Jan 19, 1990 – Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits
I read Rahul Pandita’s moving book “Our Moon Has Blood Clots” and here’s an excerpt of what happened on this day ….Life Review – Our Moon Has Blood Clots
On January 19, 1990 I was in Vizag, on my way to NIIT where I was a faculty, looking forward to another happy day at work, while you and other Kashmiri Pandits were listening to this –
“It was then that a long drawl tore through the murmurs, and with the same force the loudspeaker began to hiss. ‘Naara-e-taqbeer, Allah ho Akbar!’
I looked at my father; his face was contorted. He knew only too well what the phrase meant. I had heard it as well, in a stirring drama telecast a few years ago on Doordarshan, an adaptation of Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas, a novel based on the events of the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan. It was the cry that a mob of Muslim rioters shouted as it descended upon Hindu settlements. It was a war cry. Within a few minutes, battle cries flew at us from every direction.
They rushed towards us like poison darts.
Hum kya chaaaahte: Azadiiii! Eiy zalimon, eiy kafiron, Kashmir humara chhod do. What do we want—Freedom! O tyrants, O infidels, leave our Kashmir.”
What a contrast.. am sure millions of Indians on that day were just going about their lives normally while you all were being hounded out of your homes. With no 24/7 cable TV and 100s of news channels “breaking news”, it was just another day for the rest of India. The enormity of what was happening in Kashmir was not even felt elsewhere. I wonder if the same could have happened just 10 years later …. probably not, because by then there was “live” news. Couldn’t destiny wait for just ten years ?
For the first time after independence, Kashmir is irrevocably a part of India as it should be. Just praying that the Pandits who left in 1990, return to their homes. They are no longer refugees in their motherland.
Jan 19, 1990 – Osho’s Mahaparinirvana
The Master of Masters left his body and merged with the Cosmos, even as the Kashmiri Pandits started on their exodus. I look up as I write this and see my beloved Master smiling down from a life-size poster in my living room ….
A long time Sannyasin of Osho Swami Anand Arun wrote this beautiful piece – Remembering Osho on his Mahaparinirvana Day.
About death – in Osho’s words
This is excerpted from Osho’s discourses titled “And the Flowers Showered”. Link to the transcript – And the Flowers Showered Discourse Number 5 – Is he dead?
“When somebody dies it is really something very deep happening. If you can just sit there and meditate many things will be revealed to you. Questioning is foolish. When death is there, why not meditate? Questioning may be just a trick to avoid the thing, it may be just a safety measure so as not to look at death directly.”
“You have to be silent. If you can be silent when death is there you will suddenly see many things, because death is not just a person stopping breathing. Many things are happening. When a person dies, his aura starts subsiding. If you are silent you can feel it – – an energy force, a vital energy field, subsiding, getting back to the centre.”
“Many things start happening around a dead man. If he loved a person very deeply, that means he had given a part of his life energy to that person, and when a person dies, immediately that part that he had given to another person leaves that person and moves to the dead man. If you die here and your lover lives in Hong Kong, something will leave your lover immediately — because you have given a part of your life and that part will come back to you.
That’s why when a loved one dies you feel that something has left you also, something in you has died also. A deep wound, a deep gap will exist now.
Whenever a lover dies, something in the beloved also dies, because they were deeply involved with each other. And if you have loved many, many people — for example, if a person like Dogo dies, or a buddha — from all over the universe energy moves back to the center.
It is a universal phenomenon because he is involved in many many lives, millions of lives, and from everywhere his energy will come back. The vibrations that he has given to many will leave, they will move to the original source, they will become again a concentration near the navel.”
“If you watch you will feel ripples coming back in a reverse order, and when they are totally concentrated in the navel, you can see a tremendous energy, a tremendous light- force. And then that center leaves the body. When a man ‘dies’, that is simply a stopping of the breath, and you think he is dead. He is not dead; that takes time.
Sometimes, if the person has been involved in millions of lives, it takes many days for him to die — that’s why with sages, with saints, particularly in the East, we never burn their bodies. Only saints are not burned; otherwise everybody is burned, because others’ involvement is not so much. Within minutes the energy gathers, and they are no more part of this existence.
But with saints, the energy takes time. Sometimes it goes on and on — that’s why if you go to Shirdi, to Sai Baba’s town, you will still feel something happening, still the energy goes on coming; he is so much involved that for many people he is still alive. Sai Baba’s tomb is not dead. It is still alive. But the same thing you will not feel near many tombs — they are dead. By ‘dead’ I mean they have accumulated all their involvement, they have disappeared.”
Jan 19, 1990 is a tremendously significant day in India’s history. On this day the Exodus of Kashmiri Pandits happened & Osho left his body. Both momentous and life altering events. Its a fascinating coincidence that 31 years later, the Indian cricket team chose this day to script a historic win at the Gabba. Life is full of such fascinating, mind boggling coincidences !!