Kashmir

So I basically had little reminders written up on my phone of what I'd been up to in Kashmir and all the interesting things that had happened. Unfortunately, upon reaching Bahrain, I decided to play around with my phone, put a password lock on it and promptly forgot it. Thankfully my phone is no longer disabled but I know for sure now that my memory needs a serious reboot. Sigh. So here it goes, an account of the five weeks made up of disjointed and faded images and occurrences that I am attempting to recollect, and it's taken an awfully long time to get round to writing this.. I'm just really lazy..

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The morning we were meant to leave, we unpacked our bags, called the travel agency and told them we wanted to cancel our tickets. The situation was so bad out there that we honestly didn't know if we would be able to make it back home to my brother. He was staying behind, busy with organising protests, giving interviews and being called to speak at international conferences regarding the situation into which we were literally flying into. We had our will sorted out, my mum wrote a letter that my brother would receive if we didn't make it back and I did the rounds of 'I'm going to Kashmir, I may die, so please forgive me if I've done anything to harm you. Oh and if I owe you anything, take it off my brother..' Charming, no?

Anyway, we decided to take the risk. It's my last long holiday and I was in dire need of a break from absolutely everything. You know when you're mentally exhausted and your brain is saturated to the point of insanity? Well, time away from everything and everyone you know is the perfect fix, and for me, Kashmir is my drug. You get high, you get addicted and every time you think you're over it, you relapse. An ashiq for the bonds that come with birth. Blood that can't forget. Inshallah soon again :)

Anyhow, upon arriving in the just-bearable heat, the hartaal-imposed silence was more than noticeable, moreso as it stood in stark contrast to the usual clamour and noise that we as a people maximise to our full potential. An unavoidable part of being Kashmiri. Must be something in our rice.. unless you're one of the odd exceptions of course.

And talking about being different, our thankfully uneventful journey home was laughter-ridden as we couldn't stop staring at this bizarre movie player that proudly sat in place of the usual rearview mirror. I mean, seriously, is the driver supposed to sneak peeks at some film that's playing whilst he's trying to manoeuvre the car around horses, cows, people and maniac driving, and all without being able to see whats going on on the road behind him? Crazy!

And yes, I often do wonder if God made us Kashmiris this weird and wonderful species just so that we can forget about our issues and have jokes instead as we do oddly baffling things. So basically my uncle arrives after a two hour journey, at six in the morning, on a motorbike he'd borrowed off one of the boys on his street. Fair enough, right? Apart from the fact that his experience of riding one dates back 20 years or so. And to proper hero-fy it, he came without a helmet or jacket, (arriving shivering and frozen to the bone) during the hartaal and having to endure the ken-jang going on. Errr, don hai, don. Such a Kashmiri :D

He did it again a couple of days later, but with a friend's car, and this time managed to bring us back down with him to Baramullah. It's a good thing that he did, considering the fact that the situation worsened to such an extent that we were unable to go back down a second time.

Stuck in Baramullah for about ten days, we had three different houses we could wander between, dividing our time between sleeping, eating and watching tv. We didn't get up to much, mostly spending our days with our youngest cousins and punctuating our immense amounts of rest by sitting in peaceful content at the lake or the railway station down the road.

The situation seemed to always be the worst in Baramullah. Whilst we were there, there was a boy who was beaten by the police, had his head crushed and was then thrown into the lake. Waiting for the body to be found was a tense situation and in lue of this, the army personnel were already sat in the streets, lining the sidewalks with their own terror at the anger that they were about to face from the distraught people.

Each day brought more news of more death. More torture, more unimaginable goings on. Lives were being tossed aside as though old clothes, and like uninhibited wild animals ripping through hunted flesh, it was as though the troops were craving more innocent blood. The people had had enough. Geelani saab was calling for the still ongoing strikes and the youth were on the streets protesting, throwing stones and beating anyone who dared to resume normality in the form of open shops or travel.With all phone networks shut down, newspapers censored, and the news stories on tv cut short, word of mouth and night-time movements allowed the flow of information to spread throughout Kashmir. Things were looking worse as each day passed by.

