A plan to loot

Fresh are those childhood memories and I can still picture my classmate’s father (an uprooted Kashmiri) playing with him on my school playground. Every afternoon, during lunch break, he would come to the school to enjoy lunch with his son, would go through his notebooks, play with him and both father-son would be in a different world, talking a language (Kashmiri) which most of us didn’t understand in the plains (Jammu) in the early 90’s. Our fathers grew up in a different time, when a man was expected to show little or no emotion. Their bonding was admirable and like my classmate, even I used to wait to see a perfect father-son or rather an older and a younger friend, playing together with no inhibitions, sharing lunch and then those endless talks, as though they were running against time to finish all their talking. Lesser did my classmate know that one day when he would enter into his dad’s shoes to share much beyond his innocent talks, someone known would kill him. So small is this world and keeping in touch with him through social networking sites, I asked him about his “daddy cool” one day, to which he said someone killed him for “money” and for “house”. Last month, as reported on November 29: “Assistant director, department of economics and statistics was murdered by a gardener of horticulture department at Miran Sahib (Jammu). According to police, deceased Ashok Kichloo, had cordial relations with the gardener, Chander Bhan, who used to drive his vehicle. Chander went to Kichloo’s house and urged him to accompany him to hospitalise the ailing villager. On the way, the driver dragged Kichloo out of his vehicle and killed him. He went to Kichloo’s house and told his wife that the officer had fallen ill and was admitted to a hospital. Kichloo’s wife locked the house and went with the driver to the hospital. In the shocking state, she forgot the house keys in his car. The driver enacted a drama of car developing snag and advised her to take an auto. Later, he went to their house and looted gold ornaments. The accused, when arrested, said since Kichloo and his wife were earning well, he planned to loot them.” I had seen Kichloo’s father built his “home” again from the ashes of their memories of migration from Kashmir. I was shocked to know the “bonding” I had seen growing deeper, the great father-son relation, for which I still feel strongly about, has been murdered for money and house? As rightly said any man can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a dad and my heart goes out to the “daddy” with whom I never shared. It is perhaps not flesh and blood, but the heart which makes us fathers, sons and daughters.