A call from home

A call from home


“Card chukha seath thavaan?”
(Do you carry the ID card with you?)

Mother worries over frequent phone calls
Away from home, home enters questions
‘Identity’ printed on a piece of paper
cuts through her voice; a discomforting lullaby:
“Card gase hamashe seath thavun”
(always carry the ID card with you)

Home leaves a permanent imprint…
On scattered notes, stamped on memories

At home, mother would tiptoe after me
At the door, before endless blessings, she always asked -
That question mothers have for their sons -
“Card tultha seath?”
(are you carrying your ID card?)

From Delhi now, your question settles on my unrest
Identity – detached from the card – hangs heavy

This is not Kashmir, mother
“Toete gase card seath thavun…. “
(Still you must carry the card with you...)
The line dropped on this insistence

I kept redialing, to rest her concerns,
her unfinished questions, unanswered
Hello..heloo… mother
Can you hear me?

I left the card at home, mother
In the back pocket of my worn-out jeans
Find: a fading photograph, scrutinized edges
And no trace of those unrecognized questions
forever inked on my memory

For troops to question my absence
The proof I left behind is not enough
That frisked ID card remains
like a festering wound, pocketed pain
I carry everywhere


By Majid Maqbool

Tortured in custody

Ten days of torture


For Altaf Hussain the year 1994 is a painful memory of 10 days of torture. Sixteen years ago Altaf was subjected to torture for 10 days in a BSF camp in Handwara. Now a father of a two-year old son, Altaf is in his mid 30s and spots a medium sized beard. The unforgettable memories of those torturous 10 days haunt him to this day: the humiliation of everyday stripping, frequent beating, of being hung upside down, electric shocks to private parts, and that unbearable pain every time his finger nail was pulled out.

Altaf was a 16-year old vivacious teenager in 1994. After successfully passing his 10th standard board exams, that year he had dreams of a better future. He had made plans to move to the Srinagar city to pursue further education. However, one day would change the rest of his life.

One morning in the summer of 1994 he found himself dragged out of his home by BSF troopers from a nearby camp in Handwara. Along with a few more boys from his locality, Altaf was taken to a BSF camp located in his village. Then the torture began in custody.

“They wanted to know about the whereabouts of the militants in our area,” he says. “But I knew nothing about it”. Altaf kept telling them that he’s innocent and knows nothing about the whereabouts of the militants they had spotted in the village. The BSF troopers began torturing him to extract some information. But Altaf repeated the same thing. “From day one I told them that they can’t get any information from me as I know nothing,” he says.

The pain in Altaf’s voice comes through as he recalls those 10 days of torture. He points at different spots on his body where wires would be attached for giving electric shocks. The few minutes before the electric shocks were applied were the most frightening. Beyond a point, when the torture became unbearable, Altaf says he at times felt no pain, only a numbing sensation.

Like a testimony of his painful past, the torture marks are still visible on his body. “Besides beating, they would pull out the skin from sensitive spots of body,” he says while showing torture marks on his fingers. Small patch of pale skin has come to replace the skin pulled out during torture. All over his body the torture marks have not disappeared completely, only aged with years. The memories of those 10 days, he says, are as fresh as yesterday. He can never forget those 10 days.

Altaf remembers the minute details, the small talk, the jokes his captors would make about his miserable condition while he writhed in pain on the floor at the end of a torturous day in custody. Altaf particularly recalls a day when he was separated from other boys, and taken to another room, where some food had been specially kept for him on a table. After he had food that day, the reason for this special treatment became evident. A BSF trooper went up to him, and asked, “Tell me how many girl friends you have?”. When Altaf said he had none, the trooper didn’t believe him, and said he was lying. One of the BSF troopers, who was particularly friendly towards him that day, then asked Altaf to arrange some ‘girl friends’ for him. In return, Altaf was promised a quick release from the camp.

Altaf says he lost his cool at that moment and flew into a rage. For declining the offer he received a severe beating for many hours that day. “Kash bea easehe paez peath militant, beae lagvehae temes goel,” he says angrily. (I wish I had a gun that time, I wish I was a militant, I would have shot him there only)

Altaf says during those 10 days of interrogation inside the BSF camp, he kept repeating the same thing to the BSF troopers who were torturing him — that he was innocent and knew nothing about the whereabouts of the militants. After they failed to get any information from him despite days of torture, Altaf recalls some of the BSF troopers grudgingly acknowledging his truth, and calling him, “yae jo sach bolta hai, is ladko ko idhar laeo (get this boys here who speaks the truth.)

When the BSF troopers failed to extract any information from Altaf, he was dropped in a half conscious state on the roadside after ten days in custody. The family couldn’t believe that he was still alive. “Some of the boys who were arrested with me were found near a stream,” he recalls.

