Srinagar, April 28 -- ByNoorain Fatima Ansari

Two decades have slipped through the hourglass since the world grew a little quieter on the 27th of April, 2006.

Today marks twenty years without my Dadu, Maulana Mustafa Ansari, a man who was a scholar to the world, but a sanctuary to me.

I was only in the fourth grade when he left.They say memories begin to drift like mist over the Dal Lake as we approach the milestone of thirty, the edges softening like old photographs left in the sun.

But the heart has its own way of keeping time.

I still feel the specific, heavy chill of those Kashmiri winters, where the power cuts would plunge the house into darkness, leaving us with nothing but the amber glow of a single candle.

In that flickering...