Tale of a city, that was!

                 The pitter-patter of rain will not lull a Kashmiri to sleep for a long time.

For the last two decades we have been touched by almost every shade of tragedy but, not even in our barren dreams did we contemplate that the paisley patterned life-line, roiling itself through every part of the valley, would turn lethal in such a manner.
We never saw the scalpel; we never thought it would dagger our hearts.
With a new chapter in The Book of Betrayals and river Jhelum as a new conspirator, Kashmir, yet again stands cursed!

Believe it or not, we have factually seen it all; the worst of the worse and our quintessential resilience has prepared us as a populace, which has learnt to carry on with life rather exuberantly. Many say our cheerfulness is contagious. May be it is. Our grief, however, always has been our own.

Non-contagious. Private.

Oblivious of the despair that awaited us all, we embraced September with open arms as the autumn sun, fracturing through the clouds and peeping through the windows, knocked on our doorways. The clamour must have been frightening this time, but we didn’t notice it.
We never saw the scalpel; we never thought it would dagger our hearts.
Perhaps busy with the loops of life, we failed to infer the biting frostiness this autumn brought along. We failed to understand the presence of the absence of warmth. All we understood was the arrival of autumn. Warm? Icy? We didn’t consider.

Autumn, the richest of all seasons and the much-loved among the only four we have.
Autumn, the season of crunchy crimson chinar leaves which in their death hold the promise of life. Autumn, the season that can strip an artist of its drapery and infuse life in the life-less.
Autumn, the season of….Deluge, Death and Destruction.

With the inception of fall this year, it started to rain. Excessively, all through the light and all through the dark! Days passed by without a rain-less moment. The sound of rain was so loud that it would not lull a child to sleep. It was in fact petrifying. Petrifying enough to wake a beast out of a deep slumber. But unfortunately not petrifying enough to wake the government of the state. Wonder, what tranquilised them into a slumber deeper than that of a beast!

The pitter-patter of the rain will not lull a Kashmiri to sleep for a long time .As I write, it has started to drizzle and fear is hovering around my heart the way a moth hovers around  light . I know I am not the only one. Distress has laid its ice cold feet on every heart in my homeland and the Sun has to shine bright for quite long to make us feel warm again. Hopefully, it will.

After raining incessantly for days, Jhelum unsurprisingly was in spate. Swollen like never before; cruising ferociously like a fearless tyrant. Impatient of its inflation, the river breached many of its embankments, drowning most of the parts of South Kashmir. Reports say Kulgam, Anantnag and Pulwama are the worst hit. In the countryside, waltzing paddy fields were trampled by the irrepressible gush of water and the villages were cut off; some still are, as the fearless tyrant washed away the roads as well as the bridges. The houses crumbled under the weight of unfulfilled dreams and melancholy was the only thing left in the eyes of children waiting to fall asleep. The beast devoured whatever came in its way.

Many were rescued and many died. Some died and some stopped living.

On the other hand, Mother Nature, in its fury, decided to play a leveller. All equal. Nothing urban; nothing rural. No one rich; No one poor. The man and the dust. The dust and the man. All equal. While the people in South Kashmir were living the worst nightmare ever and battling the toughest adversities possible, the darkest of the dark clouds started engulfing the city of Srinagar.

Srinagar, the city of dreams that will turn into the city of deluge.

The Venice of Asia that many will heartlessly call a wasteland.

The city of despair where boats will be rowed for days.

The city of fright where people will walk miles and miles in ice cold water to find out if their dear ones are alive.

The city where plush houses will tumble like those of cards.

The city that will narrate the most harrowing tales of survival.

The city where dead bodies and dead dreams will be buried together.

The city that might sleep but will not dare to dream.

The city where the unthinkable will happen.

The rainfall continued to lash the valley and consequently the level of water in river Jhelum kept increasing swiftly. The bridges, old & new, historic & ordinary, were skin to skin with the waters of Jhelum. The river was flowing at an all-time high. All-time high! The level of water never seen before in the living history of the valley! Yet, no timely warning was communicated to people.

