August 2 was the last day I spoke to my mother over the phone. It was a hurried conversation as I had a hectic schedule for my day ahead in New Delhi. News stories had begun emerging of curtailing the Amarnath Yatra and my mother, living in Sopore in Kashmir, warned me to stay safe, realising the situation on the ground had started to boil. However, she had no idea that she would not get to talk to her children for days or even weeks to come.
Being a Kashmiri mother, she was less worried for herself but more so for her children staying outside the state. It wasn’t just her: relatives, friends and colleagues in Kashmir made frantic calls to me, inquiring about what was going to happen in Kashmir. They all had the same fear: that the Centre would do something bad. I tried to calm them but deep down, I knew the government had something up its sleeve.
