Whenever I see kohl-lined eyes, I am reminded of Latif Lone wearing a pathani suit on his well-built body. Latif looked at you, his eyes rimmed with kohl, and the world looked more beautiful.  

Those days there was no cable television and Doordarshan was as insipid as it is now. So the only entertainment in the Kashmir valley came from the antenna, fitted in the attic, shooting through the tin roof. Thanks to that, we saw serials on Pakistan Television.

My uncle’s son Ravi, who was our neighbour, had installed an antenna with a long handle on his verandah in the first floor of his house. The weather often played spoilsport and the antenna would change direction, so we couldn’t receive signals. And when that happened, Latif Lone would be in demand. Wearing faded jeans, he would climb to the rooftop, while Ravi’s mother prayed for his safety. He would look at the sun, then look in the opposite direction, as if offering namaz, and set the antenna’s direction right.

On the base of the antenna was a wooden block meant to keep the antenna in an upright position and when exposed to rain and snow, it turned damp, giving rise to moss and some mushroom-like growth. "What is this?" I would ask Latif impatiently, tugging at his pheran sleeves. He would lift me in his arms and say, "Algae."

Those were the days, when Mohammed Rafi’s songs ruled the hearts of lovers and Latif Lone was one of them. On the streets if you met him, he always had a Rafi song on his lips. Latif ran a cosmetic shop, where girls went unhesitatingly and he slipped red and green bangles on their delicate wrists. But there was one who would not let him do it. Her name was Ghazala and Latif loved her. Ghazala was like a couplet on the lips of a Sufi. She always draped a dupatta over her head and looked like a leaf from a newly printed Quran.

As a child I would go for long rides on my cycle and often I saw Latif and Ghazala walking together on the by-pass bridge. Latif would see me and smile. I would wave enthusiastically at them and they would wave back. Everybody in the family knew Latif. If any lady got into a crowded bus, a seat for her was assured if Latif was there.

Sometimes Latif would go to Lal Chowk to pick up Ghazala from the women’s college and then board a Swaraj Mazda minibus from the bus stand near the clock tower. If I was occupying a seat and there was none other, I would leave the seat for Ghazala and stand with Latif. I felt proud like a man and looked forward to giving her my place. Ghazala would want me to sit on her lap but I always declined. She would take my heavy school bag off my shoulders and keep it with her.

I told her one day, that if I ever had a girl friend she would look just like her. Latif, who was standing nearby, burst into laughter and she hid her face in her hands.

In 1989, I saw very little of Latif. Ghazala would board the minibus alone and even when she smiled at me, her eyes were like deep pools of sadness. Latif would disappear for months on end. And then suddenly one day, outside Amla’s grocery shop, I saw him with a few men, holding a sheet in his hands. He was collecting money for the local mosque. The radio played a song by Mohd. Rafi, I remember, but his lips did not hum that tune.

In a few months’ time, the word ‘crossfire’ became an integral part of our lives in Kashmir. And then the killings started – selected killings. Militants barged into the house of B.K. Ganjoo, a telecommunications engineer. They wanted to kill him, but he hid himself in a rice drum in the attic of his house. The militants could not find him and left the house. At the gate of the house, a neighbour of Ganju signalled to them to go to the top storey of the house. They climbed up and found him hiding in the rice drum.

Heartlessly they killed him on the spot. They even forced his wife to eat the blood-soaked rice. Killings like these resulted in a mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits. Even we left for Jammu, to start life from scratch. In Kashmir, I had been gifted a pair of football shoes by my father. But I could not carry them with me to Jammu. So I got a pair of ordinary shoes from Bata for Rs. 175. Those shoes became the symbol of my ‘migrant status’. They felt like a badge, like a yellow star worn by the Jews during the Nazi rule in Germany.

In June 1990, I was sitting on a cement pavement outside my single-room home browsing through a local newspaper. Somewhere in the neighbourhood, Mohammed Rafi’s songs echoed across: Jo unki tamanna hein barbaad hoja.  I read the headline: Dreaded militant Latif Lone shot dead in an encounter with the Army. Suddenly everything spun around me - the Bombay Beauties cosmetic shop, the algae at the foot of the antenna, faded jeans…. and then Rafi’s song came to an end.

It happened the day the results of the higher secondary school examination were declared in Kashmir. Latif stood outside his shop, under the Angel’s Garden School building. He was wearing a new pathani suit and his eyes were decorated with kohl. Suddenly an army jeep screeched to a halt in front of him and as he saw that, Latif started running behind the school building. As he crossed the barbed wire, leading to the nearby fields, his dress got entangled in the wire and as he struggled to release himself, the soldiers of the Indian Army shot pumped bullets into his body. His body lay there, dangling on the barbed wire, like Toba Tek Singh’s body in Manto’s short story. That day, as I broke the news to my parents, the gas burner in one corner of the room that served as our kitchen, did not burn.

While he was being laid into the grave, I thought of Ghazala. Where would she be? I wanted to be around her, keep her head in my lap, while she cried and support her for the rest of my life.

Around two lakh people attended Latif Lone’s funeral. Another newspaper informed us that Latif had even fought in Afghanistan against the Russians. He was an expert in handling anti-aircraft gun, reported India Today. On charges of informing the Army about Latif, his comrades killed one of our Muslim neighbours, who was known for his addiction to opium. He had curly hair and his body was found hanging on a tree, a few kilometers away from his residence.

A few weeks later, while travelling in a minibus in Jammu, I got down from it before my destination. My friend thought the heat had turned me crazy. How could I tell him that I was just trying to avoid listening to Rafi’s song that the driver of the minibus was playing on his stereo system?