a focus on rebuilding the “soft” infrastructure of shared life: cultural exchanges, joint storytelling projects, inter-community dialogues that are personal, not political. The goal should be to recreate spaces, even if temporary or virtual, where people can “breathe together.”

3. Acknowledging the Full Spectrum of Loss: Any honest reconciliation process must formally acknowledge the twin dimensions of loss articulated by Afshana. The pain of the exiled and the pain of those who endured the conflict are not contradictory; they are correlative. A truth and empathy commission, rather than a judicial tribunal, might be a starting point to simply listen and acknowledge, without the immediate pressure of assigning blame or dispensing reparation.

4. Empowering the Second Generation: The children of both the exile and the conflict have inherited a burden of history they did not create. Their perceptions—often less burdened by the raw trauma of the 1990s—are crucial. Creating platforms for the younger Pandit and Muslim generations to connect, not as representatives of history but as curious individuals, could forge new bonds less constrained by the past.

Conclusion: Carrying the Lost World, Humanly

Afshana ends with a line of quiet, profound wisdom: “That what was lost was not erased. It was carried. By those who left. And by those who stayed. Silently. Genuinely. Humanly.”

This is the ultimate current affair. The story of Kashmir is not frozen in 1990. It is a living, ongoing story of millions of people carrying a lost world within them. The “House in Jammu, Home in Kashmir” paradox is the central metaphor of this carrying. It speaks to a human condition of longing and adaptation, of memory’s stubborn vitality, and of the deep, often unspoken, connections that outlast political ruptures.

The policy implications are vast, but the human imperative is simple: to create the conditions where the “breathing together” that happens for a few precious hours in a Jammu living room can once again become the sustained rhythm of life in the Valley. This will not mean a return to an idealized, conflict-free past—that is impossible. But it could mean forging a future where the houses people live in and the homes their hearts remember are no longer separated by an unbridgeable chasm of politics and pain, but are brought into a closer, more honest, and more humane alignment. Syeda Afshana has not offered a solution, but she has performed the most critical first step: she has listened, and in listening, has allowed us to hear the whispers of a loss that demands to be heard in full, before it can ever begin to be healed.

Q&A Section

Q1: Afshana emphasizes the difference between “living” and “breathing” when describing the Pandit connection to Kashmir. How does this distinction challenge conventional policy approaches to rehabilitation and return?

A1: Conventional policy, exemplified by schemes like the Prime Minister’s Rehabilitation Package, focuses almost exclusively on the material and economic dimensions of “living.” It provides housing colonies (like those in Jammu or proposed in Kashmir), government jobs, and financial compensation. This addresses the house—the physical structure and economic survival. However, it utterly fails to address the need to breathe—the psychosocial, cultural, and emotional reintegration. Afshana’s distinction challenges policymakers to understand that return is not a logistical problem of moving bodies and building shelters. It is an existential challenge of restoring a “rhythm.” Effective policy would need to supplement bricks and mortar with investments in reviving shared cultural spaces, supporting community-led reconciliation projects, ensuring genuine safety and social acceptance, and facilitating the mundane, daily interactions that build a sense of organic belonging. Without this, a Pandit family in a secured colony in Kashmir may still be just “living in a house” there, while their “home” remains a memory, leading to potential alienation and the failure of the return project.

Q2: The essay states, “The suffering was different. But the ache was familiar.” How does recognizing this “familiar ache” create a potential foundation for reconciliation that political narratives of blame and competition do not?

A2: Political narratives are often zero-sum: one community’s victimhood is used to negate or minimize the other’s pain. This creates a competitive “Olympics of suffering” that deepens divisions, as each side feels their truth is being erased. Recognizing a “familiar ache” reframes the issue. It shifts the focus from “who hurt whom more” to “we all lost something precious.” This shared language of loss—of torn social fabric, of stolen childhoods, of cultural erosion—becomes a common ground. It humanizes the “other.” A Muslim Kashmir listening to a Pandit speak of the “unfamiliar skies” of Jammu can empathize with that disorientation, just as a Pandit can empathize with a Kashmiri’s description of a childhood under the shadow of fear. This empathy, born of recognizing a shared human experience of grief and dislocation, is the only durable foundation for reconciliation. It doesn’t require agreeing on historical causality but starts from a mutual acknowledgment of present pain, creating a sliver of trust from which dialogue about the future can begin.