Reportedly an order of evacuation was given around 11 in the night on September 6, half an hour before the time the Venice of Asia got transformed into a wasteland! Such a warning, such an order of evacuation must have had a hearty laugh over its triviality. How in the world do you evacuate the entire city in half an hour? You do not. And hence the unthinkable did happen.

All set to swallow the entire city of Srinagar, river Jhelum ruptured the infamous bund, reportedly, at as many as eleven places. In a matter of seconds, the entire swish uptown and most of the parts of historic & vintage Shahr-e-khass got transformed into a bowl of brimming murky water. The spectacle of deluge, death and destruction that left the mankind terrified. Gripped by everlasting gloom, every Kashmiri stood stunned. Perplexed and stupefied; witnessing the wreckage never seen before, watching the misery never envisioned.  As much as 30 feet of water submerged 3-4 storied houses completely. Hospitals got inundated with almost all the emergency equipment under water.  The cruellest of the sights, of course was to see the singular Children's hospital submerging under an unimaginable amount of water leaving the life-saving machines completely non-operational. Offices, schools, banks, humans, animals; the beast once again devoured whatever it touched. The city, the Venice of Asia looked nothing less than a lake. If viewed from the Moon, it would more look like an ocean and the red, brown, green and blue tin roofs would look like tiny islands in this ocean of endless misery. Days later, a video clip, released on television, revealed how sedans and saloons that fateful night, sailed through the waters of Jhelum like weightless paper boats. Nature, in its fury, unleashing what eyes couldn’t believe in!

The paradise blackened in seconds and Kashmir reeled under darkness. Pitch-black undying darkness. Watching all its dreams being washed away by the tyrant, the city of Srinagar, now a wasteland ,was caught between Scylla and Charybdis and the tranquilised government had wakened of its slumber.

Wakened and vaporised. The thinkable!

The government and its officials evaporated into thin air because now it was time for them to stand by their people and they, my dear people, are not habitual of any such practice. No government official, not even the premier of the state was seen for the next two days.

True, the top offices and the top officers were both submerged under water.

True, there was no communication.

True, the CM had no government [Sic].

True, they could not row the boats or pilot the choppers.

True, the CM did not bring the rains and nor could he stop them [Sic].

But our government-less government and its men were not even seen in the purlieu of the relief camps, where stories of distress echoed between the sky and the earth. Our sorrow, once again, our own. Non-contagious.

Nonetheless, on the intervening night of September 6 and September 7, the unthinkable had happened and so had the thinkable. Now lakhs waited to be rescued and lakhs waited to help.

The rescue operations would not have been possible without the unwavering efforts put forth by the jawans of Indian Defence Services especially the Air Force. We, in Kashmir will always be grateful to Indian men in uniform for saving our dear ones. It wasn’t easy. It was a daunting challenge but, the men of Indian Defence Services rowed the boats and piloted the choppers with untiring determination, rescuing thousands.Thank you!

Most of the stranded people accused the men in uniform of choosing to save tourists preferably even if their boats and choppers cut across the stranded Kashmiris, waving red flags on the roof tops of their houses and screaming persistently for help. This could be true. How else is it possible that on the second day of rescue operations only, a huge number of rescued people were seen at the airport, waiting to be air- lifted to Jammu and Delhi by chartered AI flights? Only a few boats were available in the beginning and pilots continuously complained of facing difficulties in hovering over slanting tin roofs and still a good number of rescued people were at the airport! Whatever happened, many precious lives were definitely saved. Ethnicity is immaterial, human life isn’t.

As far as the conflicting situations and stories are concerned, Einstein’s theory of relativity elucidates it all. A human opinion is shaped by the state of affairs a man deals with.

Indian army is god to those they saved.

Indian army remains a tormenter to those they abandoned.

The theory of relativity.

Besides being grateful to equipped and trained men of Indian Defence Services, the homeland remains perpetually indebted to the young unequipped and untrained Kashmiri men. We don’t have words to express our gratitude and moreover no words will be enough to explain the efforts put forward. The stories of bravado of young Kashmiri men will be gilded in the history of our Heaven and narrated from generation to generation with an insurmountable amount of pride. Among the sufferers, be it a Qazi, a Koul, a Kapoor or a Singh, each one has a tale to tell. A tale of how young Kashmiri men saved lives, risking their own, irrespective of colour, clan and religion. Our sorrow was overwhelming. Grief needed to be shared and tears needed to be sponged. For doing so tirelessly, take a bow, brethren!