Altaf says some 74 boys from his native village in Handwara have been killed in fake encounters, enforced disappearances and targeted killings over the years by the troopers. Four of them, he says, crossed the border and were killed in encounters after they returned.

Altaf was bed ridden for over a month after his release. He says he is yet to reconcile with those torturous memories that keep haunting him. He eventually went on to become a forest range officer. The physical and mental scars of torture, however, are yet to heal.

Altaf says he had difficulty at the time of his marriage as the electric applied to his private organs during those 10 days of torture had an adverse impact on his health. Doctors had told him to take some time and delay marriage for some years as the torture had taken a toll on his sexual health. “I had to delay my marriage for a few years to recover fully,” he says. “It was a very painful phase for me as I couldn’t share my pain with family and friends.”

Altaf doesn’t want to hide his past from his children. “When my son will be a teenager, I will tell him what the Indian soldiers did to me when I was a teenager,” he says. He doesn’t want to forget his past. Forgetfulness is more painful for him.

Every today when Altaf encounters an Indian soldier on the street, he shudders and immediately takes a detour. This fear is compounded by the memories of his torture. The sight of an Indian trooper, or even a police man, he says sends shivers down his spine. “Even when I see a Kashmiri policeman on the road, I get to see frightening nightmares,” he says. “And all those memories of 10 days of torture rush back as flashes in front of my eyes.”

Kashmir Protests

Kashmir Protests

By Majid Maqbool


Over fifty people have been killed in the streets of Kashmir since June 11, this year. Strictly imposed indefinite curfews with “shoot at sight” orders have failed to prevent people braving bullets, teargas shells, and batons on the streets. Protests have become a way of life. The military might of the state, strengthened by additional forces, kills with impunity. But the unarmed people of Kashmir, armed with slogans and stones in their hands, continue to protest day and night. Bullets no longer scare people now. The more bullets CRPF troops and police fire on the protesters, the more courage and strength people summon to resist.

People momentarily disperse after being fired at on the streets, only to reappear again, and protest more forcefully. The imposed silence of curfewed days and nights is broken by the constant cries of the protesters: “Awazan do, hum ek hain ….aye .. aye ..azadi..cheen kay laygain, azaadi!…Roe rahe hai yae zameen, ro raha hai asamaan..…ae shaheedo asalaam…jis Kashmir ko khoon say sincha, woe Kashmir hamara hai….” If the protest collapses from one quarter, others pick up the thread. All these slogans and protests have seeped into the dreams of children. They don’t have school on their minds. Even the kindergarten kids know how to lisp the rhyme: “Hum kya chatay?” Ajaadi!

From the loudspeakers of Kashmir’s mosques, the nights are lit up with slogans of freedom from all sides. Nights have become new days in Kashmir. People protest late into the nights, sleepless. On the streets, in every mosque, in the lanes and by-lanes of every locality, only one cry reverberates in the air -- Azadi!.

Despite being at the receiving end of bullets and batons, people got together to help each other in distress. In numerous localities, people collected food and funds for the poor and needy in their respective curfew areas. For those injured in the protests, blood donations camps were organized. Hundreds of people, despite curfew, turned up to donate blood. This is how the spirit of resistance is kept alive. Agha Shahid Ali’s poetic line aptly sums up this renewed wave of freedom sweeping Kashmir: “Freedom’s terrible thirst is flooding Kashmir...”

Meanwhile, for a long time on the news bulletins telecast from the New Delhi studios of Indian news channels, the news from Kashmir was headlined differently, aided with carefully picked visuals: ‘riots in Kashmir’, the “unrest and violence in Kashmir”, “valley on the edge”… The naive, ill-informed news anchors, unaware of the reality unfolding on the ground, keep putting the same question to the same chosen set of Kashmiri politicians and New Delhi-based ‘Kashmir experts’: “So what is it that people want? Why are they burning government buildings? Police stations..? Why are people resorting to violence? What exactly do they want?”

The truth is there on the streets of Kashmir for everyone to see. Seventy people, mostly teenagers, have been killed by state forces since Jan this year. If the Indian state refuses to accept the truth even after all these killings, and instead use more force to quell protests, what can people do? Protest more.

The wrong questions put to the wrong people can never find the right answers. ‘So, why are they burning public property?’ the anchors kept asking their Kashmir experts in news bulletins replete with visuals showing a government vehicle, a government office set on fire by the protesters. Interestingly, these questions were asked to everyone, except the people protesting on the streets!

