Memoirs from the Counter: “Kashmir Bank Branch”

The Valley of Beginnings to the Mass Exodus……

In 1990, everything changed. The one peaceful hum of life in the valley was shattered by slogans, threats, and a storm of fear that swept across our community like an unexpected lot blizzard. 

One moment I was a banker serving in a small but dignified branch at Bagati Kanipora, Budgam a familiar life filled with trust, community, and daily routine. 

The next, we were migrants in our own country, refugees away from homeland, huddled into a cramped room in Jammu with six members of my family, including my aging mother, Rani Ji.

She was a simple woman with a brave heart, but the sudden shock of uprooting broke something deep inside her. 

The vibrant glow she once carried dimmed as she sat quietly most days, staring out of the window as if trying to find a path back to Kashmir in the dust-filled streets of Jammu.

Her sons, my two elder brothers including me  once together under one roof in Nai Sadak, Srinagar, were scattered across the country. 

One was sent to Bhubaneswar, another to a distant part of Uttar Pradesh, and I, too, was posted away from the family, back in Srinagar under a special  security arrangement of my Bank with the state security  agency under a special  migrant deputation scheme.

The bank offered us survival, but at a cost. We received only partial payments at first — a lump sum that barely lasted a month.

And then we had to re-register as KP migrants just to secure our regular salaries.

We escalated the” state of affairs ” with the highest apex authority of the bank after a long struggle of almost six months we were somehow  paid  our requisite amount not full salaries.

Those days were heavy with utter despair. We stood in long queues to register ourselves at Geeta Bhavan, mingling with faces equally weary, equally displaced. 

The process was endless — forms, signatures, counters, stamps — and none of it brought us immediate relief. 

We were told to present documents at various counters, from the Relief Commissioner’s office to Jagat Ram’s Gas Agency, and still, the system moved like a tired cart. 

But we learned to persevere. Every small victory — a ration card, a salary receipt, a gas connection — felt like reclaiming a piece of dignity.

Even admitting our children to these schools like DPS Jammu became a challenge. 

Endless forms, affidavits, and mere documents had to be produced, proving who we were and what we had lost.

We waited under the scorching Jammu sun, holding our children’s hands, determined that they would study, no matter what it cost us. 

Education became our only weapon, our only promise to the future.

Between Duty and Despair…..

The years after migration passed not in milestones, but in quiet endurance. Every day felt like a repetition of the last — wake up, perform your duty, swallow your grief, and return to the same dim room where yesterday still lived. 

Professionally, I continued to serve the bank loyally, almost mechanically. 

My job, once a source of pride and identity in Kashmir, now became a lifeline. 

It was not just a means to support the family — it was a mask I wore to hide my despair.

In office, I was Mr. Koul, the banker calm, efficient, composed. But inside, I carried the wounds of loss and the burden of exile. 

The badge on my shirt couldn’t tell people that I was once a man of the valley, a son of saffron fields and snow-covered temples.

My mother, Rani Ji, turned diabetic, shockingly so, after the migration. Her health faltered, not due to age alone, but from the invisible wounds of displacement. 

She never complained not about the cramped room, the tasteless food, or the loneliness that wrapped around her like an old shawl. 

But I could see the change in her eyes. The spark had dimmed. She spoke less, smiled even less. Her memories of Kashmir became both her solace and her torment.

 She missed her two other sons, her daughters-in-law, her grandchildren — all separated by miles and shadowed helplessness.

When she passed away, it was a quiet afternoon. No drama. No last-minute confessions. She just faded like a candle that had burned long past its time. 

We performed her last rites with trembling hands. I remember looking at the fire and thinking — this is what exile truly means to burn far from your homeland, to turn to ash in borrowed soil.

But her spirit never left us. Even now, when I light a diya at home, I see her in the flicker steady, silent, and eternal.

The Longing to Return….

Years passed. The world outside changed — cell phones replaced letters, new roads replaced old trails, and Kashmir became a headline, not a homeland. 

