Srinagar, July 23 -- By Sadaf Masoodi

I am almost done with the overwhelm that life creates in one messy a mind, like mine. I hinged on absolute numbness for a while but I wanted to come back to my old self and did.

Now it is again hard to contain myself, but even if you were not as much of an emotional mess, how would you feel if you lost a teacher suddenly who was one whole part of your childhood?

The tastes of memory are tricky. They change, and so does the force of memory. You never know when, or how, it may suddenly inundate you, and what long lain fragments it will yield.

The last time I saw Ishtifar ma'am was almost a decade ago. She taught me in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades. After that I rarely met her. But when the tens...