Archive · 10 Sep 2026
A Kashmiri Tale Traces a Mother’s Loneliness Across Generations
A boy grows up with a mother who works hard and often feels lonely.
While she repairs their home, he learns to stand for the first time.
One day, she falls while trying to reach a high part of the wall and leaves a handprint behind.
The boy wants to grow strong enough to help her.
As they wander through streets, he learns to walk and slowly notices that his mother is becoming frail.
She teaches him many lessons about pain, life, and the world.
She explains that she once marked her hand with coal and a needle so loneliness would not overwhelm her.
After the boy grows up, his mother dies peacefully.
He is left alone and discovers that his own loneliness cannot be turned into a story as easily as hers was.
A young boy watches his mother plaster a room while he struggles to stand.
After falling from a doorway, she leaves a luminous handprint on the ceiling.
Mother and son wander through streets, where he learns to walk independently.
She reveals that she tattooed patterns onto her left hand to cope with loneliness.
After teaching him what she can, the mother dies, leaving the narrator alone with his grief.
- Who
- An unnamed son and his mother; the excerpt is by Hriday Kaul Bharati and translated by Rounak Bhat.
- What
- A son recalls his mother’s labor, loneliness, care, aging, death, and the lasting grief she leaves behind.
- When
- The story spans the narrator’s childhood through his mother’s death, but no specific dates are given.
- Where
- The events take place in a home and surrounding streets in a Kashmiri setting, with references to the Jhelum and a chinar.
- Why
- The mother struggles with isolation and poverty while raising her son; the adult narrator reflects on the loneliness that remains after her death.
- Work
- “A Tale of Two Hands”
- Author
- Hriday Kaul Bharati
- Translator
- Rounak Bhat
- Anthology
- The Big Book of Kashmiri Literature
- Editor
- Onaiza Drabu
- Central image
- A luminous, mud-smeared handprint left on a dark ceiling
- Publication context
- Excerpted with permission by Penguin India