That Night When Moon Had Blood Clots

When Indian president Mr. Ramnath Kovind decided to revoke the special status to Jammu and Kashmir, given by Article 370 of the Indian Constitution on 5th August, 2019, it not only led to the abrogation of the article but also bifurcated Jammu-Kashmir and Ladakh into two union territories, unifying it with India for good. This decision was met with extreme anger by certain section of population and usual suspects, however remaining majority of the Indian citizens transcending states, religions, cultures and languages were overjoyed, some even remarked that they never expected to see this landmark decision ever to be made in their lifetime. Amongst those joyful, were a community who’ve been living in exile in their own country for the last three decades. They were none other than Kashmiri Pandit community.
Not that I purposefully remained oblivious to Kashmiri Pandit exodus, I didn’t. But my knowledge was massively limited to an extent that it was never part of any mainstream media discourse. I clearly remember, while growing up, never coming across people who spoke in detail, reading or hearing much of it until I’d gotten more active on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter in the past few years and that’s when I began to discover the gravity of this heartbreakingly over-looked tragedy that altered the definition of ‘secularism’ and continues to be swept under the rug in the fear of getting accused for being politically incorrect or a ‘communal bigot’.
Triggered by the abrogation, my curiosity to know more about the community increased multiple fold. And my curiosity lead to Rahul Pandita’s ‘Our Moon Has Blood Clots’, an immensely admired book strongly and mandatorily recommended by a very dear friend of mine, with whom I share a close bond with, who also hails from Srinagar and understands the internal struggle of Kashmir politics with deeply personal experience. In ‘Our Moon Has Blood Clot’, Rahul Pandita, a Kashmiri Pandit, recounts not only the tragic hounding of his family, who were forced, by blood thirsty militants, to flee their beautifully built home in Srinagar only to live in exile in their own country, but also murder of his loving cousin Ravi, at the hands of militants; in addition to the history of Jammu and Kashmir.
I ordered ‘Our Moon Has Blood Clot’ from Amazon, received it after fifteen days. and completed reading it in a week, and I must admit that night I stood awake and traumatized to even realize how frightening 19th January 1990 was, which was nothing but a manifestation of religious radicalism that was sowed many years ago post 1947’s Indian independence. I tend to visualize scenarios while reading and every brutal incident, I read, sent chill down my spine. Inhumanity has existed ever since the inception of human lives so humans being cruel to fellow humans is sadly not news to me. Every time Rahul described the macabre series of Kashmiri Pandit’s murder, I found myself questioning humanity and worse, the humanity of those people who, even today due to their highly biased mindset, has the nerves to deny the exodus with such terrifying confidence as if they don’t matter at all.
Be it Rahul’s warring internal thoughts when displaced, his mother’s deteriorating emotional and physical health, the bond he shared with his family esp. his paternal grandfather and his cousin, everything struck chord with me. I connected with Rahul in such a profound manner that I wanted to dive deep into the book and give his 14-year-old being a big comforting hug, and reassure him that I hear him, and I have his back and he’s not alone in this battle although I belong to a different part of the country. Our Moon Has Blood Clots is a book that will always linger my memory forever and remind me to be emphatic.
Before I could read Rahul’s book, I was done with Elie Wiesel’s ‘Night’, a book where Elie — as a holocaust survivor, wrote about his experiences surviving the filth of concentration camp in Auschwitz, when he was 12, witnessed losing his family, which is heart-wrenching in itself. Both tragedies cannot be compared, and shouldn’t be, however I couldn’t resist comparing how similar Elie Wiesel, a lovely man who left for heavenly abode on July 3rd 2016, and Rahul Pandita are. In spite of they being two completely different individuals belonging to two different world with different achievements that’s worth lauding, they somehow had similar outlook towards their life — They choose NOT to be a bitter person, roaring revenge while simultaneously keeping their pain afresh so that we do not forget the tragic past they endured and take a leaf out of their experiences and use it as a deterrent to prevent future violence against others on the basis of religion, race, sect, caste, gender, and sexual orientation.
Rahul Pandita, Elie Wiesel and the other survivors are gracious examples of how to be a better, mindfully flexible, emotionally compassionate human beings even at the face of adversity; Like Rahul profoundly stated many years ago during a debate in news studios,
‘I have lost my home, not my humanity’.
I would end this write up with Elie’s most important quote that needs to be internalized by every human beings because not only I truly believe it but also feel it can bring change when we consistently stick to it.
“When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.”
