Column by Saba Mahjoor | No more sending her back

As a little girl, my world was filled with stories. My mother would tell us about a poor hat maker, whose hats were stolen by the monkeys when he stopped to rest at a stream. The ending, how he saved his creations by getting the monkeys to copy his actions, would send me and my brother into peals of laughter.

My grandfather would scare us with stories of the brahmbrahmchoak (a supernatural entity with a tchoang, or clay oil lamp, on its head), with the power to distract people so they ended up getting lost. We would all pray that we never met this brahmbrahmchoak.

It was a childhood where ghouls, ghosts and people danced together every night. But of all the stories I heard, my favourite was the one I heard about Phuphee.

Phuphee’s husband, abbaji as we called him, would gather us and bribe us with sweet treats from his pheran pocket, usually lydes (a soft biscuit made of flour kneaded in sugar syrup, flavoured with cardamom, and fried in ghee). The biscuit would melt in our mouths as he would narrate the story. He would ask us if we knew why every man who got married in the village was given a white kangri (a portable earthenware heater) on his wedding day? We had heard the story before, but wanting to hear it again we would reply ‘kyazi [why?].’ Abbaji would move closer to us and whisper that a long time ago, Phuphee got so angry with the villagers she took the warmth from every daan (mud stove) and kangri in the village.

A marriage had taken place in the village and a few weeks later, the couple had had an argument. The husband had taunted his bride with the words, ‘Gatchh telli waapas panun garre [then go back to your own home]’, referring to her maternal home. This had confused the new bride because she had been told all her life that when she got married, her husband’s home would be her home.

Every time they had a disagreement, he would repeat this, and each time, the doubt that had been planted in her mind took root deeper and deeper. She thought, if her maternal home isn’t her home and this new home isn’t hers either, then where exactly was her home?

One day when she had become exhausted from all the questions, she got up and left. She bought an empty cow shed near the stream (that was all she could afford) and started living there. The village was in uproar. People tried to convince her that men said these things to their wives all the time and you simply had to put up with it or, better still, ignore it. She would always reply, ‘Magar mye kattiy chu garre telli [but where is my home then]?’ She would be met with silence or bewildered faces.

Her husband was told by people that he needed to do something to control his wife. Feeling the pressure to prove his manhood, he dressed up as a bandit and scared the poor woman during the dark hours of the night. Terrified, she ran into the deep end of the stream and drowned. Her body was discovered the next day by a local woman, floating under a sheet of ice that had formed over her body as the temperatures plummeted during the night.

The woman had run to get Phuphee and both had broken through the sheet of ice and dragged her out. It is said that despite knowing she had passed away, Phuphee had taken off her own pheran and scarf, and tried to warm her.

Phuphee then gathered the local gravediggers and the imam, and the woman had been buried close to her little shed. After the burial, Phuphee walked into the heart of the village. Some villagers said her face had gone pale, as if there wasn’t a drop of blood in her body; others said they couldn’t make out her pupils or the irises in her eyes — they were completely white. She had stood there and declared that though the fires may burn, they would provide no warmth. Not until every man and woman in the village came to her and took an oath that they would never repeat the dreaded words ‘gatch telli garre wapas’.

The frightened villagers ran home, only to find out that she was right. Though the daan burned and kangris were lit, there was no warmth. And it was the middle of chillai kalaan, the dreaded period of 40 days when intense cold weather sets in.

At first the villagers resisted, not knowing Phuphee’s resolve. After three days, when people started falling ill, they finally understood she would not budge unless they all took the oath. So, one by one, everyone went to Phuphee’s house and took an oath.

It is said that even today, when a couple gets married in the village, the groom is given a white kangri, to remind him of what the callousness of the human tongue could do and to make sure that no woman ever ends up losing her home again.

We sat still, listening, enraptured by the tale. I would often run to Phuphee to ask her if the story was true? She would always look at me, pretending to be shocked by the accusation, and say, ‘Have you ever seen me do any magic? Your uncle has an overactive imagination and an abundance of time to waste. I am but a simple woman.’

I would sit there confused. I had been watching her all my life and though there were no abracadabra moments, there was definitely something. Something that I didn’t know how to describe in words — not yet anyway.

Saba Mahjoor, a Kashmiri living in England, spends her scant free time contemplating life’s vagaries.

Published – March 27, 2026 08:41 am IST