Aging Bones

I wake up these mornings thinking of ways to make my apartment more welcoming for my mother, Mama as I have always called her. Ours has been a roller coaster ride, kind of converging now after a tragedy. I lost Arshid at age 42 and I guess it is something she can't accept even for a wayward daughter, even though she has practically cursed me to hell scores of times. Today she gaslights and denies all of that verbal abuse and I have reached a stage where having made peace with myself, I have compassion for both my parents, realising they could be the caretakers of my child if anything happens to me. 

I have always given voice to the voiceless. Now that I have a say in all things of my life, it makes sense to write for the ones who were never able to develop any control over their lives. Mama like the autumn leaves in the wind just drifted wherever Life took her and affected our lives in very drastic ways, something which my sister's isolationist behaviour is a visible evidence of. 

I woke up with the image and sense of Mama bent on her prayer rug at dawn, beseeching her Allah for my long life till my son is settled and well cared for. She cries a lot for me these days, worried for my ageing bones and various ailments that come along with age. Her jealousy of my having had a son long dissolved in the years that she got to care initially for her first grandson (mine) and then for years for her second one (my sister's). I am always aware of the abuse she took for not having produced a son and us sisters in tacit agreement let her dote over ours until they were actually in the danger of developing that 'Nawabzaada' (superior) attitude that many Muslim men display and which permeates their lives and their circle of influence. 

Mama is finally getting what was due to her all those decades ago, a secure home with her daughters settled and grandkids around her. She shuttles between Abu Dhabi, Srinagar and Delhi and is just about discovering what empowerment an "English education" brings to Muslim women especially if they are determined to live their lives on their own terms. I admit seeing my sister drive a car, deal with patients, and bring up her son in a very progressive way is far better than to see me do the same minus the driving and plus the speaking out against regressiveness in Islam. This is the only bone of contention between us and until Arshid was alive brought on sulkiness and temper tantrums from her. 

But now that she has lost her "son", she is careful to just appeal to me through teary eyes not to endanger her grandson with what I speak out against. I listen and understand and nod, but she knows as much as I in my being - I am never going to be silenced. Life was never able to silence me. Life has never been able to silence me. 

So I am jolted awake with the pressing worries of installing a geyser and English commode for her and make the apartment more friendly, sensitising my son on TV timings to reschedule according to Mama's favourite TV serials; and arranging of furniture - the sit-down carpet style of Muslim families really painful for my bones. I look forward to massaging her back, knowing it hasn't been soaped for a long time because she can't reach it and other intimate things that only daughters can do for their mothers. And I frame approaches and imaginary conversations in my mind about how to get her to tell about her childhood and teen years and youth, most of it having already heard but needed for polishing the chapters of my book. 

For in telling her story, I not only will be able to bring closure to a tumultuous relationship I have had with her but also explore if Islam, as we know it, were brought up in it, and are affected by it through our men, has any chance of a reform or not. A Native American writer friend once told me - Listen to Your Elders - a common ritual in the traditions of the tribes, to gather around a fire and listen to the Ancients. As I start my chores, I imagine the campfire in my apartment in the coming winter months, when, to escape the severe Kashmir winter I am determined that she while it away with us in a milder region. Her asthma will not be able to take another severe one. 

For the time being, we are happy to let her explore her new home which Baba finally built and decorate it, plan for it, care for it to her heart's content like a delighted little girl - an image I have firmly fixed in my mind from her countless descriptions. A reproduction of what she would have looked like taken from the net to inspire me  - a common tool for writers.

She playing "sazlong" (hopscotch) with one of my Uncles balanced on her hip, one of her 6 siblings that daughters often ended up caring for in bog Muslim households. A once strong body doing endless chores for a huge household from age 6 right up till she walked out of her marriage with two daughters in tow. Her painful knees bent in the 'sazda' are what concern me, her swollen ankles a very familiar sight for me, having the same affliction. Despite repeated advice that there is a provision in Islam for offering prayers seated on the chair, she insists on the hard way. I figure it also some sort of penance, pilgrimage, that every believer exhibits in order to earn 'sawab' (brownie points in English) or as the illiterate pirate in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies retorts in a comic scene while turning the pages of the Bible, "You get credit for trying".  



Image Courtesy: The Net

Stealth Theocracy

It is admirable to read young Kashmiri Muslim women (not all of them believers) stepping forward and making it their life's work to speak out for the female victims of injustice, rape with impunity by the Indian Armed Forces, mental health issues due to the Enforced Disappearances of their sons, husbands and brothers, and the general effect of the ongoing conflict of 27 years. I know for a fact personally how difficult it is to raise one's voice in a patriarchal setup, in a Muslim culture, especially against incest, sexual assault and sexual harassment at the workplace.

It is heartening to read about how their activism is changing their families, their circle of influence into using a taboo word such as rape to create awareness about the trauma that our women suffered long before social media and access to rural areas in the Valley. It is commendable that they are giving voice to those who neither have the articulation to give voice to the violation of their bodies and souls nor have the necessary support and rehabilitation mechanism in place.

However, it would have made all their activism much more credible and morally superior if they had an equal fervour for the atrocities committed in the same time period among those they never mention, and sometimes brush away as propaganda or hoax. I do not necessarily mean the activists currently doing the rounds on various Indian outlets, especially if they are Left-leaning. They could have mentioned or spoken for the Kashmiri Pandit women for all I know. But the same zeal, space, energy, assertiveness seems to be missing when it comes to the Pandit women who underwent the same trauma, atrocities, violations as the one whom they hold in front of the largest democracy in the world as a mirror.