Many were rescued and many died.

Some died and some stopped living.

Ina-lillahi-wa-ina-illahi-rajaoon.

May they all rest in peace in Heaven away from Heaven.

On September 9, lakhs were still stranded and the fate of thousands was still unknown.

On September 9, one of the leading journalists of one of the leading news channels in one of the leading NEWS shows debated how the rescue operations carried away by the men of Indian Defence Services has infinitely made Kashmiris grateful towards India and how separatists would take a back seat in future!

On September 9, when lakhs were still stranded and the fate of thousands was still unknown, such a debate was uncalled for. Insensitive,

But who knows where the buck stops in this country and more importantly, whose buck is it anyway!

After watching NEWS shows as a sufferer this time and not just as a spectator, I realised that Journalism, like many other professions has not been just touched by the insensitivities of marketing but the profession, unfortunately, lies all drenched in the filth and journalists of the country are the new barefaced marketing magnets. It is all about the TRPs. Rational and authentic journalism, like our contagious cheerfulness, is a thing of past! During the deluge, the NEWS channels persistently emphasized that Kashmiris should be immensely grateful to Indian army and other men in uniform for rescuing their dear ones! Surprisingly, the rescuers demanded no tribute and even more surprisingly, politicians too restrained themselves and we did not hear any of their hokum. The media houses of the country, however, kept the hogwash brewing.

As the water levels recede, a number of questions surface. We ask just one. Why is a Kashmiri, living in ‘Indian’ occupied Kashmir, (if) rescued by men of ‘Indian’ defence services asked to bow his head, say ‘Thank you’ again and again and be grateful forever? Perhaps, the question has its answer knotted in its convolutions. And may be the time is ripe to untangle these convolutions and straighten the knots! It surely is. It actually has been since long.

 Politicising of Kashmir floods, even in this critical period, is not all along irrelevant. A deluge of this magnitude, no doubt is the execution of the Almighty; the fury of Nature but, floods in Kashmir are certainly a lot more than global warming. Kashmir lags way behind the other parts (if it is one) of India as far as development is concerned. Water stayed logged- in in the residential areas for weeks after flooding, striking at the foundations of a number of buildings, because there is no proper drainage system in the city. Forget about the kind of a drainage system a capital city should have, there isn’t even an ordinary one. Even though, in most of the parts of the year we do see ‘Men at work’ boards tossing crores down the drain. Illegal construction has been done along the banks of flood channels and bridges have been built where they shouldn’t be.  Jhelum hasn’t been dredged for decades and the Dal Lake no longer works as a sponge. The forests stand bare and the lakes shrunken. Bottom-line, the state of Jammu and Kashmir did not look government-less during the floods only, it always has been. It is not that the elected people are not proficient enough but, they are very well aware of the political uncertainty of the state and brazenly take full advantage of it. The state has been since long bearing the brunt of this uncertain political status but unfortunately the world looks at us with blind eyes. I do not wish to have a political discourse here; the miseries and the wounds are agape. The world just needs to remove the blindfold and have a look. Kashmir issue is an international issue and the world must come together to find a resolution. It is important for the sake of peace around the world. And, seemingly, important for the sake of ecology too!

An author once wrote, ‘Universe always finds the balance.’ It does .Looking at Kashmir floods in this context; the circumstances remind one of Noachian deluge. Noah and the Flood. The inundation brought upon the earth by God because of the wickedness of human beings. A believer, irrespective of his religious individuality, believes that incidents of misery and helplessness occur so that order is instilled in an otherwise order-less world. That is how a believer, clutching the wings of faith firmly, survives and stands up straight on his crippled limbs after being treaded over. The trampling has been done, it is time to cling to the wings of faith resolutely and try to stand up again, spirited as ever. May He forgive all our sins and may He accept us with all our failings. Ameen.

As the sun shines bright, let’s hope and pray that our heaven will shine brighter. Brighter than the brightest in the Universe, bright enough to incinerate the curse! Ameen.