These are snippets from my childhood. I tell you my mother and it's very poignant to remember her knitting beautiful sweaters for me for the winters. She was a professor of economics, and the usual routine was that we would study through the summers.

My father would talk less than my mother. He had a different kind of personality and would not get into small mundane things. He was not the one who would breathe down your neck. Though my father would talk less, he was a fine gentleman by any standards.

He had a bit of zamindari attitude left in him and a small chip on his shoulder that came from his family. He married my mother who was from Habba Kadal basically and came from a lower middle class Kashmiri Pandit family.

Her father was a junior engineer and lived in a joint family. Of course, at that time there were joint families, and they were called the sub-groups.

So, my father always had it in him that they were the landowners and, and that she wasn't. But my mother had compensated that by studying and getting a degree in MA Economics. Being a very graceful woman, I can tell you that her saris and the way she wore those were kind spoken off across the city then.

And people like Mehmooda Ali Shah ran the famous women’s college in Srinagar. It was then that the top Indian and foreign dignitaries would come for a lecture and an event there. Kashmir was then the pride of place in India and whoever came from abroad had to come for an evening to Srinagar, if nothing for a small cultural event or a dose of nature, because elsewhere we didn't have much to showcase those days.

My mother ensured that we tag along to these events so that we were part of those and the lectures and other performances had a significant influence on our lives. 

To be continued.....