It began in the most unremarkable way, like many things in childhood do, without any sense that what I was seeing would stay with me for years, and yet, looking back now, I realize that what seemed ordinary at the time was quietly teaching me something I would only understand much later. My grandmother, my dadi amma, was a deeply conversational person, someone who carried within her a natural warmth, an ease with people that did not depend on shared backgrounds or formal introductions. She had a way of sitting with someone and, within minutes, dissolving the distance that usually exists between strangers. And yet, she knew only one language, Kashmiri, and that was the world she inhabited, the world she carried with her wherever she went.

In our neighborhood, there lived an elderly Hindu couple, known to everyone for their simplicity and quiet dignity. The husband, Bhagat Lal Chand, was a respected and sincere man, someone who spoke both Kashmiri and Sarazi, a local colloquial language, and who moved through life with a kind of grounded gentleness. His wife, however, spoke only Sarazi; she did not know Kashmiri at all, not even in fragments. And yet, over time, a quiet but deeply meaningful friendship formed between her and my grandmother. After my father’s passing, my grandmother came to live with us, and from that point on, my childhood unfolded largely in her presence, shaped in quiet but lasting ways by her personality, her stories, and her way of being with the world. She was not just someone who lived with us; she became, in many ways, the emotional and cultural center of that phase of my life.

She was a natural storyteller, and much of my childhood was carried along by those nightly moments when I would sleep beside her, waiting for what felt like the most anticipated part of the day. She seemed to carry within her memory hundreds of stories, and they flowed effortlessly, without pause or hesitation. There were stories of Shala Kaak, of Aziz Joo, of Himal Nagrai, and of many other characters whose names I may not fully remember now, but whose presence shaped my imagination in ways that have stayed with me. She did not read from a book, nor did she ever seem to search for the next line; the stories simply emerged, alive and complete, albeit with the added spice of her made-up humour, as though they had always been a part of her.

In many ways, she was the keeper of our family’s memory, a living archive of its past, its struggles, its peculiar characters, and its quiet inheritances. At the same time, she was a deeply strong and courageous woman, someone who had endured more than she ever chose to speak about openly, and yet carried herself with a quiet dignity and resilience that left a lasting impression on me. After my father’s passing, her health did begin to change, and she developed problems with her heart, but even then, there was something in her spirit that remained untouched, something that refused to be defined by illness or loss.

It was during those same years that her bond with that neighbor, the elderly woman who spoke only Sarazi, became something I began to notice more closely. They would sit together in the lawn for long stretches of time, often in the soft light of the afternoon or as evening quietly settled in, and they would talk, or at least, that is what it appeared to be. My grandmother would speak in Kashmiri, and the........

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