Qazi Shibli
Imagine being cornered by tall walls, no rooftop, no space to call your own, after a seemingly endless amount of time, when you do not possess the freedom of choice over who to be with, where to go, whom to meet, or where to go? A place, where the camera’s sharp gaze does not miss any of your movements and where love or a delicate human touch is hard to find. You are isolated from loved ones, friends, and family. Amid this hubbub was Masroor, a fair-handsome bearded Kashmiri, a little shorter than i. We connected initially because he loved to gossip and share knowledge. He wanted me to tell him about the possible consequences of the abrogation of Article 370. I had no idea about why Masroor was in Jail, but our friendship developed over the next few hours amid the uncertainty of ‘What’s next’. Our conversations ranged from reality shows that he used to watch, to other matters that I believed, were more profound. We were talking about philosophy, which expanded into more wide-ranging topics, and before we could realize it, we became friends.
In the course of the next few hours, no one had a hint of what will happen. An early morning call asked us to wake up. We were told that “you are being shifted”. “Do you know where?” Masroor asks. Without any information, eventually, we were transferred to the Defense airport in Srinagar via buses. I was out of touch with him until we de-boarded the police buses for the IAF carrier. We reconnected, through the faces of despair inside the plane to the evident and visible uncertainty. We did not have any tiny idea when we sang ‘Hum Dekhenge, Laazim Hai Ki Bhi Dekhenge’ that the same song will be sung on the streets of India and become the crest of India’s uprising against NRC and CAA.
When Faiz was being a friend and an inspiration in my fight against injustice, and coincidently, Faiz was t the same time being hummed on the streets across India.
The next stop was a sultry airbase, where twenty handcuffed men including a 15-year old and a 63-year-old man, were forced into a vehicle. Masroor clung onto me throughout the journey like a bee swarming to its queen. “I intend to not be in jail or be fodder to any political gimmick, I just want to live my life well,” Masroor said to me as he held an iron ceiling in the vehicle we were being taken in. Fearing the heavy contingent of troopers, the 57-year old man sharing the same vehicle, said, “Why does it look like I am Azhar Masood.” I counted and as many as 20 vehicles were following up our bus.
In my next moment of conscience, there were men in solitary cages, shouting to each other, guards shouting into the darned radios, the endless clanging of footsteps and the bars rolling. I vividly remember those images, so different from today. Those images have been engraved in my mind – memories of my first night in prison, Hopelessness describes it the best. Sorrow, self-pity, and regret stood in the way of my future, along with the iron bars that caged me inside the jail. I could not wrap my head around the fact that I may have to spend the next six months of my life in a narrow cell where if I could lie on my sleeping mattress and touch the toilet with one hand and the door with the other. I was buried alive. I can only say that I was alive and breathing, but not living.
In a space where the key highlights of the jail environment are likely to lead to identity alteration, counting the constant misfortune of free choice, need of protection, everyday shame, where one has got to wear a consistent cover of immunity and hide emotions to prevent misuse by others, and the prerequisite, day after day, to remotely exacting the rules and schedules.
I happened to strike a conversation with a non- Kashmiri prisoner and straightaway asked him, Do you know Masroor? This was when I reminisced about how Masroor had not left my hand when we were separated and caged inside two different blocks, I could notice tears rolling down his face.
I have been through incalculable evenings, lying alert, foreseeing life, attempting to elude detainment through my mind’s eye. I dreamt of the things that I will do once I’m free. Flashes of me giggling with family and college friends in Bangalore or being in the company of a wonderful lady, whose images played in my mind like a silent motion picture.
“Salam Alaykum, he has said,” my messenger told me the next day. The message brought tears to my eyes. When nothing was around, a message from a familiar name evoked a comfortable emotion. There was a fear, so longer messages could not be exchanged by this man, whose hair had turned grey while in jail. He had been lodged in the Bareilly jail for the last 11 years. Shorter messages could be easily communicated; my urge to hold a pen was now escalated. My first demand after the jail was to be provided with books, a pen and paper, though I was denied any access to pen and paper, citing “Restricted articles” as the reason.
Our movement outside the cell was not allowed, “Half an hour in the morning and the evening, you can roam inside the compound of the barrack,” we were told. This added to the fact, that you were detained merely for “committing journalism” and performing your job ethically under democratic principles. It does make you a bit more distant, as one has to conceal and suppress their emotions. You become tougher and even colder, you become more detached.
The initial thoughts, the media indoctrination, the misinformation that was cultivated, dispensed in the form of oblation among races, genders, castes, classes, religions, thoughts of all kinds was an affliction that needed a panacea and as a journalist, I felt, it my primary duty, to be factual and entrust them with explicit information. Music helped me draw them closer to us, I sang Bhajans and Hindi songs, which bridged the polarity. “I am a national and you are an anti-national,” soon I had them flocking C6, which was my cell number inside the high-security prison of Bareilly Jail. “Sing us a song, Masroor from A-block too is a lovely singer.” He, the next day, amid these messages of “I love you, I miss you,” sent me coupons that we used to get tea. I had no money, as nobody from home had come to see me. I was untangled in emotions. This coupon carried along with an air of Kashmir, a breeze of home love as if it had been touched by someone from home.
