#KASHMIR- A Paradise In Pain

#KASHMIR- A Paradise in Pain I have been working US Hours (18:00 Hrs to 04:30 Hrs IST) for about 15 years now, which means I hit the bed when morning walkers take to the streets at first light. However, I have been blessed with the ability to fall asleep at almost any time and I am grateful for that. But, there recently was a time, like there has rarely been in recallable memory, when I was restless, unable to sleep for hours, even while in my normal work-sleep schedule! And this lasted for a full 2 days! The 3rd day, I took to some meditation and half a sleeping pill to cover up that sleep deficit! There clearly was Only One Thing that had caused these sleepless nights- I watched #THEKASHMIRFILES- a movie based on the #KashmiriHindu #Genocide that happened (or rather, began) on the 19th of January, 1990 in #KASHMIR, INDIA. What I felt while I was in the theatres for those mind-numbing 3 hours is something I cannot fully explain! Numerous moments when I let out a gasp in sheer shock and disbelief, many such when tears would just begin rolling down my cheeks, my nose would choke and I would breathe heavy; a few moments when I felt this gut-wrenching kind of feeling in my stomach as though my intestines were oscillating in a washing machine, pushing me to look or even, walk away, unable to fathom those gory visuals. I am a sucker for emotionally moving scenes from movies, but I have never felt this way, ever before! I learnt only later that what was shown in the movie was but a small fraction of what actually happened in #KASHMIR back in January 1990 and kept happening for another decade and a half after! The #KASHMIRGENOCIDE. I felt a deep sense of redemption, for I now know the truth and have the urge to know more. What also followed was remorse, for a major event from my country’s painful past managed to go unspoken and unnoticed for more than 3 decades and little or nothing was done to make it known to the populace! I am a positive thinking and an emotionally strong man and a large part of that strength comes from the very fact that I am emotional. A person who feels for others and doesn’t shy away from shedding a tear is often the one who is rock solid in testing situations himself/ herself. Contrary to popular belief, Emotion and Expression of Emotion is a Sign of Strength, not Weakness! Some of you would ask me, “You admit to be a sucker for emotional movie scenes and do cry easily. Isn’t this movie just another one of those with emotional scenes that made you cry? What’s there to lose your sleep, after all??” Let me help you understand this in perspective- We All Love Our Homes, regardless of how they are or what part of the globe they are in. Be it a modest 350 sq. ft. flat in a down-market area or a 10,000 sq. ft. mansion in an upscale locality, we all work tirelessly towards making them better places of living, don’t we?! We do so much to keep them nice, cosy and welcoming. We clean them, sanitise them, paint them, decorate them, load them with stuff, all in an attempt to make them look their best! We spend to no end to keep ourselves comfortable, nowadays even going to the extent of hopelessly pampering ourselves- needing the likes of Alexa and Siri to tell us where our phone is! We cannot bear 60/ 365 days of summer heat so we get an expensive AirCon bracing ourselves for health hazards, expensive maintenance and fatty electricity bills; we think the air we breathe in our own homes is not fresh anymore, so we get Air Purifiers; we become lazy bums to even clean after us, cook for ourselves or attend to those 10-15 plants in our terrace garden and we bring in a battery of domestic helps to do the job. We make compromises, extend our budgets, plan and project, literally work our butts off, to squeeze in that bigger TV with better pixels, that lavish, big sofa or that classy looking, multi-featured kitchen hob. After all, who wouldn’t like to feel nice about their home, call their dear and near ones over, show-off their neat nest and think of it as a place they’d like to go back to everyday? Every evening, when we pause the battle of life, we head back to our homes, to our families to revive, renew and rejuvenate our mind, body and spirit so that we can go back to our battlefields the next day with new gusto. When that home is encroached by something as miniscule as a lizard, cockroach or mice, we go on the offensive and get rid of the unwanted visitor. If a gadget malfunctions, a light gets fused or the plumbing springs a leak, we become restless and put things on hold to attend to that adhoc task at the first possible opportunity and make sure we get that fixed before dusk! Aside from everything I said about Our Homes, in a much simpler sense, it is the forever fixed place where you can be yourself, stay safe and protected from the outside world, take shelter from rain and shine, keep warm on chilly nights, eat, sleep, sing, dance, thrive and do so much more! Our Homes are living spaces that we are emotionally connected with. They are an inseparable part of lives; something we cannot imagine our lives without. And now that you’ve had a renewed, fresh realisation of what Your Home Means to You, could I please ask You to Get Out of Your Home and Never be Seen Again?!! In a sensible world, you’d say I’m a rude A-hole and I’m using anything else but my mouth to speak, wouldn’t you? Well, You’d Be Right! BUT, what if it isn’t a request? What if I am dead serious and I give Two Hoots to what you think of me?! What if I and a few others with me, create such extreme, hostile conditions around you, that push you to believe that Leaving Your Home is Your Only Option??!! I can sense you beginning to feel uncomfortable at that thought already. Let’s take this up a few notches. I want you shut out the world for the next few minutes and just picture this to the best of your visualization abilities- It’s a chilly winter evening in your living room and you are sitting with your family, chatting over hot tea and some piping hot snack, having a great time, looking out the window at that beautifully-setting orange ball of light. The doorbell rings. Engrossed in an engaging conversation, one of you answers the door. Four dreadfully cold looking people storm into your home, slapping and kicking their receiver; they pin each one of you down, pointing automatic weapons in your faces. The atmosphere in the living room has just undergone a metamorphosis in a matter of seconds! You and your loved ones suddenly find yourselves held at gunpoint, your lives now at the mercy of a group of ruthless, reckless, trigger happy men! This realization sends a chill down your spine as you and your family look at each other in sheer horror, unable to come to terms with what’s unfolding and why! BANG!! Without battling an eyelid, one of the men puts a bullet right between your eyes! You fall to the floor, eyes wide open, face disfigured, lying over a growing pool of blood. Confirming the Kill or just Pure Hatred, call it what you may, the man puts 6 more bullets in your chest. That’s It! That is the End of You, Your Life- not just for You, but for the others in that room who are left behind to watch you die with their eyes wide open. “He was marked for death” says your killer, in a calm, deep voice. The other men brutally kick and punch your family members, abuse and manhandle the women and children, and tell them to Leave Their Home and

Disappear before next dawn, else meet the same fate as Yours. Well, you have been dead now and don’t really have to worry about things because You Can’t; Worrying is for the Living, not the Dead, right? But, hang in there and picture what your family is going through at that very point. Isn’t this way more than Enough to Scare the Daylight out of You? YES, IT IS! Would you imagine yourself wanting this to happen to someone you dislike or even, despise the most? NO, YOU WOULDN’T! How long would you think it would be, before your family puts behind them, the memories of that ill-fated, atrocious evening and sleep in peace? ALMOST NEVER! Would they ever be able to think of or picture you, without thinking of how it ended for you that evening? HELL NO! Your family is left to relive your death, every single day, for the rest of their uprooted lives, with not even the time to mourn your painful departure! As you live through this visualisation, I’d like to leave you a question- How Do You Feel?! I couldn’t hold back my tears, I couldn’t get myself to sleep, I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days ahead because I lived through that horror, picturing myself in those places, those situations while I was only watching from the comfort of my seat at the theatres, asking myself “If it is so scary and painful to watch a depiction, how would it feel to live the horror in the first person? What and How those Half a Million of my Countrymen felt when they were Intimidated, Insulted, Beaten, Raped, Killed and driven out of their homes forever is what I could never come to terms with! There are movies that make you emotional with fiction and then there comes something like #TheKashmirFiles that shakes you up with facts. There is a World of Difference!

Some people are good at remaining Superficial, Detached, Indifferent and Unaffected; I Am Not. And I am grateful for not being good at those things, For I Am Alive Not Just Outside, But Deep Inside too. I was not even in my teens when the #KashmiriGenocide happened and in a time and age of very limited access to information and lack of maturity to truly understand its gravity, I remained alien to the truth, only consuming what was fed to me- a Sham Narrative that played to the vested interests of a few people. From the day I walked out of the theatres, every single time that I think of it, I am unable to find the answer to one question- “How could a human being do this to another human being”? How could people go so cold and lifeless within them that would cripple their conscience to an extent where it prompts them to maim, rape and murder people? Even worse, people they knew as neighbours, as acquaintances! How could one get so influenced by another and lose all rationality, sensibility and logic? They say Faith is Blind; should it necessarily be Blind? And Deaf and Mute too? Can we not give Our Faith a pair of Eyes to see through Right and Wrong? A pair of Ears to take in the Truth and leave out the Lies? A Tongue that Questions Tainted Narratives and becomes the voice of Truth? Isn’t this something to lose your sleep and peace over, or would You dismiss me as an Emotional Fool?!