Every year, the harsh Kashmiri winter prompts about 30 families from in and around Lal Chowk, Srinagar to migrate to Mumbai. These families spend three months in the city and survive by selling Kashmiri Handicrafts and, wallnuts and apples from their farms.
Last week, I happened to be occupying a berth in a Sleeper Class boggie, which was entirely filled with these families. Here are some paraphrashed lines of the fragmented conversations I had with two brothers - 24 and 14 - who were in the same compartment as me.
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| "Kashmir is beautiful...its heaven on earth." |
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The winters are definetely one of the reasons we migrate to Mumbai every winter, but its not the only reason. If the situation was more stable back home, maybe we wouldn't have to be away for so long. The people of Kashmir have given up faith and all we want is peace. We don't want Pakistan, we don't want to be with India either, because neither of the countries care. If we have an independant Kashmir, I swear to you, our lands are so rich, we can earn so much from just the tourism and our farms that a Kashmiri will have to work only three months out of a year - we will earn so much; thats the potential Kashmir has. Even if we were to stay with India, wouldn't it benefit India to improve the lives of Kashmiris. The potential is all lost.
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We never plan ahead. We don't know what will happen to us when we step out of the house in the moring - if we will come back to our families. They (the Indian Army) use pellets on us - thats used to control animals - are we animals? The media accuses us of accepting paltry sums like 500 and 1000 rupees to pelt stones - we are not stupid; we have families and dreams; our lives have got to worth more than that. If you grow up seeing your friends, vanish one byone, killed one by one; and Kashmiris who stand against the oppression getting labelled and hunted down, termed 'Terrorists', would the youth know of any other reality and in some cases build even stronger resolve to break away? Think of the psychological effects this is having in the generations growing up - generations who grew up in this violence.
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The sun begins to set in the horizon, and we both stare out the window in silence - there is a sense of shared injustice and neglect which we mutually feel. We both belong to the fringes. We have both been asked to prove our loyalties many times over.
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