Grandfather at the Door

This is the story of a grandfather who became father, mother, and anchor in a storm.

- Syed Majid Gilani

My earliest memories of my grandfather aren't attached to words. They live in sound. The soft shuffle of his slippers before Fajr. The creak of the garden gate. The faint whistle of the kettle warming on the stove.

Even now, I remember those mornings — the cold of Lal Bazar, the sky still dark, and somewhere in the house, a voice reciting verses from the Qur'an. Slow, even, and certain.

That voice belonged to Syed Abdul Rashid Gilani. He was my grandfather. For me and my sisters, Yasmeen and Sabiyah, he became something larger. He was the rhythm of our days. The man who held a fractured house together after it cracked wide open.

He was born in 1927 in Khangah Moula, one of the oldest and most storied quarters of Srinagar. There, in a neighbourhood of latticed windows, green-tiled shrines, and water-smoothed stones, he came into a family of teachers, clerics, and poets.

His father, Maulana Syed Mohammad Yasin Shah Gilani, was known across the valley for his knowledge and moral standing. His uncle, Maulana Syed Mubarak Shah Gilani, who wrote under the pen name Fitrat, was a Persian scholar and poet. Theirs was a house where language sat beside faith, and knowledge was passed on not as information, but as inheritance.

He left for Punjab University, Lahore, in a time when such journeys were rare. He earned a degree, brought it back home folded into a briefcase with polished buckles, and entered the state’s Food Control Department.

He climbed the ranks over decades, from Supervisor to Assistant Director, then retired in 1982.

Around that time, he built the home where I would grow up. He called it Gilan House. Its walls were pale, the garden small but orderly, the floors spotless. Everything about the home — the way shoes were placed, newspapers folded, curtains drawn at Maghrib — mirrored him.