On the ground people speak about the brutality unleashed by the ‘security forces’ in their respective areas. All these memories have become a festering wound, which is refusing to heal. “The CRPF men got hold of this boy near our home and he was beaten ruthlessly,” said one caller who watched the whole scene from the window of his room. “Then they took his pictures and left him there after beating him to pulp,” he said. ‘He was only a little kid’. Another friend, a doctor, was told by his colleague: “Yesterday an ambulance with paramedics and doctors was stopped by the CRPF troops on one street. They were asked to come out and used as a human shield by CRPF troops to protect themselves from the protesters,” he said. Another friend called to inform us that CRPF troops smashed to smithereens the windowpanes of her home.

A relative of mine kept as a grim memento a teargas shell fired into their home by CRPF troopers. The smoke filled their eyes, their rooms, for the whole day. “I preserved it after it cooled down. You can come over to have a look some day,” he said. Everyone has his own story of being witness to the blood of innocent people spilled on the streets. At a time when killings have become a routine affair, the injuries inflicted on thousands of people in the past few months have gone unnoticed.

Bullets can only kill people though. The sentiment and aspirations of freedom can never be killed. People can be shot at, but the sentiment is too deeply entrenched in the hearts and minds of people -- and it’s beyond the reach of bullets. The sentiment for freedom has a habit of passing on from one generation to another. Force can not suppress it. Look at the streets.

A Stone Pelter’s Song by Feroz Rather

A Stone Pelter’s Song

BY FEROZ RATHER



Out of the last cries

Of my fellows, those boys

Killed on street yesterday,

Out of the sky and the summer rains

In my own eyes,

In my own voice,

I compose a song of freedom


Out of these stones,

Forged in the brooks of Jhelum,

These gifts from the Mountain,

Tearing the air apart

In fury, with jubilation,

Ah! Here I hit their backs,

I exist in these stones,

I don’t need to tell them,

I compose a song of freedom


Out of my own blood and brain,

Smearing my dead face,

Out of a vow of

A mother’s love for her son,

Against the dagger of Abraham

When God ceases to be an assassin,

Out of the triumph of truth

Rises a song of celebration,

I live a song of freedom


Out of the rebels’ chants,

Against their bullets,

Against the shells and the smoke of death,

Out of these slogans

Sung in unison,

These songs of defiance and anger,

I’m my own poet, a majnoon

Of this country, an unfailing lover,

I’m a stone pelter

I sing a song of freedom.

Building blocks of sadness

Building blocks of sadness

By Majid Maqbool


Kashmir is a sad place. There is sadness in the stories of people. There’s sadness in their personal histories. There is sadness in the lives that people live. And in the regret for lives that they should have lived, but couldn’t. There is sadness, for a future that might not be different from the present. There is sadness, for being witness to a bloodied past replete with pain, injustices, death. There is sadness, for promises not kept. There’s sadness, for having lived, while all around the loved ones died. It is this collective sadness that lends a sorrowful aura to Kashmir. Memories come in the way of happiness here. And sorrow, like that ubiquitous bunker on the street, has found a permanent home in Kashmir.

The wounded architecture of the city is saddening. Burnt buildings, reduced to abandoned remnants of encounter sites, evoke sadness. Blackened, burnt wood in place of windows; damaged walls, sprinkled with bullets; exposed bricks, punctured with bullet holes. All these destroyed buildings – once peoples’ homes, public offices, shops – are devoid of life now. They are the building blocks of sadness. They evoke a sad memory. They stand testimony to a blood soaked past. New buildings are erected in place of the destroyed ones. But the sadness remains, forever locked in these sites. And the memories of the wounds remain, intact. Kashmir’s past—every Kashmiri’s past for that matter—is a landmine of unresolved memories. Even an act of remembrance can explode them.

There is sadness on the faces of Indian soldiers present after every other kilometer on the streets. Guns slung across their shoulder, few meters away from each other, their presence adds to the sadness of the city. They remind us of what we have lost. They remind us of what they have taken away from us. They, we are told, are here to ‘protect’ us. Keep us safe! Innumerable barricades, inked in capital red letters on a white background, are kept on the streets: ‘Your cooperation is solicited’. Your safety is our concern. Peace keepers of the nation....’ Courtesy: CRPF, BSF…

What can one say? Quote Agha Shahid Ali: “They make a desolation and call it peace.”

‘People there are helpful but they don’t smile,’ a writer wrote after travelling to Kashmir. This sadness stems from a bruised history. It is a result of unforgettable memories - of years of occupation, against the wishes of people, by the outsiders. It’s difficult to reconcile with a troubled past, look ahead, and live a content life. It is difficult to foresee a future which has no place for the memories of the past. You can forgive (or can you?) but you can not forget.

