Srinagar, July 15 -- By Mohammad Ilyas Bhat

I lately found myself driving toward a town that had once been the village of my childhood, chasing a face I had last seen as a schoolboy.

My friend Fayaz sat beside me, equally eager and uncertain.

More than fifty years had passed since we had studied under Masterji Ali Mohammad Pandit, the teacher who had done far more than teach us mathematics and Urdu.

Time had changed the landscape around us. Roads had widened, houses had multiplied, and the village had grown into a busy town.

One thing drew us there with complete certainty: we wanted to see whether the man who had influenced our earliest years still remembered us, and whether we still understood what he had given us.

People often mea...