Jammu and Kashmir- The Wounded Paradise

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Preface Being a Kashmiri and a journalist covering events in Jammu and Kashmir was part of my job and while chasing news had to visit Srinagar, Jammu and Leh often, sometimes finding myself entangled in fast moving events, in midst of fighting groups who often resorted to the stone pelting, which has been ancestral pastime of Kashmiris But to write a book on political history of Jammu And Kashmir was not my priority, I just shirked away from the idea. It was long after my retirement from active service that I had developed an urge to remember my days in Kashmir, people I knew and what happened to the land many daydreamers considered the Paradise and to some elderly Muslims which was the Rishi Vor (the garden of Rishis). I remembered the days when I was growing up as lower middle class boy in muddy, dirty and narrow lanes of Srinagar city, which is said to have been founded by the great Ashoka in second Century BC. The days when I was a student of Lal Ded School and my staunch leftist teachers, who gave leftist orientation to Naya Kashmir of Sheikh Abdullah, introduced me to Communist way of thinking I remembered my father clearing my doubts about Muzaffarabad, where I was first admitted to school and where I met a man whom people of the town called 'Panah Guzin', but my father called him 'refugee'. Father told me that he was in fact a Kazakh who's community was forced to abandon their homes and they had sought shelter in our State. Nothing registered in my mind, Kazakh like many other words and concepts remained unintelligible till many years after I had completed my college education and was able to get better knowledge about India and the neighbouring countries. I remembered the SP College days where I happened to be a class fellow of Tariq Abdullah the second son of Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah, who introduced me to his famous and powerful family.

It was all about myself. Was it really? Looking back through a wide angle I realised everything around me too was changing, probably faster than my own life. New events were unfolding, new concepts and new faces were creating my ambience. Soon, I had forgotten my leftist ideology and 'Sare Jahan se Achha Hindostan Hamara' of Iqbal, because many words had lost their original meaning and acquired new ones. The word 'refugee' which I had heard when a boy of six had by now acquired a global status and it was a household word, and the theme word of new generation all over the world. So is word 'ballot. Ballot came early to my state but was soon pushed back by the bullet. It was then that I decided to make journalism my profession and moved to Delhi from Srinagar. Absorbed in the multitude of events, the hectic life of news man, late nights, meetings and frequent tours across the country. Off course, Kashmir was not totally lost to me. But whenever I got a chance to visit Jammu and Srinagar I felt myself a stranger who had to make new acquaintance on every visit.

Three years ago a young man from a small village near Handwara in Kashmir valley came to see me at my Delhi residence. He was not a new visitor to my house, because it was his fourth visit. Every time he came he looked upbeat and fully satisfied that he was doing good job of helping the educated youth of his village to find jobs in major industrial companies across the country. But this time he looked sad. When I enquired about it, he said that his cousin is a drug addict and is in a bad condition "I did not want to leave him in this state but I had to come, because this too is urgent".

"Why don't you admit him to any de-addiction centre or any hospital?"

"We did, but after a couple of weeks he ran away from the centre." They wanted to admit him to another rehabilitation centre run by the Army and hoped the better security and better treatment may save his life. But he refused to be removed from his home. He threatened to commit suicide if forced to go to the centre.