How "Hospitable" Are You

By Shaikh Tawheed Rehman

I always thought I have the potential of a good writer as my lengthy love letters always delivered good results just like Google. This thought of mine was further supported by my Master’s degree in Journalism but even after two years of the completion of my degree I haven’t written anything yet.

Yes, I cannot write but I stepped down. It’s not as though I can’t put words together and construct a good sentence, weave those sentences into paragraphs and come up with an eloquent written piece. It’s just that I cannot write objectively. Even if I try to, emotions always seem to creep in and take over the profession. So I just give up the idea of writing and keep myself happy in reading and learning.

What prompted me to write this time is out of frustration caused by my professional Gods – Newspapers. I was told during my degree that journalists should choose their words carefully as they never know who the reader might be. It took me two years to find one such word and unfortunately that one word appeared in a reputed newspaper of India, The Indian Express. The Editor in his editorial piece titled “The fires just don’t die down” dated August 13, 2008 available at their website http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEF20080813015151&Title=First+Editorial&rLink=0 describes the “100 acre” Kashmiri land as “inhospitable”. As it is quite evident that a piece of land cannot be inhospitable, the Editor means to say people in Kashmir are inhospitable. And I wonder how senior journalist approach to events and start generalizing things or events.

Conflict in Kashmir has its own context and there is no wrong in standing up and fighting for your rights. A lot of nations have done it. During India’s struggle for Independence from East India Company, people in India, regardless of their caste or religion, were united till the end unlike in Kashmir, where a community fled overnight.

Religion in this region has always been a root cause to all the problems. Majority of Muslims in Kashmir share their religious proximity with the neighboring country, Pakistan, and majority of Hindus with India. So, if Kashmirs are not comfortable with India there is no guarantee that Hindus in Jammu will find relative peace with Pakistan and this will continue. So the question of accession to Pakistan doesn’t exist anywhere.

By the way, we don’t want a partition of Jammu and Kashmir like India and Pakistan. A Kashmiri just wants freedom from such administration. We don’t want the administration to formulate heinous acts and implement them in Kashmir, we just don’t want our brothers being detained illegally and then tortured to death, we don’t want forced disappearances, we don’t want false media reports or tags, we don’t want being killed and tortured by our own Kashmiri police men, we don’t want any mothers tears, not any more…

We just want our freedom, our nation, and our rights. And if all this sums up to being “inhospitable”, we are proud for being so.

Options To Death – The Only Choice

I wake up in the morning to realize that all the essential food items in my home are over and there is not a single grain of food left to eat. My 2 year old son is asking for milk, my wife is silent because she knows about the things but my old mother is unaware and is shouting and asking for her morning tea.

I stand still like a rock not knowing what to do but I leave my home to see if I will be able to do something. Nothing is accessible outside and the money lies wasted in my pocket. The first step out of my house and I get a beating from the policeman standing just outside my home. Not a single word is uttered but the beating continues but I somehow manage to escape from there and reach the main road. All shops closed, a deserted look and the feeling of pain surround me. Before I can even get a good look of where I stand, an army man comes charging to me. He beats he with the back of his gun until I bleed and tells me to go back before he opens fire on me. But those words have no effect on me and I just laugh.

That laugh boils the temperature of the army men and they all start beating me in all the possible ways they can. They throw me from one corner of the road to another and all that comes to me is the face of my 2 year old son who is starving for food, my old mother who cannot survive without food and my helpless but silent wife.

They don’t allow me to say anything and push me back into the lane where the earlier policeman is waiting for his turn to try his beating skills which he showcases perfectly. And finally I am pushed back into my house. Seeing my face, my wife cries out loudly but my son is silent. I do not know what to do and I have nothing to do.

I take out my entire family in my car and move out of the house. Policemen try to stop me but I don’t, they fire but I cannot afford to stop. Bullets everywhere but I have no option. As I reach near the army banker, they shoot a grenade and next thing I hear is a big bang.

No more worries now, everything is silent. No need for milk, food or anything else. I can see my mother, my wife and my two year old kid resting for ever. They are no more and so am I.

But before I take the last breath, I just wanted to see their faces once again but I cannot because the next grenade stopped me from even doing that. We all had to die, either by every passing day or in one go – these were the only options left here. But still, I love my land and I am not ashamed of what I did – this was my only option.

This is my story and this is my Kashmir. Welcome one and all . . .

According to Mamkol, “Life always has a connotation, let us give death also a meaning”.