The sentiment of freedom, simmering inside for years, came out bubbling into the streets last year. It swept everyone who came along. But somewhere behind those joyous shouts for freedom, there was sadness. Sadness, for example, in the life of that man I met in the TRC ground. He lost his brother and his son in the nineties. He still manages to smile. He knows what sadness means. Travelling all the way from his hometown, he joined a sea of people that poured into the TRC ground in the summer of 2008. Only one cry rang into the sky – azadi! He too put his arms up. He shouted for Azadi. For every collective shout of hum kya chatay that reverberated in the air, he seconded – azadi! And he waited for his leaders.

Although doubt was palpable in the fractured voice of leaders that addressed people assembled in the ground, there was no doubt in his mind. He remembers his son; he remembers his brother. That’s why he came. He didn’t come for any compensation. He came to mark his presence. He came in the memory of his brother and son. They are both dead. He lives with their memory. They were killed, he told me, his words drowning in the din of slogans. But they live in his memory. For him, they are not dead. Sitting besides me in the middle of the ground, surrounded by thousands of people of all age groups, he seemed momentarily lost in his thoughts. Turning towards me, his gaze fixed on me, he said: “My son was young like you when he was killed.” I said nothing, and looked down. “Enough of young people have died in Kashmir,” he said after a brief pause. Then he looked away into the distance. The ground kept swelling with people. His spirits rose.

He’s sad. He’s angry. He is living. He knows the meaning of life. He has lost his loved ones. He knows what freedom means.

Memories of an Election Past

NOTES FROM THE GROUND

Memories of an Election Past


Majid Maqbool


It’s a cold, fogy November morning. The view from the windscreen of the Tata sumo vehicle we are traveling in is hazy, dreamlike. A thick, smoky fog surrounds the outside view, making the houses around – and the road ahead – disappear. Some kilometers into the drive, suddenly an approaching sound becomes more pronounced. There’s commotion in the air. A closer look reveals the first signs of a polling booth: excited people assembled on the roadside, security vehicles, a small middle school thronged by men and women, and tense, watchful CRPF personnel, standing guard.

We are covering elections today, but all of us—a photographer, some journalists, and the driver—are talking about election boycott. As our vehicle stops, the fog clears out, and a polling booth comes in sight. Pheran clad people holding on to their Kangri, and CRPF men shivering in the cold emerge from a thick morning fog hanging heavy in the air. The sight of the crowd comprising of young men, women, girls, old men and women, assembled outside a two-room middle school turned into a polling booth in vadipora, Handwara, lends a festive look to this place. We see long voter queues outside the polling booth. Far from Srinagar, here, people are in no mood to boycott polls. People have willingly come out to vote, they tell us clearly. And everyone comes up with standard answers: the voting is for bijli, sadak, pani, naukri. Men and women jostle for space in their respective queues, waiting for their turn to cast their votes.

There is a lot of noise in and outside the polling booth. Inside, a group of polling agents, sitting like school children on the rugged mats of the small classroom of this government run middle school, are sifting through the pages of electoral lists. Like school children turn the pages of their textbooks in a classroom, the pheran clad and noisy polling agents sift through the pages of the white electoral lists in their hands. The polling booth officer, sitting comfortably on a chair, is like the headmaster here: he’s in command, the authority. Everyone listens to him, except the CRPF men, who keep coming in and out of the polling booth at will. They question everyone—including visiting journalists—but they can not be questioned. Much to the dislike of nervous CRPF men standing outside the booth, some people hang around the booth after casting their vote—smoking, talking in small groups, making noise. And those who are yet to vote try to remain in the queues, anxiously waiting for their turn. And whenever some people break out from the discipline of the long queues, angry arguments break out. The sight of the approaching trooper, with a long baton in one hand and a gun in other, however, ends all the arguments among the voters in the queues. Silence prevails. Voters come in the line, quietly.

Just outside this middle school, an old man – the white bearded tea-shop owner who shows no interest in voting today – is making tea in his shanty, wooden tea-stall. People, who are yet to vote, and those done with the voting, are having their cups of tea here. And in between sips, they talk. Vapors from their tea-cups mix with human breath visible on a cold morning, which then comes out like smoke from the old wooden door of this small tea-stall. Hugging onto their rifles, the tense looking CRPF personnel reluctantly stand guard outside the booth, as if under compulsion. They push around people, and ensure people maintain a disciplined line—though most of them still don’t.

Just behind this busy pooling booth is a young man’s grave. He was killed years back (in 1996). And today, only one person is standing near his grave: his father. And he is not voting today, he says pensively standing near the solitary grave of his son. Resting on a raised slope and protected by iron bars, the grave is everything for this man standing near it. None from my family will vote today, he says after a brief pause, coming out of his thoughts. My son was 18, he adds, when he was martyred by the army. “He gave his life for independence, for azadi, and not for elections,” the man says with eyes transfixed on the grave.