It was a miracle that we were able to leave Baramullah, get ourselves up to Srinagar, and the following day find ourselves in Pudsoo at a far too early an hour to remember. However, the two weeks we spent 'stuck' there defined the entire trip and have created such intense memories, that it is difficult to put all those feelings into words. Each time I remember my time there, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I usually end up doing a bit of both. Dealing with such incomparabale amounts of genuine love and affection from my dad's side of the family is always slightly overwhelming to begin with, but it's what we have learned as being the true definition of somewhere being 'home'.

As though the cleaner air up in the mountains purifies the passing hours, the village appears to live in a bubble of land that time has forgot. There is a stillness, an almost breathing entity that allows life to flow unbroken alongside the running streams. An infinitude of peace. A haven reclaimed.. :)

Spanning almost 20 years between the youngest and the eldest of our 30 odd cousins, we were able to enjoy each other's company for the two weeks that we were there. We spent our days traipsing around both our and neighbouring villages, eliciting unashamed stares from the natives, a very ingrained characteristic passed down through generations amongst the Kashmiris.

The fruit orchards are always something else. To spend whole afternoons in the fields looking for snakes, eating fruit plucked straight from our trees, and hearing stories about life in Kashmir, this was the bliss we had come in search of. My memories of Pudus are mostly of spending my time sitting outside on the boulders and cracking open half-ripened walnuts and almonds whilst we're sharing stories and soaking in the atmosphere and the people.

There were always funny incidents, such as when one cousin milked a cow straight into another cousins waiting open mouth, or when my sister had a tantrum on seeing a dead abandoned puppy on the road. We also learned that one of my younger cousins has built a pigeon pen in his loft and spends his time 'training' them. Although I never got round to seeing it, my sister did seem to be impressed by it!

The boys in the village would gather at a pre-fixed time to play volleyball in the courtyard everyday outside the darzga (Islamic school for the kids) and despite numerous attempts to take over the playing area, we had to settle with just watching them from an abandoned building that looked down onto them.

One of the major highlights was learning to drive. We snuck out one day to practice in the open grounds in Aherbal and also enjoy the view at the same time. Aherbal, although highly dangerous, is extremely beautiful; the water source for Kashmir, a raging waterfall that has seen the death of many. This was only the start of my many driving expeditions.

Apart from the time where we went to visit extended family in Ritnipoora and Shoonshpoor, we managed to leave the house once and went to Wazirbag, a park of sorts, followed by a quick trip to a place known for housing black fish. Our outing was however cut short as the ken-jang started up again as we made a speedy escape.

One thing I will never forget is standing on the rooftops at nightime, holding candles in order to see the young boys and adults of the village surge through the streets to nearby villages, gaining numbers as they went along, shouting their slogans and demonstrating against the situation Kashmir was arrested in. The rumble of their voices and their intense passion filled our hearts to breaking point. We only wished we could go down and join them.

Our last night was filled with singing, dancing and a lot of silences as it dawned on us that we wouldn't see them again. Surrounded by all my cousins, I couldn't help but realise what we miss out on when family isn't always in your life.

By the end of our stay, the city was ringing with the sound of the oppressed people; nasheeds, slogan shouting and restrained anger blaring out from the mosque speakers. Some areas made announcements that anyone who stayed indoors during the hartaals and didn't protest would face the wrath of the people. The women and children lined the streets outside their homes until 2am whilst the boys and men took to the streets.

The day we left Kashmir we heard the news of a child who had been taken by the army; the body came back battered with the eyes gouged out and had the ears and hands cut off. Obviously dead. The nine year old boy who had gone to play at his friends house was captured, had a baton rammed all the way down his throat, which was then used to bash his head in. Witnesses saw the army stamping on his small body until the audible sounds of all his ribs breaking were heard. Goodness knows how many more similar stories exist, I just couldn't bear to hear them all. But these aren't just 'stories', they are realities which the Indian Government do their best to hide by nation-wide media blanketing. The situation is out of control and no one in the outside world knows.

It is only Allah's blessings that allows anyone to survive at all..

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*hartaal = imposed by kashmiri leaders, i.e. Geelani. These are strikes where nothing is open. You can't go anywhere by car because the people on the streets, mostly young guys, will beat the muffins out of you or throw stones at you as go by.

* curfew = imposed by the army. shoot-on-site order if you leave the house. usually imposed during the hartaal so that people can't go out and protest.