Q3: Afshana describes the meal as a “sentence from a language spoken without words.” Analyze the role of shared culture—food, language, poetry—as a reservoir of memory and a potential bridge in fractured societies.

A3: In deeply fractured societies where political language is toxic and distrustful, shared secular culture becomes a vital, apolitical reservoir of common identity and memory. Food, in particular, is a powerful somatic archive. The taste of nadru (lotus stem) or the smell of haakh (collard greens) triggers pre-verbal, sensory memories of a shared homeland and communal life. It bypasses the cognitive defenses of political ideology. The Kashmiri language itself, with its unique idioms and poetry, carries a worldview shaped by the Valley’s geography and shared history. When this “language without words” is invoked—through a shared meal, a recited poem, a folk song—it momentarily recreates the lost world. It acts as a bridge because it affirms a shared inheritance that predates and transcends the current conflict. It reminds both communities that their identities are not solely constructed in opposition to each other but were once woven together in a rich, common cultural tapestry. Nurturing these cultural connections (through food festivals, literary meets, music collaborations) can keep this bridge intact, preserving a channel for communication and empathy even when political dialogue is frozen.

Q4: The “quiet normalisation of loss” is identified as a deep tragedy. What are the societal and psychological consequences of this normalization, and how can it be countered?

A4: The normalization of loss has devastating consequences:

• Societally: It leads to a collective resignation, a lowering of expectations for justice, repair, or a better future. It allows cycles of violence and displacement to be accepted as inevitable. It stifles political imagination, making any alternative to the status quo seem unrealistic. It can also manifest as intergenerational transmission of trauma and grievance without the tools for healing.

• Psychologically: For individuals, it can result in complex grief, where mourning is incomplete because the loss is ongoing and publicly unacknowledged. It leads to dissociation—a separation between the internal world of memory and pain and the external necessity of daily survival. It can breed cynicism, depression, and a diminished capacity for hope or trust.

• Countering it requires: First, breaking the silence. Creating safe spaces for people to narrate their stories of loss without fear of political co-option, as Afshana does. Second, validation. Having those stories heard and acknowledged by the wider society and the state, not as political points but as human testimonies. Third, cultural and artistic expression. Encouraging literature, cinema, and art that articulate this loss can disrupt normalization by keeping the human cost in public view. Fourth, truth-telling processes. While formal mechanisms are difficult, grassroots efforts to document personal histories can combat the erasure that normalization depends upon.

Q5: The author is a Kashmiri Muslim woman visiting Pandit friends. How does her specific identity and approach (as a friend, not a journalist) make this testimony uniquely powerful and what does it suggest about the agents of potential healing?

A5: Afshana’s identity and approach are central to the essay’s power. As a Kashmiri Muslim, she is not an external observer but a constituent part of the shared past and the fractured present. Her visit is an act of reaching across a communal divide not out of professional duty, but personal memory. This allows for a vulnerability and intimacy that formal journalism or political dialogue rarely achieves. The Pandit friends open up not to a reporter, but to “Syeda,” someone who understands the cultural shorthand, for whom the food carried the same stories. Her role as a witness—a compassionate, listening presence from the “other side”—is itself a small act of healing. It suggests that the primary agents of potential healing will not be politicians or diplomats alone, but rather the “first persons” of the conflict: the ordinary individuals, the old friends, the cultural practitioners, the women who manage households and memories. Healing will be micro-social before it is macro-political. It will happen in living rooms, over meals, in whispered condolences, and in the courageous decision, like Afshana’s, to seek out the “other” not to debate history, but to silently acknowledge a shared, familiar ache. This bottom-up, human-to-human empathy is the indispensable mortar for rebuilding any shattered society.