Our Moon Has Blood Clots Quotes

“During Aurangzeb’s rule, which lasted for forty-nine years from 1658 onwards, there were many phases during which Pandits were persecuted. One of his fourteen governors, Iftikhar Khan, who ruled for four years from 1671, was particularly brutal towards the community. It was during his rule that a group of Pandits approached the ninth Sikh Guru, Tegh Bahadur, in Punjab and begged him to save their faith. He told them to return to Kashmir and tell the Mughal rulers that if they could convert him (Tegh Bahadur), all Kashmiri Pandits would accept Islam. This later led to the Guru’s martyrdom, but the Pandits were saved.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“Another problem is the apathy of the media and a majority of India’s intellectual class who refuse to even acknowledge the suffering of the Pandits. No campaigns were ever run for us; no fellowships or grants given for research on our exodus. For the media, the Kashmir issue has remained largely black and white—here are a people who were victims of brutalization at the hands of the Indian state. But the media has failed to see, and has largely ignored the fact that the same people also victimized another”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“I’m on bridge, bridge is on water, bridge-bridge cancel, I’m on water.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“For most of us, Kashmir means a calendar hanging in our parents’ bedroom, or a mutton dish cooked in the traditional way on Shivratri, or a cousin’s marriage that the elders insist must be solemnized in Jammu. A”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“Vidyam deehe Saraswati.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“Another problem is the apathy of the media and a majority of India’s intellectual class who refuse to even acknowledge the suffering of the Pandits.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“Sometimes it is best to leave things ambiguous, suspended, so that some hope remains.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“I remember the day when I realized I had no memory of her voice. That morning I had been reading the newspapers like I did everyday. I would read a report or two, and Ma would point out advertisements of houses for sale. There were many of them.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“During the rule of another governor, Atta Muhammad Khan, Lawrence writes: Any Musalman who met a Pandit would jump on his back, and take a ride.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“One of his fourteen governors, Iftikhar Khan, who ruled for four years from 1671, was particularly brutal towards the community. It was during his rule that a group of Pandits approached the ninth Sikh Guru, Tegh Bahadur, in Punjab and begged him to save their faith. He told them to return to Kashmir and tell the Mughal rulers that if they could convert him (Tegh Bahadur), all Kashmiri Pandits would accept Islam. This later led to the Guru’s martyrdom, but the Pandits were saved.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“Sir V.S. Naipaul, for his eternal lines: ‘The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“How can you say that?' he barked. 'It is they who have forced you out of your homes, turning you into refugees.' I looked him in the eye and said: 'General, I've lost my home, not my humanity.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits

“Navin Sapru’s friend, the poet and writer Maharaj Krishan Santoshi, wrote a poem on his death. In ‘Naveen my friend’, Santoshi writes:
Naveen was my friend
Killed he was, in Habba Kadal
while on the tailor’s hanger remained hung
his warm coat.
Passing as it did through scissors and thread–needle
in the tailor’s hand, till the previous day
it was merely a person’s coat
that suddenly was turned into a Hindu’s coat

In the last stanza the poet writes:

I used to ask him every time
why doesn’t he possess the cunningness of Srinagar
I still await his response
My friend! Yes, I changed my address
since after your murder
it ceased to exist
the bridge of friendship, this Habba Kadal”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits

“path, sochan osus phone karay—I swear by Allah, I was thinking”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“For most of us, Kashmir means a calendar hanging in our parents' bedroom, or a mutton dish cooked in the traditional way on Shivratri, or a cousin's marriage that the elders insist must be solemnized in Jammu.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits

“it. But, sometimes, when I’m angry at the TV shows where our murderers speak about our return, I do. On its front page is a picture of Ravi’s mutilated face. The blood from his nose—the result of a blow from the butt of a Kalashnikov—has dried up. His forehead still looks beautiful and clear, and so does his moustache that I had wanted to imitate when I was young.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir