Shreen Hamdani
While sitting in my cozy room, I tried to jot down my childhood memory; all confused how to initialize. There were many such incidents which were travelling through neurons of my brain at the velocity of light. Among all those incidents, there were some which made those unforgettable incidents to stop the speed of neurons and let my mind to recall the experience of those flashback years.
All those unforgettable memories are surrounded around the glimpse of five decades old house. A big house with four floors and a kani – an attic, made up of daji-deewar i.e., a mixture of bricks, timber and mud. A place where every house is surrounded by other houses, all crammed together. The mere difference between those houses, one can reckon is their different outer color of walls.
It is that house where I was born 22 years back, where I learned to speak, where I learned to walk. It was located on the corner of a three-way road; One connecting way to Kalashpora, other to Fateh-kadal and third to Bohri-kadal, at khanqah-e-Maula – the downtown of Srinagar.
It was at the age of six when I started to observe things around me. That tender age which every person loves to recall as the time go by. The days of my tender age are the one which still moves around my mind. I do not remember vividly, but many of such moments till crave inside my mind.
It was the year 1996, I had turned six.I had almost prepared myself for the upcoming winter break. I had taken a leave for sickness from school to enjoy a holiday at home, one such excise which almost every has given at its tender age.
It was an off from school which started my day and I was the happiest person at home that day; never though in any corner of my mind that it will turn into such a day which will remain deep inside my thoughts still this day. After finishing my breakfast, which I did so quickly in comparison to any other day, I ran upstairs to sit in the outer balcony with all my dolls and Barbie’s. Suddenly I saw my dad walking towards the main road. It was not just him but every person was coming out on the street. Suddenly my mother called to come down stairs. She told me it was a crackdown, and I need to stay with her. At that tender age I could hardly understand what this crackdown was all about, but the one thing which almost brought fear in my heart and mind was the tensed face of my mother. She was holding my hand with her full might as if someone was going to pull us apart. Soon after our neighbor uncle knocked our door. He came inside our house, followed by men with guns and dogs. They started to search our house, which they stated it as a daily routine. The moment they left my mother told me to remain in one room till dad comes back. He came and we all preferred to confine ourselves in one room.
I brought all my toy stuff and took one corner of that room, while my father and mother were discussing the things going around.
Suddenly we heard a big noise, and before I could figure out what exactly happened, my mother pushed me to lie down. All I could remember was one word “Firing”. As I was about to follow my mother’s words and lay down, something pierced the wall of that room, rebounded with another hard material, re-coshed and disappeared. In a reflex reaction, I yelled and felt sole of my right foot was baking on hot bed. I cried hard and my father picked me up. Later I came to know that I had stepped on the bullet. I had no clue, what was going on.
Time and years passed away, we left our home and switched over to the uptown area of Srinagar. The memories were ebbing away. I got admission in a new school, new friends and fresh memories.
The life was revolving in a loop, from home to School and then back to home.
All was peaceful for me. No more the sound of firing; no more the crackdowns and blackouts. But unlikely the peace was all a visitor. The year of 2008 came; I had started studying in 12th class with medical stream. The trend at that time was the same as it is nowadays – to attend renowned private tuition centers for individual subjects at pre-dawn prayers, instead of going to well-reputed schools.
I was all buried beneath the stress of 12th exams, but something more stressful and dark was about to come. The peaceful valley was again boiling, this time it was not about killings and fake encounters, but something about changing the demography of the valley. It was an Amarnath Land Row agitation which was on the cliff of judgment. I had moved out of my home to attend tuition class for chemistry at Karan Nagar. I reached my destination. After finishing our class, me and my friends left the tuition center and started to proceed towards our own ways. Suddenly from nowhere stone pelting took place and the police standing thereby went into quick action. They started to disperse the crowd and responded with tear gas shelling. All what we could witness was a clash between the local boys and policemen; and we were now struck between the two.
We had a narrow escape but one of my friends got her left ankle fractured. Somehow, I reached back home and my parents preferred of my not attending the tuition for some days till everything pacifies. For the valley, pacifying the thing was not so easy. Every single day brought news of protests and killings. Every single day a new death was making the situation from bad to worst. All I could pray was for peace and an end to the killings. Every day I used to get frightened to see the morning paper. I didn’t know whether this fear was because of the everyday news of killings or somewhere deep inside my mind, I had the fear that the valley should not go back to the year of 1996.
I had probably developed the intensity of heartbreaks from my ancestors, and turned myself into a prisoner who like many others was living here.
Reading newspapers and watching news channels thoroughly was the mere job one could find. Struggle for freedom was the peg of the topic to discuss and debate at suppertime.
Once again we were confined to our homes. Again we were confined to one room; the same way I could see the tense face of my mother and the same way valley was again in blackout.
Once, while sitting with mom I put forth a query about the bullet that stroked the hard surface and roasted my right foot.
Mom answered me in her sturdy voice, that the day was blackout day. From outside an encounter was going on between militants and army men. The light of TV screen was reflecting through the windowpane. An Army man opposite to our home was targeting towards the militant but he changed the direction of his rifle and shot straightly to the TV screen light. Fortunately, no one was hurt.
The trauma of that year was forcing me to relate with what was going on in the valley outside.
From that year, things started to turn from bad to worst. More than hundreds of young Kashmiri boys lost their lives in 2010.
From then and now nothing seems to have changed. How many places we change and how many homes we make; the trauma remains there. The same cries over arrests, the fear of crackdowns and illogical searching operations, and the threat of molestations and the killing of innocent people of Kashmir.