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Volume 2, No. 7 - December 2002 |
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Survivors Speak
My family suffered not
only once.... We used to stay at a small village about 15kms from Anantnag. I still remember Shivratri(a major festival of Kashmiris) of the year 1986.My maternal grandfather was in the last stages of his cancer so all my masis(aunts)and mausas(uncles)were there at his place trying their best to serve him during his last days of life.During this period,riots had started in the southern part of the valley and some miscreants in Kashmir had started looting the Hindu families.One morning we got the news that my Aunt's place had been looted.It was like a nightmare, on one side my grandfather was very sick and on the other side we had no knowledge of the whereabouts of my cousins and their paternal grandmother who were there at that time. Then my Masi(Aunt) borrowed a burkha(veil)from a neighbour to conceal her identity as a hindu woman and walked for hours to reach her village just to find her wrecked house and shocked children and mother-in-law. After a few days my grandfather passed away and slowly we had to return to our normal lives trying to forget the painful past. Then came a time (ending 1989 onwards)when everybody had to decide whether to leave the valley or not.My parents had to stay there for a little longer than everybody else did due our personal problems.I was sent to Jammu,since my school had been shut down, to take admission in another school there. One night,when my perents,grandmother and great grandmother were getting ready for the dinner, they heard a knock at the door.My mother went to open the door and the first thing to enter was a barrel of a gun followed by two masked terrorists.She almost lost consciousness. They took my father in a separate room and started questioning him about him having a wireless telephone and being involved with the Indian Army calling him mukhbir(informer).Truth being, my father had nothing to do with a wireless telephone.He is a man of principle and has always believed in a live and let live policy. They showed him a letter stamped by some area commander saying that if they found him guilty he would be given the appropriate punishment according to the rules. In the other room my mother and grandmother tried to escape through the window to get some help when they realised that our house had been surrounded from all sides by the terrorists. My great grandmother who was a courageous and selfless woman, forcefully entered the room where they were questioning my father and she started screaming at the top her voice, condemning them of killing innocent people without any reason. With her entrance in the room, my father gathered courage and started yelling at them telling them to do whatever they had to do in front of the whole village. He told them that they were cowards and challenged them to prove his guilt and then punish him in front of everyone in the village. The terrorists were really shocked as my father pushed them aside and dragged one of the two terrorists outside in the courtyard and told him repeatedly to call the villagers. They got confused and fled without harming anyone from my family. Later when my father reported the incident to the so-called elders of the village(who tried to assure him that nothing like this would happen in future and he doesn't have to fear any more),they did an investigation and we came know that an ex-tiller of ours had hired these terrorists so that he could own our land that was just next to his. My family had to leave the place soon after this incident since my family no longer felt secure there. I am thankful to God for blessing us with my father's precious life. It is really shameful that we have lost so many precious and innocents lives and the culprits are still at large. |
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