Ledge Between the Streams

In the summer of 1943, an Indian public-health official (Daddyji) and his wife (Mamaji) were traveling with their six children to the Vale of Kashmir for a holiday. During a break in the journey, their blind nine-year-old son, Ved the author of this exquisitely composed memoir heard water flowing and asked about it. He was told there were two streams, one clear, the other muddy. He said he wanted to see them for himself, and the family climbed down into a gorge where a narrow ledge separated the icy torrents of the Jhelum, a powerful river fed by the snows of the Himalayas, from a tepid, sluggish local stream. Ved squatted down on the ledge and put a hand in each stream. A cloudburst suddenly caused the Jhelum River to rise, and the Mehtas barely scrambled out of the gorge with their lives.