JUMP CUT Memories Of Home I don’t remember, in Meerut or Muzaffarnagar, being told not to go to ‘a Muslim area’. PRAGYA SINGH

JUMP CUT Memories Of Home I don't remember, in Meerut or Muzaffarnagar, being told not to go to 'a Muslim area'. PRAGYA SINGH You could say that a Muzaffarnagar Muslim predicted my arrival. In winter 1976 my parents visited 'Hari kurti wala', a Sufi mystic who wandered around my mother's family's farm. Hindu or Muslim, if you wanted your fortune told, you went to him. When this couple—a military man and his memsahib—landed before him, they were told, to their surprise: "You will have a daughter next September. Then, your worries will disappear. You'll become rich!" Muzaffarnagar meant "where Mummy comes from", a wealthy, liberal, well-educated clan with more than its share of troubles. "Papa" emerged from the same region too, but my "real" hometown near Shamlee we never visited. Muzaffarnagar was a comfort zone between Meerut, where the relatives had moved, and Kurmali, where the roots once were. Not far from Kurmali is a village of 'Pathans'. Lore, and maybe history, has it that these pathans sheltered my father's forefathers for months after a particularly bitter 'internal' feud.     To us, Muslims were the folks who lived in those crumbling havelis, who sold off their jewels.     By the time I landed in Meerut in 1991 Hari kurti wala had faded, before we could meet. Now, an astrologer from the 'Unit' visited our home in Meerut Cantonement. He also politely predicted nice things, or gave away secrets that my parents have kept well. In January 1993, Moinuddin, a carpenter who had developed a fondness for the now-retired military man and his memsahib's cups of tea, brought news. His neighbours, all Muslim, had beaten him up "nicely" immediately after the Babri Masjid fell in Ayodhya a month ago. As news of the mosque's collapse arrived on liberalised cable TV, Moinuddin's doubts about becoming a member of the BJP grew. He laughed off the bashing-up, but quit the party. After that day Muslims seemed different. Not dangerous—how scary can they be if their Mosque just "fell"? But 'Islamabad', the part of Meerut where, it was rumoured, Hindus "couldn't enter" seemed like a good, sensible idea to a child of 13. You keep yours, we ours. Meerut, not Muzaffarnagar, is where I discovered I am Hindu and Jat. The latter were perpetually eulogised in our tales of 1857 and the freedom movement. The 'in' jokes of Jats I grew up on constantly pulled Brahmins—and women—down a notch. Rajput "supremacy' was questioned heartily—using "history". All this is ironic in today's Modi-lore. I don't remember, in Meerut or Muzaffarnagar, being told not to go to a "Muslim area". No, to us, Muslims were the folks who once lived in those crumbling havelis. Desperate, they sold their hand-crafted family jewels, which we bought—reasonably priced—in Sarafa Bazaar. Otherwise, the Noaibs, Shoaibs and Danishes were as much a part of me as anything else. This is unlike Delhi, where some friends expressed "concerns" about the "safety" of visting Chandni Chowk or Jamia Nagar. My class in Meerut had one Muslim student, a boy. Delicate-skinned, shy—we never spoke—he sang Hindustani classical. I never thought, then or now, that he had got "too much" from India and I, less. A slightly shorter, edited version of this appears in print http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?287801