Col Tej K Tikoo
Name of Book : Searching For Yemberzal’
Author: Zitien Tickoo
‘Searchng For Yemberzal’ is authored by 15-year-old Kashmiri girl, Zitien Tickoo, and published by ‘The Write Order’, Bengaluru.
This wonderfully written small novel, just over 90 pages long, is the latest additionto ‘Exodus Literature’. What makes this book rather special is the poignant narration of the events just before the exodus of Yemberzal’s own family, written from the perspective of a young teenager, with all her innocence and purity.The deep fissures the violence and uprooting of her own family and her close relatives created on the young mind of Yemberzal(Kashmiri name for daffodils), the protagonists of the novel,is so effortlessly recounted that the reader himself becomes part of the dreadful happenings and the unfolding of an unprecedented tragedy.The sorrowful events are written with utmost felicity, without being judgmental, mainly becauseYemberzal, at that tender age, could barely understand the politics of it all. The anguish and pathos that the writer portrays, particularly of the events between September 1989 and January 1990, makes a lasting impact on the reader, as the world around her is torn apart, suddenly, and swiftly. The horrific events, as these unfold in front of Yemberzal and her younger sister,Shehlat, turn their own small worlds upside down. The unbelievable scenes of shrieks, shock, and anguished cries of people in lane after lane that greeted the two sisters returning from school could hardly be comprehendby the young children. It was only a little later that they understood the enormity of the tragedy when they overheard groups of people talking in hushed tones about the killing of Tika Lal Taploo on September 14, 1989. The benumbing shock that the children experienced, provides a peep into the minds of little girls when confronted with such senseless violence of unimaginable proportions.
The frequency of such incidents, more violent than the one preceding it,now occurredevery day at some place or the other, with each such event getting closer to their own family. One day it is burning down of a school, while on another day, a shopkeeper is asked to close his business and flee for his own safety. WhenYemberzal’s own close-knit familyis confronted by a news item in a local Daily in which the radical Islamists clearly ask the Pandits to leave the Valley at the earliest or be prepared to convert or get killed, the reality starts dawning on them; this is what their elders had been heard speaking about- Raliv, Galiv, Tscaliv.
Yemberzal and Shehlat’s mother makes great efforts to restore calm in the agitated minds of the young girls, assuring them that the situation will normalize in a few days and they need not worry. But the children are far from being calmed,as they see the situation deteriorating with every passing day, with their own eyes. Eventually, even the mother gives up thepretenseas her own brother decides to flee after he receives death threat.His fleeing Kashmir so suddenly deals a deathly blow to whatever was left of the children and the mother’s resolve to stick on. From then on, it was only a matter of time before the family too decided to bolt.
Zitien, with her imaginative writing style and flowing prose,painfully describes the conflict raging in her own young mind as it becomes abundantly clear to her and every member of her family that their days in Kashmir, their home for all their lives, are now numbered. The very thought of abandoning their home, their beloved daffodils, which bloomed in their garden, their numerous friends, their school, their home containing a million memories, makes her sick, literally so.The last nail in the coffin, as the adage goes, was driven-in when someone repeatedly jumped over the wall of her lawn, not once but twice, and pasted a leaflet. As she read the leaflet, her heart came to her mouth with fear and apprehension, pounding uncontrollably; this time it was a warning to her and to the inmates of her house to flee from Kashmir: Raliv, Galiv, Tscaliv.And to make matters worse for her, the warning came around the Night of January 19, 1989; the night that Kashmiri Pandits will never forget.
The disastrous impact that such events have had on young minds is aptly summed up by the teenage author in the title of the book itself,Searching for Yemberzal. The main protagonist of the novel, Yemberzal, the elder of the two sisters, is searching for the lost daffodils,meaning Kashmir, while at the same time, she is also trying to search for her own identity; an identity that was stolen by the radical Islamists.
15-year-old Zitien, the author of this wonderful book, is a three times winner of English Olympiad and therefore, it was no surprise that I had to consult the dictionary often enough to understand the meaning of some of the words that embellish the vocabulary of the book.
Incidentally, Zitien is the great granddaughter of a prominent Kashmiri Pandit of Habba Kadal, Late Shyam Lal Tickoo and granddaughter of well-known Kashmiri Pandit social activist, Dr Usha Tickoo and her husband, Sh. Chaman Lal Tickoo, the owner of a famous Education institute in Jammu.
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