Seeing us engaged in conversation with this man near the grave, the old man suddenly comes out of his tea stall. The two men know each other. There is one thing common to them: they both lost their sons. The old man comes up to us, greets the other man, and tells us why he too is not interested in voting today: his son’s grave lies few meters away from his tea-stall. Pointing at his son’s grave protected by wooden logs, the old man wants me to listen to the story of his son too. He looks expectedly at my notebook, wanting me to pen down his story. But we are getting late. We have to rush towards another polling booth. We will come again to listen to your story, I tell the white bearded old man as I run towards the vehicle blowing repeated horns for me across the street. And as the vehicle drove away from this polling booth, I could see the old man from the rear windowpane of the vehicle: he stood pensively outside the polling booth, near his tea stall, and kept watching people around him vote, and the rest, wait in queues for their turn. As the vehicle accelerated and fog took over the scene completely, the old man’s frail frame faded out of my sight. And I knew I won’t come again to listen to his story.

Weeks pass.

Srinagar goes to polls today. We are making rounds on the empty streets of the Srinagar city littered with troopers and armored security vehicles. Around 3pm, we reach Tangpora area of Batamaloo. Here “poll boycott” is the writing on the walls, quiet literally. “No elections. Election boycott. Azadi”—is chalked on the walls of the alleys of this neighborhood in capital, bold, hand written letters. And small, fading paper posters of affected family members made out of old newspaper clipping adorn the outer walls of the households in the small alleys of this locality. Some distance from a desolate polling booth, around 3:30pm, the agitated people of the locality we stop by have come out of their homes. They have assembled outside the street near the local mosque. Suddenly, one bearded middle aged man emerges from crowd to stand on the stairs of the mosque. And from the stairs of the mosque entrance, he suddenly addresses the rest of the people in front of him. The address, without a mike and outside the mosque, is not a sermon. It’s political. It’s about elections. He reminds them – in loud, defiant voice – of why they boycotted elections today. He reminds them of the three families of the locality they paid homage today—by not voting. Three sons from the locality are still missing in custody, he says. Who is accountable for their disappearance, he asks the crowd. “How can we vote then?” he questions the people in front of him. Only 17 people have voted today, the man says out aloud. And we know who they are, he says, they came from outside. Some women in the crowd, holding each others hand, are listening attentively to his address.

And then, all of a sudden, the man makes an announcement:

“Let me tell you now that yesterday I was told by someone from the authority that our young men have been killed. There is no point in waiting for them now. And their families should perform their last rites….”

A sudden hush descends on the crowd. There is a brief silence. No one speaks. Shocked and surprised faces look at each other, and then at the man who is addressing them. Hearing this news, some elderly women, who were listening to this man silently, start mourning now. And weep inconsolably. Their mourning becomes more pronounced now; their feeble cries lapse into loud shouts of grief. Rolling the edges of their white scarves, the old women around them wipe their tears, and each others. And the younger women, who are part of this small crowd outside the mosque, have tears in their eyes, too. But they try to console the elder women first, extending a comfortable shoulder for them to grieve on.

Hesitantly, I negotiate my way through the crowd to approach one of the old women. She is particularly inconsolable, repeatedly calling out loud, one name in particular: Mushtaq Ahmad, her son. And when I ask her about her son, she weeps some more. She is not able to talk. Other women accompanying her, speak for her. They ask me to come to her home situated at some distance from the mosque. And I walk slowly to keep pace with this group of grieving, elderly women to one of the small one storey house nearby. And as soon as we step into a small room, the old women, Rahte, grabs a framed picture of her son kept on the upper windowsill of the room. And before I can clearly see her son’s picture, she hugs it tightly, holding it close to her chest, not letting it go, as if it was her son who had come back home today. Then she wept, all the while gently swinging her head back and forth, in mourning. And, in between, she would frequently shout her disappeared son’s name, addressing his photo as if he was in front of her. The constant surge of tears from her sad, sunken eyes seemed to acquire a material form palpable in the room: for a brief moment, I felt as if I could touch her grief.

By now many women from the neighborhood had assembled in this small room. And I was struggling to take notes. Amidst tears and mourning from each family member present in the room, many narrations of their disappeared family member competed on my notebook. Narrated by many grieving women surrounding me, I was finding it hard to listen to all the women speaking at the same time about one man’s disappearance years back. Unable to pen down much, I closed my notebook. And as I was preparing to leave, one of the grieving women said that many people like me have visited their house before, heard the story of disappearance of Mushtaq, and then left, never to return again. And our Mushtaq also never returned, said another woman with moist eyes sitting in one corner of the room. I had no answers for their questions. I just scribed them on my notebook, and left the house along with their story – like many journalists, human rights activists had left before me—leaving behind grieving family members, in tears.

