Srinagar, Dec. 2 -- Syed Mehraj U Din Bukhari stepped into the room like he owned every corner. My mom's brother-in-law, he silently showed me how to keep showing up, without calling attention to it.

He'd fix a wobbly chair while asking about your day, fold his newspaper so neat it looked new, drop a tiny story that would replay in your head for years. He had no lectures to give, just silent moves you catch yourself doing later.

That's how I clocked that people leave bits of themselves behind. His bits just happen to be the heaviest.

He entered the world in 1928 in Keeri, a village near Pattan that sits in a gentle pocket of north Kashmir. His father moved the family to Srinagar when he was still a child, settling close to the shrine o...