Title: A Mother’s Vigil
In the late 1960s, my elder brother Vidhan Ratna Yami was studying in REC , Shreenagar, a time and place shadowed by unrest. One day, news broke of a terrorist attack and massacre nearby. The air turned heavy with fear, and far from the site of violence, in our own home, my mother cried through the night.
I was just a child then, but the memory of her weeping—silent at first, then uncontrollably trembling with worry—has never left me. That night, she clutched the uncertainty of war in her hands, praying for the safety of her son in a city spiraling into chaos. She didn’t sleep. She didn’t eat. She just waited, each hour stretching unbearably long.
Watching the recent footage of conflict in the same region brought it all back—
https://youtu.be/jt1b2qmOG0k?si=kxul0gtND48XTPOs
—as if time had folded upon itself. I saw not just the images on screen, but my mother’s tears, her trembling hands, the quiet courage of women who bear the emotional toll of war in silence.
Her love was not loud, but it was resolute. It was in the sleepless nights, the whispered prayers, the way she carried the weight of fear without letting it break her.
Now, as I work to preserve the erased stories of women through projects like a storing my mother Heera Devi Yami, I hold tightly to memories like these. They are not just personal—they are political, historical, and essential. My mother’s story may not be in the textbooks, but it lives on through us, and through every daughter who remembers the power of a mother’s love during a time of war.
The governor Bhagwan Shahay (Governor of Jammu and Kashmir: Following his tenure in Kerala, he was appointed as the Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, serving from May 15, 1967, to July 3, 1973. ) was a very good friend of my father. I do recall my father's friend, the famous poet of Nepal Mr. Kedar Man Byathit tell people in one event how the governor had kept in touch with my brother and used to invite him for launch at his residence. Later in 1976 I recall having interacted with the governor Bhagwan Shaye at his New Delhi residence. By then my parents were no more.