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Volume 2, No. 5 - October 2002 |
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Survivors Speak
January 20,
1990 - A
SURVIVOR’S STORY For past couple of
months the situation had been extremely tense in the valley. Everywhere
there was fear and uncertainty. A lot of our relatives and friends had
already fled from Kashmir. My mother and I were still resisting because
we had nowhere to go, no home outside Kashmir, no source of income
outside the valley. My mother had told me on 19th January
that no one could make her leave her home. “This is my home and my
state, I was born here and I will die here, no body can drive me out of
here”, she told me categorically. Little did she know that she would
have to change her statement in less than 24 hours. My school had been
closed down because of the turmoil and I was restless and fear stricken
at home desperately listening to every news bulletin on the radio.
On 20th
morning everything looked normal or so it seemed. It was my
grandfather’s birthday. Usually this occasion was a big day for our
entire clan. All my cousins and aunts and uncles got together in my
grandfather’s house and we all spent this day together with traditional
gaiety and tons of happiness. But today was different. Everything was
gloomy and sad. We lived about 15 mins away from my grandfather’s house
but my other aunts lived far away. For the first time in my life we were
contemplating whether we should go to our grandfather’s house or not on
this day. My mother was crying since morning. She told me she had never
felt so helpless all her life. I had known my mother to be a rock who
would face every situation with calm and poise. ‘If she was feeling
helpless something must be terribly wrong’, I told myself. Around lunchtime my
mother told me to dress up in my warm clothes.’ We are going to nana’s
house’ she told me simply. I quickly dressed up and we set out. My
mother held my hand and two of us walked down to my nana’s house.
January is probably the coldest month in Kashmir. The walk to my
grandfather’s house had never seemed so long before. My mother held my
hand firmly in her hand and we walked, shivering more with fear than
cold. We were met with cold stares from policemen and BSF officials who
could be spotted everywhere. It must have been quite a sight for them to
see two women walking on the deserted road. My mother told me not to
look at anybody and we quietly walked. Little did we know that this
would be our last trip to nana’s house. My mother told me that we would
wish nana happy birthday and come back before it gets dark. Finally we
reached nana’s house. For the first time I found their door locked. I
don’t remember them ever locking their front door, but today things were
different. We lived in tough times. My mother knocked on the door. My
grandmother shouted from inside asking who it was. After confirming that
it was my mother and I, she opened the door and let us in. The fear on
her face was obvious. She was glad that we could make it. She was almost
sure that her two other daughters would not be able to make it because
they lived little far away and would not be able to brave the situation.
Inside the house my grandfather sat at his usual place with hookah in
front of him, but he was not smoking today. He looked worried too. I
quickly ran to him and wished him happy birthday and he in return hugged
me and told me to sit in the blanket because I was very cold. He told my
mother to stay over for the night. ‘Your brother will drop you back
tomorrow morning.’ My mother agreed and soon we were chatting away and
for some time forgot what was happening outside. That night after dinner
we sat around the TV watching some old classic movie. After a while I
saw my mother get up and suddenly I heard a loud shriek from her. All of
us rushed to the courtyard and heard loud noises coming from loud
speakers. At first we were too shocked to understand what was happening.
All the noises seemed like battle cries and we all huddled together in
fear. We were standing in the courtyard and our faces were white with
fear. Slowly everything started making sense. All the militants or
so-called Jehadis were declaring Jehad from the loudspeakers placed in
the mosques. They were coaxing Muslim men, women and children to come
out of their houses and join them in the so-called holy Jehad. All
kafirs or Pandits were threatened to join them or face serious
consequences. In the fifteen years of my existence I had not known what
fear really was and for the first time I asked my mother that why was
being Hindu such a big crime. The noises were getting louder and louder
and we all had blank expressions on our faces. No one knew what all this
meant or why all this was happening to us. Later we got to know that all
the Mujahideens or simply militants had crowded in Maisuma Chowk and a
battle ensued between security forces and militants. That night the
government of India had named Jagmohan as the governor of Kashmir and
then Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah had resigned in protest. So that
night, on 20th of January 1990 there was no government in
Kashmir, no one to control the situation and no one to protect us. My
grandfather went around his house like a mad man frantically praying to
God to protect his family. Tears were trickling down his eyes and he
kept repeating ‘ kabali loot gav, kabali loot gav’ [the kabalis have
struck again! (ref to kabali invasion that Pakistan had masterminded in
1947)]. My mother looked at me and said ‘ my child we will have to leave
Kashmir, for you I will have to go. You are more precious to me than
anything else’
Next morning Curfew
was clamped in the city. We were at Nana’s place for a week. And then
returned to our house. I still remember how sad my house looked that
day. As soon as we reached all our immediate neighbors came to meet us
and they all were sure that the time to leave their homeland had come.
