Its’ the 60th Republic Day for India…I did watch the parade (I used to watch it every year back in school) ...and then for some reason I was very glad with myself to decide to stay back in India... Hoping for a world without war, economy moving upwards, no more RAJUs in the making, AR Rahman bagging an Oscar, Obama doing his bit to change the world…and why just Obama!? We doing “our bit” too! Amen! :) As a pop up thought, do watch Slumdog Millioaire…you’ll enjoy it thoroughly! I am not great in writing movie reviews unlike my other pals, so skipping the details :)
While switching channels I came across interviews of the soldiers posted in Kashmir and their experiences in the valley. Couldn’t help but put in excerpts from one of the books that I read sometime back. The book is Curfewed Night by Bashrat Peer and its’ a must read for every Indian! The author is a Kashmiri and was a part of the happenings in the valley in the nineties. On the lines of my previous post, the book just made my belief in “Everything has an other side” all the more strong. Like the author, I was a teenager when things were happening around in the valley; but unlike him, I could never understand what was actually happening, why it was happening, who were the stakeholders for the simple reason that it didn’t affect me in any way. Even today, I have a very limited knowledge on the whole story. But this book made me think, made me realize the flip side of the story that is known to most of us. It’ll take me a decent amount of time to know and understand certain stories that I am interested in now more than ever.
Here are some lines from the book that’ll linger in my mind always…
Sharif Hussain Bukhari was one of those men. In his early sixties, a beak nosed man with soft eyes, wearing a light blue shalwar kameez, he walked in a daze as he crossed the bridge from the Pakistan-controlled part into the India-controlled part, where he was born. He was returning home for the first time after 1950. crossing the LOC had haunted him through the five decades he spent in Pakistan, as a student, a lawyer, a Lahore high court judge and now a professor of law. His two sisters and a brother had stayed in his ancestral north Kashmir village when he trekked with his father across the LoC as a fifteen year old. For years, he neither received nor sent any letters home. There were no phone calls either. He communicated through his dreams. “I would dream of my school, of the apricot and apple trees in our courtyard. I would dream of the house I was born and of the journey back home”, he said. The crossing had become unattainable even in his dreams. “In my dreams I would be arrested at the LoC and turned back”, he said.
The failure of the subconscious was the border. The line of control did not run through 576 kilometers of militarized mountains. It ran through our souls, our hearts, and our minds. It ran through everything a Kashmiri, an Indian and a Pakistani said, wrote and did. It ran through the fingers of editors writing newspaper and magazine editorials, it ran through the eyes of reporters, it ran through the reels of Bollywood coming to life in dark theaters, it ran through conversations in coffee shops and TV screens showing cricket matches, it ran through families and dinner talk, it ran through the whispers of lovers. And it ran through our grief, our anger, our tears, and our silences.
Hundreds of villagers had gathered at the Reception Centre for the visitors from Pakistan-controlled Kashmir at Salamabad village, half an hour from the Peace Bridge as you drive back from Srinagar. School children dressed in traditional costumes, who had waited throughout the day for the bus to arrive, welcomed it dancing to Hindi film songs. A young man rushed towards Bukhari. Bukhari didn’t recognize the excited youth. “I am Showket, your sister’s son”, said the young man. “I am sorry son. I didn’t even get to see a picture if yours all these years,” Bukhari said. Their moist eyes were the line of control.
The buses carrying the passengers from Muzaffarabad traveled under a drizzling grey sky to Srinagar. It is a road that has been deserted after duck for a decade and a half. I watched thousands of women, men and children stand aling the much soldiered road, waving hands and umbrellas, welcoming the ones who had stepped across the line. There was no fear that evening. There were only hands reaching out of the bus windows, waving in the air, as if each wave would erase the lines of control. I raised my hand waved.
I wish for a world without fear, where there are no battles for boundaries and people in places like Kashmir, Afganistan, Gaza, Israel, Palestine are privileged to rights of democracy, peace and freedom as any other normal person in the world; where children in these places can enjoy their childhood and have fond memories to cherish rather than the nightmares that we cannot even dare to imagine…
While switching channels I came across interviews of the soldiers posted in Kashmir and their experiences in the valley. Couldn’t help but put in excerpts from one of the books that I read sometime back. The book is Curfewed Night by Bashrat Peer and its’ a must read for every Indian! The author is a Kashmiri and was a part of the happenings in the valley in the nineties. On the lines of my previous post, the book just made my belief in “Everything has an other side” all the more strong. Like the author, I was a teenager when things were happening around in the valley; but unlike him, I could never understand what was actually happening, why it was happening, who were the stakeholders for the simple reason that it didn’t affect me in any way. Even today, I have a very limited knowledge on the whole story. But this book made me think, made me realize the flip side of the story that is known to most of us. It’ll take me a decent amount of time to know and understand certain stories that I am interested in now more than ever.
Here are some lines from the book that’ll linger in my mind always…
Sharif Hussain Bukhari was one of those men. In his early sixties, a beak nosed man with soft eyes, wearing a light blue shalwar kameez, he walked in a daze as he crossed the bridge from the Pakistan-controlled part into the India-controlled part, where he was born. He was returning home for the first time after 1950. crossing the LOC had haunted him through the five decades he spent in Pakistan, as a student, a lawyer, a Lahore high court judge and now a professor of law. His two sisters and a brother had stayed in his ancestral north Kashmir village when he trekked with his father across the LoC as a fifteen year old. For years, he neither received nor sent any letters home. There were no phone calls either. He communicated through his dreams. “I would dream of my school, of the apricot and apple trees in our courtyard. I would dream of the house I was born and of the journey back home”, he said. The crossing had become unattainable even in his dreams. “In my dreams I would be arrested at the LoC and turned back”, he said.
The failure of the subconscious was the border. The line of control did not run through 576 kilometers of militarized mountains. It ran through our souls, our hearts, and our minds. It ran through everything a Kashmiri, an Indian and a Pakistani said, wrote and did. It ran through the fingers of editors writing newspaper and magazine editorials, it ran through the eyes of reporters, it ran through the reels of Bollywood coming to life in dark theaters, it ran through conversations in coffee shops and TV screens showing cricket matches, it ran through families and dinner talk, it ran through the whispers of lovers. And it ran through our grief, our anger, our tears, and our silences.
Hundreds of villagers had gathered at the Reception Centre for the visitors from Pakistan-controlled Kashmir at Salamabad village, half an hour from the Peace Bridge as you drive back from Srinagar. School children dressed in traditional costumes, who had waited throughout the day for the bus to arrive, welcomed it dancing to Hindi film songs. A young man rushed towards Bukhari. Bukhari didn’t recognize the excited youth. “I am Showket, your sister’s son”, said the young man. “I am sorry son. I didn’t even get to see a picture if yours all these years,” Bukhari said. Their moist eyes were the line of control.
The buses carrying the passengers from Muzaffarabad traveled under a drizzling grey sky to Srinagar. It is a road that has been deserted after duck for a decade and a half. I watched thousands of women, men and children stand aling the much soldiered road, waving hands and umbrellas, welcoming the ones who had stepped across the line. There was no fear that evening. There were only hands reaching out of the bus windows, waving in the air, as if each wave would erase the lines of control. I raised my hand waved.
I wish for a world without fear, where there are no battles for boundaries and people in places like Kashmir, Afganistan, Gaza, Israel, Palestine are privileged to rights of democracy, peace and freedom as any other normal person in the world; where children in these places can enjoy their childhood and have fond memories to cherish rather than the nightmares that we cannot even dare to imagine…