I am going to state the obvious yet again -
that acknowledging the Pandit women underwent atrocities will expose the "struggle for self-determination" that they keep reiterating is for Kashmiri nationalism and a secular separate country as a stealth theocracy under the garb of Freedom Movement.

that recognising the Kashmiri militants had been capable of behaviour they accuse the Indian forces of doing inhumanly would bring them face to face with what their brothers, sons, and husbands could do if anarchy were to prevail with a lot of help from "our friendly neighbouring country".

that the impunity they keep shoving in the Geneva conferences, on Amnesty's pages, even in the UN meetings is also something their "beloved mujahideen" enjoy since not much testimony exists about these atrocities apart from the victims'own families and certain Right-wing groups. They can find a kinship with these right-wingers as they too do not acknowledge that a Kunan Poshpora occurred or that "rape is being used as a weapon of war by the Armed forces".

This is why it is important to step back and see things for what they are and where they stem from, especially if they keep occurring on a daily basis. I keep getting asked on forums how I cannot condemn what the security forces are doing in the Valley and I keep answering I do everywhere I can, only I am not selective when it comes to the beastly nature of man. It is dishonest if one only talks about the Armed Forces and their use of the AFSPA, and various sexual crimes against Kashmiri women and not about the women abducted by militants, or killed simply on the allegation of being informers, or forcibly married to militants under the threat of the "gun" (a common mafioso practice in the Indian subcontinent). It is equally dishonest if they are silent on the rampant incest, and other pervert practices going on in their homes especially marital rape which their beloved religion does not recognise nor does the law of the country from which they want to separate.

Selective condemnation brings its own problems with it. Apart from putting a question mark on your objective, it also does a disservice to the very women you are fighting for, and whose stories of assault are lost in the whataboutery, revenge policies, and dismissal theories (the same that you come up with like the Jagmohan Theory) of the other side/camp. In the Far Left-Far Right/ majoritarianism in the Valley/majoritarianism in the country polarisation, the victims become pawns and a mere statistics instead of the faces, names and people whose stories need to be told to bring closure and justice.

I was 15 when I witnessed the Gowkadal Massacre of January 21. My late husband (also 15 at the time) witnessed it separately and he acquired double the trauma having had to pick up bodies and help in their burial and seeing/cleaning those gunshot wounds. Of course, it brought us girls/women out on the streets pelting stones at the CRPF/BSF stationed near the various schools and colleges hastily in sand bag bunkers. Yes, we marched with memorandums to the UNMOGIP (United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan) at Gupkar, Srinagar in wave after wave of processions with Azadi slogans.

But on November 7, a few months later when a resident of our locality Pitti Koul was gunned down in front of our eyes, just for the fact she had come to retrieve her luggage along with her daughter made us step back. At least I did pause. The killer's name whispered in gatherings, the upright elders of my community hanging their heads, the young brats rejoicing, the security personnel who had to take her away for cremation was a trauma of a different kind, bringing me stark face to face to the fact brutality doesn't have borders or religion.

I do not expect these young activist women travelling the length and breadth of the country and the world on Scholarships; attending Literary Festivals and gaining support from Left-leaning bastions of free speech to speak for Pitti Koul or Sarla Bhat or Girija Tickoo, for the simple fact that they were not born at the time. It would be silly of my generation to let our blood boil when these women parrot the Intifada Script circulated on social media, penned down by the various journalists and activists of Press Enclave, Srinagar with permission from their Mirpuri sponsors in the UK and US. They were not there and they grew up in a Valley "siege" with concertina wires, curfews and every imaginable prison of the body and the mind.


"Stepping Out" to speak about the regressiveness in your culture and regressive practices in your religion is a as important as "stepping back" to understand what was going on, what are we demanding, is it the right aspiration, can we build a free country on the blood of innocents who genetically, ethnically, linguistically were our very own. The typical retort of "... but the Sikhs haven't migrated" also underlines your majoritarian bigotry, for the sheer fact Sikhs as a group have learnt their lessons well from the Partition, the brutal repression of the Khalistan movement and developed what is called "survival tactics" of minority groups when faced with annihilation and ethnic cleansing. They keep quiet and form alliances with the Hurriyat groups to ensure that they are not harmed, as in reverse the neighbouring Khalistan movement in the 80s redeems them in the eyes of the Kashmiri Muslims who see them as kinsmen rejecting the "Hindu Endia".

I reiterate the bold, daring and courageous work of the young Kashmiri Muslim women speaking out for their sisters are in my book already Nobel Prize winners of Peace and deserving of the Medal of Honour as Righteous Citizens for upholding the principles of justice, truth and equality. It would take them to a whole new level if they speak out for those whom no one wants to fight for because they do not fit the parameters of their Azadi Dream - the Pandit women killed in the 1990s, the Muslim widow whose husband was a cop killed while fighting their beloved Mujahideen, the father whose daughter was abducted or forced to marry a militant, or seculars, agnostics, atheists who live under constant threat to their lives in case a Mashal Khan lynching like mob descends upon them and who are dying everyday due to mental and physical health issues - committing physical and mental suicide.

I am hoping that day will come.

Pic Courtesy: The Internet
The body of Sarla Bhat, the hospital nurse who was abducted by the JKLF and gang raped for days and her body dumped on a roadside.