Nobody said anything but they all knew that it was all over. After that
we hardly left our homes. We were literally trapped in our own homes.
All we could see everywhere were security forces marching up and down.
Soon it was almost clear that schools could not run properly in this
situation and my mother was concerned about my studies. All our
neighbors had fled and we were the only Pandit family in that
neighborhood. Militants had also started selective killings of Pandits
and one of our close relatives had also become a victim of this
manslaughter. By now it had become clear that militants wanted all
Pandits to leave Kashmir. The gory tales of their violence spread
everywhere like wild fire. My mother was concerned about our safety and
well being. With a heavy heart she woke me up one night and said, ‘ I
have decided to go to Delhi and get you enrolled in some school there.’
She was heart broken. We had no where to go in Delhi. We had to start
life all over again. My mother would have to look for a job there and it
would be a very different life from what we were leading at Kashmir. In
about two weeks, we packed just the bare essentials and left our home
forever.
I still remember the
night before we left our homes. My mother cooked our last meal in the
house that we still called our own. She had been quiet the whole day and
in the evening as she was serving the food she could bear it no longer.
She broke down and told me ‘ I came to this house as a young bride. This
house has been a witness to all my good times and bad times and even
when your father left us forever, this house protected me against all
outsiders and evils. Today I am leaving the security of my house and
don’t know where I am going. I cannot pack the moments spent in this
house. I cannot pack my memories, why am I being forced to leave my
homeland, I have not committed any crime, why am I paying the price for
the mistakes of others.’ I was too small then to say anything. I just
wiped the tears from the face of my mother and two of us quietly ate our
last meal in our house and wept till we could weep no more. The moment we left
our house we were branded as ‘MIGRANTS’ by the Government and so called
‘ALREADY SETTLED’ Pandits living outside valley. For the first time I
realized how tough it was to survive in this harsh world. We lived in a
rented apartment in Faridabad, near Delhi. The house we lived in had no
windows and no fans. For first couple of weeks we didn’t even have a
refrigerator. We had to battle against a lot of things outside valley,
heat of plains being one of them. God somehow gave us, and many families
like us, a lot of strength. We survived and took everything as a
challenge. My mother found a job for herself. We started gathering the
threads of our life with time. But strangely enough, the scars have
only become bigger with time. My grandfather literally went insane. He
could not bear the fact that he was being forcibly made to leave his
house. He could not bear that he had left his palatial bungalow and was
living in a rented home in Jammu with absolutely no amenities. He soon
stopped recognizing people and stopped eating. We lost him soon and the
tragedy was that we could not even mourn for him properly. Many more
such tragedies happened. Many people have been languishing ever since in
the migrant camps and normal life has never been restored for them.
More than a decade
has passed but the wounds are still there. When I see how callously the
Kashmir situation is being handled the wounds start bleeding all over
again. When I hear of Bamiyan Buddhas being destroyed by Afghan Vandals
my wounds become fresh and I am reminded of the vandalism I am a victim
of. When I see no one taking up the cause of Kashmiri Pandits because we
don’t form the vote bank for any politician my wounds start aching.
Although we are all
survivors but something has died in all of us. We are all leading an
incomplete life. Our homes have been burnt down, our dreams have been
trampled upon, our numbers are decreasing fast, yet we are holding
against all odds hoping that one day we will return to our land of
ancestors, our home land.
I can only say in the
end
‘zuv chum braman ghar ghasha”…..[I am pining to go back to my home] Sunanda Zadu Vashisht |
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