105th Post - “Our Moon Has Blood Clots” by Rahul Pandita

105^th Post - “Our Moon Has Blood Clots” by Rahul Pandita

It takes me almost a calendar week to write out this review. Almost, the same time I took to complete this book. And, I still have a lump in my throat when I started to pen this review. Because I didn't know from where I've to start and at where I've to make an end.

The moment when I opened the book to read, my eyes rest on very first lines and my eyes feel moist. I was in deep thought by reading those first lines and assumed that it'd be going a very great read and it was with a great effort that I kept reading. But, after a while, it becomes too painful to continue. Even turning a page seems like a herculean task. I feel drained both emotionally and physically. But, I continued and continued....and - Finally, I had done sheer the book “Our Moon Has Blood Clots” by Rahul Pandita. The book is very very powerful and persuasive and moves with every peculiar word. Undoubtedly, Mr. Pandita has amazed with his pen-down capability – with every word and every paragraph and it took me so long [ almost six days ] to finale a 256 page book because I want to read every page once again. Merely I don't know why ? But I wants to read and think about every sentence again and again.

The book is all about the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits community from the Kashmir Valley in the Indian state of J&K during period of 1985 – 1995 and describe a broad view of exodus events that had been occurred during two agonized decades – That was the time when the people of a very appealing place [ It is said that Kashmir is so beautiful that even the Gods are jealous of this paradise ] were given three choices, if they wants to live – they've to convert, or to flee [ if they had chance ] or to die. Each time many perished and many more displaced – each with a saga of untold misery – all in all they were deserted by their own and by their own Gods. The book is a collection of many outcomes and can be split-ed in three major parts. The first part tells us about the life in Kashmir pre-exodus. And then slowly, portents of the exodus started showing up on their doorsteps, literally. The third part tells the story of the exiled families, how they cope with the drastically changed situation. The new living conditions were deplorable.

With the very first part of the book the author begins by giving a small intro to the Kashmir’s rich cultural and literary history, He describes Kashmir for the people who don't know and once when the reader are mentally in Kashmir he began every story of Kashmir that happened within Kashmir – how people are tortured and eliminated, how women were raped and how the children orphaned. There are some shocking incidents that reading alone will shock you and make you shiver - ::

1. Like a cricket match between India and West Indies in Srinagar and the whole ground had Pakistan flags fluttering and Indian players being booed and shouted expletives at or in a planned militancy attack a guy named Vinod Dhar’s 23 member family was brutally murdered while he was just 14 years old and the lone survivor in his family.

2. The Benazir Bhutto’s speech “Kashmiriyon ki ragon mein Mujahideen aur Ghaziyon ka khoon hai and they will drive out the infidels (Hindus) aur har eik gaanv se eik hi aawaz buland hogi: Azaadi! Har eik masjid se ek hi awaaz buland hogi azaadi! Har ek school se bacha bacha bolega: Azaadi, Azaadi, Azaadi!” which was later followed by the incident in which the chants of “Allah ho Akbar” and cries of “Azaadi” grew louder from the every Mosque as the people marched towards the homes of Kashmiri Pandits in a planned attempt to get rid of them. Even when the most of the people don't know the actual significant of that comely word “AZADI” (Freedom).

3. One recollection of the author where his mother clutches a knife and says she will first kill her daughter and then herself – that hit me very hard and emotionally. Being a human, It truly need a courage to speak out those lines and being a parent – it is a logistical nightmare to spoke out those blood-stained lines and it needs a literal hooligan courage [ somehow that incident prompts the days of partition ].

4. In one of his paragraph as Pandita says – There are many immigrants in Delhi, but they have a home to go back to, I have nowhere to go back to.

5. “But, we only lost our homeland, never our humanity. And that is the sole reason of our existence. We may still be a minority, but we continue to live a prosperous life because we did not treat anybody else the way we were treated” – the line told by Pandita's father to him, when he returned back after listening RSS public lecture and with a chesty nature to take revenge from Muslim's.

This book comes as one of the finest exile literature about the word “Exodus”. It is not just the author story, besides; its story of every human being who ever have had been sustained through that phase of exodus at any stage of his or her life. The author has aptly tried to depict the absolute pain of an exiled community. The author had tried very hard to pen-down a clearly, honestly, and with no intent to tar the minority community and succeeded to tell a story as simple as it can be. He narrated every character and every scene as real and as it happened in actual. I hope that the Muslims ( if they ever read this finest art ) must acknowledge to themselves that hidden in their stories of victimization are the brutal stories of these victims. The brutality flew with every para, every sentence and with every peculiar word.

This book not lonesome gives the aspect of tragic conflicts that happened in a civilized country “India” besides, it depicts a world, which we called “MODERN” and the tragic that go on every moment – based on religion, gender, caste, creed and many more. The psychological and physical impact of the exodus on people leaves a scar that may take many generations to heal, if at all it heals. Description of some of the killings is so gruesome that it can make you sad for many days and one of think-worth line pen down in book is – In “The Murderers Are Among Us”, Simon Wiesenthal writes - “However this war may end, we have won the war against you; none of you will be left to bear witness, but even if someone were to survive, the world would not believe him.”

Well, If someone ask me to describe the content of this beauteous art in a sentence, I'd like to write below one - ::

“It had been an epoch passed since the first human being was calved and when I go out to discover what a human being achieved during those long eons of time I discover heretofore – a human being is still carrying the burden of two all-important quandaries of life – “How to live?” and “How to let live?”.

In this speedy race of life,
We forgot how to live a life,

We are prison of our own nous,

We are prison of our own bosom,

We all are running behind,

A chaos, that has no end,

A Human is who stands is only a human,

We need to understand, humanity as a religion,

As, there is one God or there is no God,

As, the God is love and the love is God,

Humanity - there is nothing else down here or above,
Let's begin a new way of life with love and care.

I'd like to say to read this book only for a single reason of hope and trust and certainty that the author had not given up and concluded his words in the last as, “I will come again. I promise there will be come a time when I WILL RETURN PERMANENTLY”.

And, after completing this book, I was only able to understand why the director Vidhu Vinod Chopra requested him to grant the copyright and asked him to pen-down a script.

“Kudos to Rahul Pandita.”

About Author - :

Rahul Pandita was fourteen years old in 1990 when he was forced to leave his home in Srinagar along with his family, who were Kashmiri Pandits: the Hindu minority within a Muslim majority Kashmir that was becoming increasingly agitated with the cries of ‘Azadi’ from India. The heartbreaking story of Kashmir has so far been told through the prism of the brutality of the Indian state, and the pro-independence demands of separatists. Our Moon Has Blood Clots is the unspoken chapter in the story of Kashmir, in which it was purged of the Kashmiri Pandit community in a violent ethnic cleansing backed by Islamist militants. Hundreds of people were tortured and killed, and about 3,50,000 Kashmiri Pandits were forced to leave their homes and spend the rest of their lives in exile in their own country. The title of the book is taken from a poem of Pablo Neruda that the author quotes in the beginning of the book ‘...and an earlier time when the flowers were not stained with blood, the moon had blood clots!’ and Indeed “Our moon has blood clots.”

Cheers!

Dhitendra

Keep Smiling :-)