Latter in the day, as the voting in the Srinagar city was coming to an end, and light was fading on the empty streets of Lalchowk, near Ghanta Ghar something unusual was happening. It grabbed my attention: A mock exercise in which a group of CRPF women around Ghanta Ghar, in turn surrounded by tangled meshes of concencreta wires and armoured vehicles, were getting filmed by their female colleague. She had a handy-cam in her hand, like you take out on a family holiday. She was trying to focus, trying to bring all her colleagues in frame. She was repeatedly asking her subjects to smile, raise their batons in the air, and pay attention. She wanted to capture a perfect shot. But her subjects looked tired, and unwilling for this exercise after a tough day on duty. Unsatisfied, she would line up her wary subjects again, and do a retake. And as our vehicle drove past them, the CRPF woman, undisturbed, kept filming her colleagues who were doing their moves once more for the camera. Finally they managed to put on fake smiles for the camera. And this time the CRPF women soldier seemed satisfied with the shot. Happy, she walked up to her subjects, and showed them how they looked like in the video. All of them surrounded her, and saw themselves in playback mode: captured, happy, smiling.

This final image from the last phase of elections in the last, fading hour of voting kept playing on my mind like an unforgettable movie scene. Each one of them, I thought, would take the videos home miles away in some state of India, and show it to their children, mother, father, husband, fiancée, lover. They would take our home to their homes. These videos would become part of their family videos perhaps, I thought as the scene faded out of my sight to play on my mind latter. And the videos would show a different Kashmir—different from those shots in that if-there- is-paradise-on-earth Kashmir paraded on those ‘Incredible India’ ads on TV.

That Kashmir is of innumerable troopers, of desolate streets, of armoured military vehicles, and innumerable checkpoints; of sandbag bunkers with guns pointing out, and troopers, inside, outside. And one can imagine the sub-titles of those videos shot in Kashmir: We came to Kashmir, in armored vehicles. We came with guns. We made bunkers. We stopped them on the streets, searched their bodies, and asked for their identity cards. And we filmed it all, kept a record, for you. Of course we did all this for their security. You must be wondering: what else we did in—and to—Kashmir? Simple: We captured it for you.

A long, long drive to hospital, in curfew

My phone rings, around 3pm, on August 26th. “Your uncle had a heart attack. Come to SKIMS, Soura. He is in the emergency intensive cardiac care unit”, a voice hurriedly informs in a worrying tone. My first thought: I have to reach SKIMS, Soura as early as possible, somehow. And I have to tell this news to my parents in a calm, matured manner—and tell them that he is out of danger now although I know he isn’t. It’s a lie, I know that. But sometimes a lie is needed to convey a painful truth, especially when it is about your loved ones.
There is a problem: We can’t move out of our home. It is the third consecutive day of curfew. A strict curfew has been imposed in the entire valley to prevent people from coming out of their homes. Following many successful freedom marches wherein lakhs of people participated, the pro-freedom leaders had given a Lal Chwok chalo call. On 24th August people from all across the valley were expected to march to Lal Chowk. But the government came up with an antidote: A strict, indefinite curfew was imposed in the entire valley on 24th August to prevent people from marching towards Lal Chowk. From the morning, shoot at sight orders were in place in Srinagar. We come to know about it from Delhi based Indian news channels (the anchor said it so briefly, in a cold, casual manner). All local channels had been banned in the valley. And the local papers couldn’t be published.
A curfew is different from a hartal. Moving out this time means: the soldier on the street will shout at first, then threaten with his bamboo stick, and finally—if you still keep moving, unheeded to his repeated shouts—bullets will come your way. But then, we had to move out anyhow, and try to reach the hospital. When a loved one is struggling for his life in the hospital, you can’t stay at home. Even when there is curfew outside.

