Every winter, ever since she was born, she descended on our Gurgaon nest like a migratory bird from the frozen turbulence of Srinagar, like the first rays of sunshine that follows darkness at dawn. Her parents -- friends and family to us across three generations through four decades and running -- call her Fajr.
We call her Jaan.
And so, for all her nine years that she's been around, nobody ever dared lift a finger at FajrJaan, our god-child from the Valley that's come to inhabit our collective mindspace as a no-man's land created by the follies of human hatred dividing 'you' from 'us' and the othering of the other.
Not so, for Fajr, the stormy petrel in our lives who unfailingly took pleasure at scribbling across Zara's text books and rummaging through Nandita's cosmetics at will. And in eating up every square of the chocolates nonstop that Mona didi stacked in the fridge to dole out one bite at a time.
And so went life... winter followed by next winter, year after year.
And now comes winter once more...
And we pack up to desert our nest...
And migrate across deserts, farms, seas... And over clouds...
To nest in a faraway land.
Jaan got wind of us taking flight this weekend.
And there was no turning her back.
Fajr Jaan, our heart throb, and God's best gift to us, forced an early morning flight out of her vale, dropping out of her term tests, to spend these last few days at home, in Gurgaon, with her family undivided by hatred and the othering of the other in the quest for freedom, and the partition of souls between This God And That!
Small wonder then, we are carrying a drop of Fajr in our eyes.
Because, there's never going to be enough of Fajr..
Because, there's never going to be another Jaan!
Back to Essays