Mehran Bhat
The armed conflict in Kashmir has rendered thousands of people homeless and traumatized since it broke out. The generations born after the ’90s in Kashmir have a very unusual sense of the word, ‘normal’.
As far as I can remember, I was a little child the first time I visited Srinagar’s historic Jamia Masjid for Friday congregational prayers for the first time with my father. All of a sudden, loud bangs from the outside were heard. Everyone began to rush here and there and there was complete chaos. My father grabbed my arm and started walking me out of the mosque. I asked my father what was happening around, to which he responded, “Yete loug Kanejung.”
I was too young to make sense of what all was happening. With the passage of time, I became familiar with the word “Kanejung.” Every Friday, I would see young boys clashing with the forces outside the Jamia Masjid in Nowhatta. It was a routine for the young boys from different localities of the downtown wearing masks, holding stones in their hands and raising Anti-India slogans, to assemble outside the Jamia masjid after Namaz and to tease the police and paramilitary forces deployed there. The boys used to pelt stones at the forces, who in retaliation would fire tear gas shells and pellets to disperse them.
“My mother would often say to me, ‘Jamia chuy jung chalan yene apear gasakh,'” said Aaqib, a resident of downtown Srinagar.
“Conflict has been a part of our lives. I grew up in Downtown, and on every Friday windows of my house would be broken and I would see a cop standing at my door. The view is embedded in my subconscious mind,” Sualiha from Downtown, Srinagar says.
She adds, “Some days I would go to school unsure I would return home. Here, uncertainty surrounds our life.”
Recently, when the internet was suspended and the curfew was imposed I was unable to meet my friends and go outside. Staying in for months gave rise to suicidal thoughts in my mind. And I can vouch, there’s barely a Kashmiri who hasn’t felt this.
Maleeha, a student, thinks that it’s an irony that she doesn’t know what normalcy looks like because she hasn’t seen it since she was born. “Since childhood, I have been familiar with strikes, curfews, stone pelting, arrests and encounters.”
She says that living in downtown made her used to stone pelting, and it somehow became an everyday routine. “I considered it as normal and thought it happens everywhere around the globe. I used to watch it through the window and see how boys would pelt the stone and then the police would retaliate with tear gas shells,” she added.
She says that she would stay there until her eyes could no longer bear the strain. “One evening,” Maleeha said, “I entered the room when stone-pelting began and that very moment policemen fired tear gas. I saw the tear gas flying in the air exactly in front of me and it infused fear in me. It was quite disturbing and depressing, even for a person who’s used to conflict.”
Whenever stone pelting would occur, I’ve lost the count as to the number of times our glass window panes were shattered by the forces. I can assure that it has literally happened numerous times. To protect them, we would often cover them with blankets or shut the lights off at night. Once while our family was having tea in the lobby of our house and stone-pelting began outside. For safety, all of us rushed into a room in our house that had no window towards the road because we always feared that a stone or a tear gas shell might hit the window and enter into the room.
This one time, we forgot to switch off the lights in haste but what happened afterwards was shocking. The forces broke all the glass window panes and did not even spare the bulbs. When children of my age in other parts of the world used to play with toys, I would help my mom in clearing away the broken pieces of shattered glass window panes and tear gas shells.
A person, wishing anonymity, said, “I still remember the dark nights when I used to tremble with fear due to the night raids by the government forces. I used to leave my home in the late evening and roam around the streets just to escape from the night raids. Even if there is a knock late in the evening on our main door, I am always ready to jump from the window and escape just to escape from any raid by the government forces.”
I’m not sure if the youth in Kashmir is at all optimistic about their future. The conflict has traumatized each and everyone here. They are depressed to an extent that many are undergoing mental treatments and counselling. I, myself, had to undergo mental treatment to cope with the trauma caused by the night raids and arrests. With every curfew, lockdown or shutdown, our mental health sees a new low, and the ever-looming uncertainty governs our life since the moment we, the children of conflict, are born.