I was eager to write a letter to him, I had a paper, which was wrapped around the medicine brought for a 52-year-old patient. I was trying to be friends with a policeman who would often be found outside my cell, listening to Bhajans. “Please give me that pen that you have in your pocket,” I asked. “It is highly insecure,” he said. Requesting him, I said, “I need this pen”. He questioned, “Why?”. “I have to write a letter to my friend,” I told him. He said that he would give me the pen late in the night when nobody is keeping an eye. Around 1 am, I felt heavenly. Heavenly would be an understatement, perhaps, I felt surreal. The emotion is indescribable. I embraced the pen and held it in readiness, hiding it, as if it was a treasure that I wanted to conceal from everyone else. The first line that I wrote was, “I am a journalist” and over time, we exchanged twenty-two letters.
The Kashmir valley was placed under a lockdown for months after the abrogation“Dearest Masroor, The vital thing for you to know is that I will never give up on you. I have seen the profound interior of you, I know most individuals will never get a chance to see how lovely your soul truly is and in knowing that I am exceptionally blessed. You have become my deep-rooted friend, You’ve got given me so much trust, indeed, even though my world disintegrated at my feet, but the esteem to the misfortune of everything I had was that we both had a lesson to learn. Dearest brother, I love you and will always, find a pen and do not stop writing; it feels homely when you write.”
The time in that cell was undoubtedly challenging, I was alone in there, and a message came to me in the dead of night, “100 per cent I love you, brother. We are going to be released soon.” This timely exchange of letters ranged from songs, stories, music, poems, our families, our week and women we loved. Our Public Safety Act (PSA) was previously to expire on November 08, 2019, but in October, Jammu Kashmir Home Department extended PSA by three or six months for most of the detainees. Masroor’s PSA was also extended by three months; I got a letter of desperation that night. I could easily feel his tears in the words.
“My dear friend Shibli,” read the message. “I miss my child. I want to get out of here, please support me,” he wrote. A patch of desperation clutched me and Faiz was what came to my mind and I wrote, “Nisar mein teri galiyon pe aye watan ki jahan chali hai rasm ki koi sar utha ke na chale” (Salutes be to you thy sacred streets, O beloved nation, where a tradition has been enforced that nobody may walk with heads held high) and two more couplets from the poem. “This is exactly how tyranny and fascism have been fought by people, Neither their traditions of suppression nor our customs of resistance are new. And as always, in the scorching heat we’ve bloomed, neither their defeat nor our triumphs are new.”
I had to spend Eid, my birthday, New Year’s Eve in jail. It was certainly rough in there. I recall getting a present from one of the other detainees for my birthday. His name was Iqbal and it was a Bhidi, wrapped in a paper. What do I have to say? We have made the best of it, the times had changed, I wrapped up this Bhidi and many more and parcelled them for Masroor and the friendship grew. “Today you’re faraway but tomorrow would be ours, of no significance this lonely night If the lucky ones today are the oppressors, love! Our dawn is not too far in sight,” I further wrote in the letter, and in the letters following that. He told me that the policemen were attracted to his songs, I wrote more songs to him and he sang them. They produced a magnetic effect and our songs, us, became a talk of the Jail, Masroor, and I.
Photo- Sajad Hameed~ The Kashmiriyat
No matter how brave you think you are, there’s no question that under the strain of the method of solitary confinement, you’d break. Spending time in prison is no joke, and even less serious crimes can be overwhelming. But when it comes to maximum security, it’s a whole different situation — and that’s particularly true for Kashmiri inmates. Masroor and I had built up the most valuable asset in prison–Trust. And we’d always have it outdoors — or so do I think. While many prisons give inmates plenty of time to be outdoors, such was not the case with us. The inmates at the high-security block of Bareilly jail get one hour a day outside of their cell. At first, the two of us connected over music, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Ghazals, Kishore Kumar and eventually, they got us to talk about concepts concerning our identities, relationships and regular ups and downs.
It was one day when someone called me a terrorist in jail. I questioned his understanding of me and said, “I am not a terrorist, I am a journalist.” He then told me about how he has been learnt from local newspapers and people that “20 terrorists are being bought from Kashmir”. It immediately struck a nerve as I was unable to fathom the fact that how negative narratives are built for the common public. Media, despite being one of the strongest tools, can incite hatred into the hearts of a common man.
Pretty soon, Masroor and I were talking about all kinds of stuff – philosophy, politics, religion, music and the women we loved. Developing friendships at spaces as harrowing as jails take a backseat, but it develops the ability to cultivate resilience in the face of extreme trauma and hardship, How can one anticipate to carry on a discussion, with your sight not seeing past ten meters, with you being called a terrorist sympathizer, yet some of the most handsome blossom amid such chaotic spaces and psychological trauma.
We exchanged money, he would often pay for my tea and I would pay for his biscuits. I would save smokes for him, and he would save eggs for me, We discovered our mutual compatibility and the extent to which we found moral support in each other, There was a quiet, spontaneous quality about our friendship, which was we had an element of madness, where despite being watched, scrutinized and having guards around us 24*7, we took the risks to write to each other.
It was Wednesday, Masroor wrote, “Brother, we will soon be all released, in not more than ten days, no matter who gets out first, I will always love you.” Then suddenly, the door of my cell opens, and an officer says, “Shibli, are you ready?” As I rose from my mattress, I kept thinking, is he really serious? I wish they would have released me in the middle of the night while everyone was asleep. There was this urge to go and see Masroor, to explain, and the will to shout, “I’m still one of you!” But that would be a lie as he was still there, inside the jail, missing his family while I will be with mine. His view of the world will be blocked by tall walls and bars.