ARE you finally going home?’’ someone asked. Why else would anyone travel to the kitschy, dirty, sleepy but daunting city of Jammu. It’s been home to my parents and extended Kashmiri Pandit family for at least 17 years now. Home for me, though, is just where the house is.

A few things have definitely changed since my last visit in the wet winter of 2004. My brother has grown into a tentative pubescent, happily assimilated in the milieu. His ‘measures’ sounds more like the common street pronunciation of ‘meyers’; he spends his free time roaming around crowded bylanes on his modified Pulsar. He’s joined a ‘sure-shot capsule’ coaching class like millions of other star-struck small-town teenagers.

What bliss it is to be a part of the crowd. To be anyone and yet be everyone, than be someone and yet no one. I, on the other hand, haven’t always felt very comfortable with assimilation. I’ve known the pain of isolation, of being asked incredulously whether my family members actually cook meat on Shivratri. On the other hand, many aspects of Kashmiri life have penetrated local Dogra lives. Every week, many households, without ever giving it much thought, relish their nandroo—a corruption of the Kashmiri nadur (lotus stem).

My grandfather still reads his morning newspapers after morning tea, dressed in a phiran (a local long robe worn in winters), sitting in the drawing room. How painful it must have been to be dislodged from the land of his forefathers, to abandon a dream four-storey wooden house on a mountain slope overlooking the Dal Lake and the Nishat gardens; a dream which had, among other things, trees of apple, walnut and the glorious warm-hued chinar. It was a dream destroyed for a myth: the myth of a nation, of religion, as opposed to the truth of common ethnicity and heritage. Yet here he is, as unconcerned as he always was. Life to him is basking in the glorious winter sun on the verandah, chewing cheap apples and sipping cups of kahwa.

I spend much of my time in mum’s kitchen discussing the ingenuity with which my late naani (her mother) paired matsch (aromatic balls of minced mutton) with ripe alubukharas (plums), or her mastery of Hokhgard Ta Bum (dried river fish with water lily stems). At the dining table, remnants of the Rogan Josh (fiery red mutton curry) pile up, Tsaman Qaliya (paneer in a milky gravy) catches me at the throat and the matschgand litters my plate. Then there’s the humble Muj Chatin (grated mooli with yoghurt and pudina) and the green-gold kahwa (not to be confused with the Ethiopian Qahwah).

Our bookshelves hold a voluminous edition called Kashmiri Cookbook by one of my great grand-uncles. The book repeatedly reiterates the difference between Kashmiri Pandit and Muslim cooking. The former makes extensive use of asafoetida, or hing, while the latter uses onions and pran (local shallots) along with the cockscomb flower for colour. How shall I describe the taste of asafoetida? Musky and multilayered, fit to be an unguent of the Gods. But beyond the divisive ingredients, the kangri (a Kashmiri clay pot used in winters for warmth), the inherited tolerance, the music of the tumbaknaer (a drum) and common ancestors, unite all Kashmiris.

I catch up with some of my school buddies and travel around the city on a bike. I visit the dilapidated fort of Mubarak Mandi, which now houses the local courts and police bunkers. What a price to pay for our heritage! A symbol of the old Dogra city of Jammu is now a spitoon for pot-bellied lawyers. Meanwhile, a tall and sturdy villager makes his way up the treacherous hillside below the court with his evening pile of firewood. What a contrast between him and the armed so-called saviours. We later go to the Tawi riverbed, now a mosaic of sand and gravel, and I practise my newly acquired photography skills on the local herdsman.

I also travel north to the hill resort of Patnitop and further still to the quiet green settlement of Batote. There are no apple blossoms on the trees; perhaps I’ve come a little too late. The mighty Shivaliks penetrate my senses with their massiveness. I lie on the grass and store my share of the warm mid-morning sun.