The Last Mirror – A Kashmiri Mother’s Tale
It was Room No. 203 at Bee Enn Charitable Home on Canal Road, Jammu—a modestly appointed chamber with an air-conditioner humming gently, a ceiling fan turning slowly above, and a calendar from 2020 still pinned to the wall.
This was where Leelawati Kaul, aged eighty-three, had lived for the past five years. Alone. In silence. Surrounded by routines and faces that changed every few months, but whose names she seldom remembered.
Her bed was always neatly made. Her steel trunk sat against the corner, filled with pressed saris, old black-and-white photographs, a prayer book, and a pouch of dry lavender that still carried the faint scent of her old home in Habba Kadal, Srinagar.
Leelawati was not the only one here. The Bee Enn Charitable Home had quietly become the unintended shelter of a whole generation of migrant Kashmiri Pandit elders.
Those who had been uprooted in 1990 and had since scattered like torn pages from a forgotten manuscript.
There was Pushkar Nath Bhat, once a lecturer in Political Science in Sopore, now confined to a wheelchair and barely able to remember his own lectures.
There was Sheela Razdan, whose husband was a priest at a Shaivite temple in Pulwama.
She barely spoke now, except to whisper verses of Lal Vakhs under her breath, eyes closed, as if invoking her home with every breath.
And Bhushan Pandita, a retired bank officer, who used to hum old Raj Kapoor songs until dementia made even that melody drift away.
All had one thing in common……..
Children who had moved on, willingly or circumstantially. Most were in Canada, the US, Delhi, or Pune.
They paid the bills. Sent clothes during Diwali. Maybe even called once every three or four months. But the voice of presence was absent.
Leelawati’s days passed like slow shadows across the floor.
Each morning, Kamlesh, the caretaker, came to bathe her, change her clothes, and place a warm cup of tea on the table.
Kamlesh had grown fond of her, though she tried to hide it. “Chup rehna seekh lo, Amma,” she once said, teasingly.
“You’re the only one here who still scolds like a schoolteacher.”
Leelawati smiled faintly. She had taught for thirty-seven years at a girls’ school in Anantnag.
Her voice had once commanded classrooms. Now, it barely reached the corridor.
Her favourite time of day was the late afternoon, just before sunset, when she would sit on the plastic chair near the window, holding an old mirror in her hand—a gift from her late husband, Raghunath.
She would look at herself—not just at the wrinkles and thinning skin—but through herself. Into memories.
She would whisper,
“Raghunath, remember our garden? The apricot tree? Pooja playing with her dolls in the shade?”
And then she’d chuckle,
“She once said she’d never leave me. She left first.”
No one ever truly leaves the valley. Not in memory. Not in the bones.
Leelawati’s speech was still peppered with Kashmiri phrases. Her lullabies, though now whispered to herself, carried the fragrance of saffron and snow.
She had three children—two sons and a daughter.
Akhil, the elder son, was a software engineer in Toronto. He had insisted on placing her in Bee Enn. “It’s better for you, Ma.
You’ll have medical care. Routine. People your age. You’ll like it,” he said on the call five years ago. He hadn’t visited since.
Ajay, the younger one, was in Gurgaon. He would call once every two months. His wife never came on the line.
And Pooja, her daughter, had married into a wealthy Marwari family in Jaipur. Pooja had loved her mother deeply once—but love, Leelawati had learned, was often a seasonal river. It dried up quietly.
One day, a nurse entered with a letter. Not an email. Not a printed form. A real, hand-written letter.
Leelawati’s fingers trembled as she opened it. It was from Ira, her granddaughter—Ajay’s eldest.
“Dearest Amma,
Papa doesn’t talk much about Kashmir. But I found your picture with Pooja maasi in a yellow saree and a garden behind you.
I want to know you. I’ve taken a semester break. I’m coming to Jammu to meet you. I want to stay. Love, Ira.”
For the first time in years, Leelawati cried—not out of grief, but out of a rediscovered identity.
Someone remembered. Someone cared. Someone was willing to return.
Ira arrived that winter.
She brought almond biscuits, a box of tapes of Kashmiri music, and a camera.
She sat at her grandmother’s feet for hours, listening, asking, recording, and absorbing.
She took photos of the mirror, of the courtyard, of her grandmother’s hands.
They laughed together. They cried in the evenings. Ira even took Leelawati in a wheelchair to Shiv Mandir in Canal Road, where the old woman joined the evening aarti for the first time in years.
Before she left, Ira said, “Amma, this is not goodbye. I’ll be back. And next time, I want to record your songs too.”
The mirror still sat on Leelawati’s table.
But now, beside it was a printed photo of her and Ira, both smiling, their faces brushing each other like autumn leaves against wind.
The mirror no longer reflected only loss. It now bore witness to memory reclaimed, even if fleeting.
Around her, many others still waited.
Waited for letters that never came.
For voices that wouldn’t return.
For children whose success had demanded sacrifice—the slow fading away of the people who had built their lives, one compromise at a time.
They weren’t bitter. They had accepted their irrelevance in the grand tide of progress.
But what lingered in their eyes was not anger—it was a silent ache.
A cry muffled not by weakness, but by dignity
In the courtyard of Bee Enn Charitable Home, the autumn sun lays a golden sheet over worn-out benches, dry marigold petals, and the silence of a generation that gave up its roots for the survival of its children.
What the world calls a “care facility” is sometimes nothing more than a gentle waiting room for the forgotten.
These elders are not just aging—they are witnesses of an uprooted civilization, especially the Kashmiri Pandits who lost not only their homes, but their place in their children’s lives.
And the society we live in?
It has become a circumstantial holocaust—not with fire or guns, but with neglect, dislocation, and the warm, smiling indifference of progress.
It is a holocaust that doesn’t scream—it whispers in tears not seen, in letters never written, and in mirrors that reflect more memory than hope.
And those who built this world?
They sit silently now, waiting—not for miracles, but for the next voice that says,
“I remember.”
Rajender Koul
Rajender Koul, a resident of Talab Tillo, Jammu, is a retired officer from the State Bank of India. After decades of his first innings and very dedicated service in the banking sector, he now enjoys his second innings in the quiet rhythms of retired life. A keen observer of people and the world around him, Rajender Koul, has turned to writing as a way to reflect, create and reconnect with life’s deeper meanings. He spends his leisure time crafting short stories and capturing memories, experiences and moments that often go unnoticed in the everyday hustle. Through his thoughtful storytelling, he seeks to preserve personal and collective journeys of spiritual growth, humane love, loss, resilience and hope. Prayers and blessings a support to the world of ours we live. Jai Bhagwan ji
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