I leaf out a white page from an old, abandoned drawing book. EMERGENCY, I write in capital letters with a black sketch pen, and paste it on the front window of the car. This should help us with the soldiers outside, I tell myself. Outside, as we slowly, hesitantly drive our vehicle out on the road, an unmistakable curfew-silence rules the air. It’s palpable. One can hear the faintest of the noises in the air. A curfew silences the noise of everyday life on the streets, and instead, amplifies the silence, manifold. Except occasional army vehicles swiftly driving past us, the noise of our vehicle is the only thing breaking the enforced-silence of the curfew outside. My parents, accompanying me, are worried—about things ahead, and for the uncle in the hospital. And there is another cause of worry playing on our minds. We don’t have a curfew pass. And we know that can be fatal when you are moving out in a curfew. We know we will be asked for it by the gun wielding, bamboo stick holding soldiers patrolling everywhere on the streets. And that means, on our way to hospital, we will invite trouble in many forms: angry soldiers, shouts, threatening whistles, pointed guns, and, finally, bullets. A curfew-pass, my father tells me while we slowly drive on the deserted road, functions like an identity card during curfew. In fact a curfew pass is the identity card in curfew. If you don’t have it, you simply can’t move out; you better stay at home. But then we knew this, too: we had to move out this time even without a curfew pass- for my uncle who is in the hospital.
After driving a kilometer, near Sanat Nagar, some tense soldiers suddenly come in the middle of the road from the pavement where they were sitting till now. They come up to stop us, raising their bamboo sticks in the air, tightly holding on to their guns.
“Hay….kahan jana hai… curfew pass dikhav” (where are you going. Show us the curfew pass), shouts one of the soldier.
Hospital, I say, thinking on hearing this word they will let us go.
“Koan hai hospital main, patient kahan hai..”(Who’s in the hospital, where is the patient). The soldier searches for the patient in the car. But the patient is in the hospital.
“Patient hospital main hai.” The patient is in the hospital, I say
“Curfew pass kahan hai”. Where is your curfew pass, he again asks the question we dread the most.
Nahi hai..,(we don’t have it) I say the truth, emergency hai.
“Police station say lain gay. Wahan tak janay deejyay”. We will get it form the police station down the road. Allow us to reach there, I say.
Despite all my explanations, and despite answering all of their questions, the soldiers are unrelenting, unmoved.
Yeh kis nay izazat diya (who allowed you to paste this), says one of the soldier, pointing to the EMERGENCY paper pasted on the front window of the car.
“Emergency hai, I explained, wahe likha hai (that’s what is written on it)
Kud kaisay lagaya, kis nay ijazaat diya…han …(why did you write it yourself. Who gave you the permission…) His tone is increasingly becoming threatening. Seeing his anger rise, I keep quiet. Though, at that moment—for not allowing us to moving ahead despite all our explanations—I also felt anger rise inside me. But then, my anger was pointless: I couldn’t afford to show it. And unlike me, the soldier, besides his anger, had the gun. And I didn’t even have the curfew pass!
Without saying anything, the soldier turns his back towards our vehicle—the barricade intact, the soldiers unmoved to our repeated pleas.
“Wapas jav--go back, he orders from a distance. And then he looks the other way as if we are not there. But we stay there. We are silent. We can’t go back. We have to reach the hospital.
My mother pleads now, then my father—in front of the soldiers who are refusing to listen. I don’t want them to plead before these soldiers. Raham karo, hospital mae beemaar hai…( have mercy, our patient is serious in the hospital), my mother pleads. After repeated pleas of my parents, one of the soldiers, finally, tells his colleagues to let us go.
Janay do…let then go, he tells his fellow soldiers. lakin yahan say wapas nahi ana. But don’t come back from this side, he tells us.
We move on, thankful to this momentary sympathy of an occasionally sympathetic soldier on a curfewed day.
After covering some two kilometers, again, we are stopped. The same questions from the soldiers; the same answers from our side. And the same unconcerned, unmoved soldiers. And then, in the middle of all this uncertainty, a bearded Kashmir policeman appears from nowhere on the scene, and listens to us.
He lets us move ahead, somehow prevailing on the soldiers around. The soldiers don’t like his intervention. We like it very much.
The policeman tells us in Kashmiri that he is not sure if they will allow us to go beyond Rambagh. But you can try, he says. We drive on; we have no other choice.
We stop near Barzullah, to see if we can get a curfew pass from the police station. Inside, three police officers, sitting in a dimly lit room of the police station, are attending tense calls from the policemen out on the streets. They also answer frequent calls of their higher officers. We wait for them to take notice of us. They are not authorized to give us a curfew pass, a police officer informs us on asking. Only DC’s office can issue it, he says. That is a long distance away from here, we think, and on the way there are far too many soldiers, far too many barricades to stop us from reaching the hospital. To be on the safer side, we request them to give us some authority slip with a police station stamp. They write something on a piece of paper, put a police station stamp, and hand it over to us. But they are not sure if it will help us with the soldiers outside; neither are we.
You can take it but it doesn’t work with the soldiers down the road, a policeman frankly says. One police officer rues the fact that CRPF on the roads outside is not even listening to them, although they should, he says. They are supposed to follow and work under our rules but you see in Kashmir things are different, he says in helplessness. “I had an argument with the CRPF officer on the use of force by his men yesterday in Rambagh,” he further informs. “The area comes under our jurisdiction but they are terrorizing and beating up people at will,” he adds as we come out of the police station on the deserted road.
‘Don’t worry, we have something now, this should help us’, my father tells me while we drive away from the police station, towards Rambagh. And as we near the Rambagh bridge, again—as one policeman had earlier said—we are stopped. The same questions follow by a different set of soldiers. And as we feared, they dismiss the police station slip we were carrying. Nearby, an CRPF officer looks on disdainfully. One of the soldiers takes away the police station slip from us, and walks up to this CRPF officer to show him the slip. To our surprise, without moving from his position and after closely scrutinizing it, the CRPF officer tells his men to let us go. And then the same expected warning follows: don’t come back from this side, the officer shouts from a distance. Yes sir, I say and we drive on, relieved.
Finally, we reach the DC’s office to get that life saving piece of paper: a curfew pass. After waiting anxiously for a while in a long queue, we get it—a white paper; an official curfew pass. VALID FOR CURFEW PERIOD” is printed on it in black capital letters. The possession of curfew pass felt as if a life saving drug was handled over to us.
We drive on from the DCs office, towards SKIMS, Soura. We are stopped at many places, asked for the curfew pass, and we confidently show it to them from the window of the car. They would let us move ahead after closely scrutinizing it for a while.