But inside me, time did not move so fast. The part of me that had once been Rajender from Bagati Kanipora a proud young banker, son of the valley, dreamer of snow-filled mornings — still lived somewhere, tucked away, silent.

One year, I was invited to a week long  deputation, training session in my head office at M A Road, Srinagar. 

I just managed to took a short detour to our old mohalla. I didn’t tell it to anyone. I walked the streets like a stranger, unsure of what I was  thinking and seeking. 

The chinars at our childhood  play ground , the Goordemb, Taing’s hilltop playground still stood tall, but they had aged. 

The lanes were familiar but to me unfamiliar — the rhythm was broken, the names on the walls had changed.

I stood in front of our 116, Razdans house, at Nai Sadak,  old house or what remained of it.

Both the front gate were gone. The backside Aangun gate was damaged broken .

The windows were sealed. The walls were cracked. But the tap in the close corner of the roadside near our left extreme side shop was still there — older, leaner, but standing, like a sentinel of memory. 

I was reminded of how we filled many buckets of water from the same tap when the regular taps ran dry during summers.

The tailor’s shop, the barber’s shop, the medical shop — they all reminded me of how fast time had passed, and I wondered how the real self within me had endured. 

On my return to Jammu, I carried no souvenir, no stone, no leaf. Just silence. But something within me had changed.

I had finally faced the past — not to reclaim it, but to honour it. Exile had taken my land, but not my identity.

What We Leave Behind…..

As the years gathered behind me like old photographs, I often found myself thinking about what truly endures. 

Houses crumble. Documents fade. But stories — lived honestly and remembered faithfully — become our real inheritance.

Our children, born in exile, grew up hearing tales of a land they had never seen. 

They heard of snow that came like a blessing, of rivers that whispered prayers, of a culture where even the simplest food carried sacred meaning. 

But they also heard of fear, of sudden departures, of homes abandoned in a single night.

I told my children stories of their grandmother, Rani Ji,  — of how she once walked barefoot in the snow to fetch kerosene oil and charcoal for kangdis, of how she cried silently the day she left her kitchen behind. 

I told them how that same woman, frail and broken, still folded her hands before the gods every morning in our refugee room at Bakshi Nagar, never forgetting who she was.

As I began to write, it was not with ambition, but as an offering — stories of our people, of mothers who waited too long, and fathers who died with the house keys still under their pillows.

I wrote because we were becoming footnotes in our own story. And this someone had to remember — not just the pain, but the poetry of what was.

Today, when I sit alone with my old memories, I no longer feel bitter. I feel grateful. We survived what should have broken us. 

We lost homes, but we did not lose values. We lost land, but not faith. Let the next generation walk lighter because we carried the weight.

Grace Beyond Exile…..

And yet, through it all — through sorrow, suffering, and sleepless nights — there was always one silent companion. the grace of God. 

In the darkest winters of our exile, it was faith that kept the flame alive. When ration cards replaced dignity, when bureaucracy bruised our pride, when the world looked away, it was belief that whispered, “This too shall pass.”

Parenthood became a sacred duty not just to feed our children, but to shape them with the values of discipline, compassion, and resilience. 

We taught them to walk tall even when life bowed us down. We raised them not as victims of fate, but as witnesses of endurance. 

Today, as they stand on their own feet — educated, self-reliant, and morally strong — I see in them the continuation of our collective courage.

Our exile was never just a story of displacement it was a test of conviction.

We learned to build temples in tents, to celebrate festivals in borrowed courtyards, and to find hope in the ashes of despair.

We learned that God does not reside in any one place — He lives in the strength of the human spirit.

May the story of our struggle remind generations to come that while home can be lost, belonging cannot. 

We are, and always will be, children of the valley  the keepers of memory, the guardians of light.

With this the emotional reflection on divine grace, the parenthood, and the unbroken spirit of Kashmiri Pandits. We will take forward to our next generations always.

My Own Self and my memories with a depth has now been beautifully closed.

My longing resolute journey of memoir with strength and faith.