By : Muhammad Faisal
It was a raw urge and an emotional outburst, i wanted to write about to get some closure over the pain i had seen recently. I saw the mother of Sameer Jan, the 8 year old boy beaten to death and trampled with jackboots in the 2010 Uprising.
I came home feeling enraged and saddened, came to my room, closed my eyes and my world wandered,
Wandered around the bloodied paradise that Kashmir had become.It was painful, felt like a dagger cutting your body in half,slowly like the merciless butcher. I couldn’t bear the pain of seeing Sameer’s Mother, of her eyes haunted by the blackened body of her son.
I needed something to vent, so i wrote this:-
Kashmir, the world’s most militarized zone, suffocating with over 500,000 thousand strangers thumping on its soil, once called the Paradise on earth is now in shards, reminiscent of the conflict that has been going on for six decades. The six decades which have been full of pain, tears, passion and suffering for the people that live in its misery.
Over 400,000 souls departed since 1947, while others survived the pain of massacres, mass-rapes, torture, disappearances and sufferings that sounds like wrath of the evil over the good. Justice is hardly delivered and the procedures to seek it are never ending,
A Mother who lost her son, killed while she was dreaming about the henna on his little finger the day he would have been married, was returned with a coffin. The pain of losing her son kills her every moment his flash passes by, silently.
Her daughter awaits the return of her groom who was taken into the darkness, never to be seen again. The boy, who she was in love with, whom she wanted to tease and play games with, is nowhere. She wonders if he ever will comeback, is he alive or is he dead somewhere in the mountains. She is an empty soul wandering and staring at the knob every night.
Her sister haunted by the nightmares of the time when her soul was torn apart by the beasts in the dark of the night. Her screams and cries for a saviour gagged by their hands. She sought justice and the door was shut on her, Her family and the hypocritical society banished her. She survived the pain but the Pain took everything of her, took her dreams of being married, of having a family, of being humane. She now lies in the dark corner of the room, a life less soul.
She looks with a sigh to her neighbours’ abandoned house whom she used to gossip about her never-ending chores, of her annoying Hash (Mother in Law), left her amidst the chaos and fear. She wishes for her to return to the house occupied by the gun-toting troops of the country down south.
This mother has been the rock of resilience, survival, strength and hope. This mother is KASHMIR.
The hope has never faded in the hearts of the people living in Kashmir, Hope of a glorious future, of a new beginning, of a new dawn, of Freedom
"Muhammad Faysal is a Human Sciences student, He writes at www.muhammadfaysal.wordpress.com"