Near Eidgah, we had to stop our vehicle. Something has happened down the road. There is tension in the air. Some noises come out from the houses nearby. The soldiers, carrying bamboo sticks in their hands, are all angry, all worked up, shouting. Some distance away, we can see a load carrier driver and a boy surrounded by the soldiers. They are shouting at him; he is showing them some paper. With a paper in one hand, the man is pleading before them to let him go. The soldiers ask him to come out of the load carrier. And then, without listening to any of his explanations, they start beating him with their long bamboo sticks. We are watching this from a distance, from inside our car. Alternately, every soldier hits one blow, on his legs, without respite. And every time a blow comes down on his legs, he bends a little, and tries to receive the blows on his hands. But the blows still come down on his legs. He winces in pain. He pleads. I could hear the sound of every blow—that sound when the wood strikes the human flesh and bone—as it came down on the legs of this middle aged man. He kept pleading before the soldiers, and showing them that piece of paper. But the blows kept coming.
The young boy accompanying him—probably his son—stood still and kept watching this spectacle from near the load carrier. He was silent, shocked, terrified. But he did not cry. Tears formed in his eyes but did not fall. He kept staring at the soldiers who were beating his father. How does it feel like seeing your father getting beaten in front of you? And how does it feel like when you can’t do anything about it, I asked myself. Safe, and from a distance, perhaps I could only imagine how it feels like. But the boy knows it. He saw it. It happened before his eyes. The boy kept looking at his humiliated, bruised father with disbelief. Suddenly a woman raised her voice a bit; she was watching this beating from the window of her house nearby. The soldiers got angry on this, and hurled some unmentionable abuses in the direction of that house. I will come to your home and break your bones if you don’t keep quiet, threatened one of the soldier, raising his bamboo stick towards that window.
After the beating, and after some abuses when the load carrier driver was finally let off by the soldiers, he ran to his vehicle, limping. He was struggling to start his load carrier. The terrified boy came out of the driver’s seat to enable his father to kick start it. The soldiers got angry on this and shouted at the boy, pushing him around, asking him to run away. The boy shouted back this time, “don’t you see he can’t start the vehicle”. And when his father was finally able to start the load carrier, I could see the boy, shocked out of his innocence, kept looking at his father. His father was silent though. He did not look at his son. They just drove away.
Now it was our turn.
The same soldiers came up to our vehicle and asked for the curfew pass. I had kept it ready in my hand, unfolded. I hand it over to them all the while fearing that they will ask us to come out of the vehicle now. But they closely looked at the curfew pass, one by one, searched our vehicle suspiciously, and then we were allowed to move ahead. I thought the load carrier driver who was beaten up, instead of a compulsory curfew pass, was showing the soldiers some other paper or a police slip. But that doesn’t work in curfew. But does that explain the beating?
Finally, after a long drive—It seemed a long, long drive—we reached SKIMS. Ahead of my parents, I rushed to the intensive cardiac care unit where my uncle—amidst a mesh of wires and life saving machines attached to his body—lay pale and weak on the bed, breathing with an oxygen mask. Some young doctors were constantly monitoring his condition. My mother placed a hand on his forehead; my father stood nearby. I took a young doctor aside, and asked him: how is his condition now? Is he out of danger? He smiled, and said: “you should thank god, your uncle is lucky to have reached hospital in time. Many such patients died on the way to hospital. Because of curfew, they couldn’t reach the hospital on time.”
I thanked the doctors, sat near my uncle, and looking at the even crests and troughs signifying normal heartbeat on the ECG monitor, I said a silent prayer.