Two wars- Bloods of different kind

June lost hope on Delhi heat. July was en-route. Papa had to leave for duty tonight but first I was to be dropped to the train station where-upon his cousin, Hari would chaperon me.

Hari lived in a small town of Jammu, from where my late mother-Ammi hailed as well. I had been there several times, in Papa’s stories. Today was the first personal audience. But before that “Papa one last time,” I implore.

“Your Ammi lived in a town called Akhnoor. In September 1965 the Pakistani army launched Operation Grand Slam to devour it. Ammi was returning home in a bus when some heavily armed men swooped. Her bus was hit by a hail of bullets, snapping a wheel off, forcing all to run pensively, seeking refuge inside an abandoned home. Ammi locked herself in a room and ducked in darkness, as the gunmen began their rampage. Suddenly, the door splintered open as those men shot the lock apart and burst in, plucking frightened Ammi, clamping handcuffs on her.”

“And then you tore in and broke the backs of those men like my hero,” I clapped feverishly.

Papa left me at the station with a promise from me to do as uncle Hari says. I did.

I extended my frisky fingers out of the train’s window, hoping to scoop snow off the scalp of the distant Himalayas.

“Pass it,” Hari gestured towards the water bottle dancing on a hook by the window.

Our compartment was empty. The Delhi-Jammu Tawi route was a busy link for tourists travelling to Srinagar. This was not the year for tourism though, as it was for war. Kashmiri Separatism had cast its murky shadow. Winds were carrying blood back home.

I passed the bottle and with that Hari pulled me close to him. An awkward proximity, I apprehend now.

“My back hurts. Press it, will you?” He was pounding it with clenched fists. I agreed, but for seven minutes; my age.

Hari pulled his cashmere sweater and kurta over his head and said “Come on and I shall give you a magic marshmallow.”

He explained that the more I suck it, the bigger it will grow.
I placed my hands against the train’s moving wall, climbed on him and began working his back, pressing the flesh in then relieving the pressure, like Papa would knead dough. Hari moaned, or was it the train as its wheels strum music against the track?

My feet visited his buttocks. I felt his flesh throbbing under me. I lost my balance. He made me lose it. He grabbed my nascent breasts.

It wasn't the first time I had pressed his back, but never before, did the winds carry blood back home.