Suhail Dar
The Kashmir valley in 2018 was gripped by deadly violence as the toll of deaths of civilians, Militants, and Government Forces kept on rising and it tarnished thousands of lives, many mothers losing their sole bread-earning sons and many fathers shouldering the coffin of their young sons.
The raging violence has cut short the dreams of thousands of families and youth, who have become a victim of the decade’s long violence in the region claimed by both India and Pakistan, A teenager, Numan Bhat killed in the firing of Government Forces in Shopian on November 25, 2018, made news one month after his death, when the results of class 10th were declared, has passed the matriculation exams.
The simmering conflict has left a seemingly catastrophic effect on mothers in Kashmir. It has become routine for them to receive the dead bodies of their children.
Numan Ashraf Bhat, a 15-year-old boy and a resident of Bolus area in Kulgam shot dead on 25 November during clashes near an encounter site in Shopian when six militants– Mushtaq Ahmad Mir, Mohammad Abass Bhat, Umar Majeed Ganaie, Mohammad Waseem Wagay, Khalid Farooq Malik, all from South Kashmir, and one foreigner were killed.
Numan’s father who is a carpenter remembers the day when he shouldered the coffin of his 15-year-old son, “It was Karbala for me, I do not…..”Mohammed Ashraf bursts into tears trying to narrate the sequence of events that unfolded on 25 November. “Numan had finished his practical exam on Saturday and on Sunday morning, he left to get bread for breakfast, we kept waiting for him to come back, but he did not, his dead body reached my courtyard,” Mohammed Ashraf, his father said.
He said that his son dreamed to help his family and bring them out of poverty. “I do not want to become a doctor or engineer, but I just want to study well and take my family out of poverty,” his father remembers him saying several times.
Few days after his death on 25 November, the result of his class 10th was declared, he had cleared the class 10 exams.
For the father, the battle to feed the family and provide for them has kept him away from the thought but for the mother, the battle to existence is very tough. She confines herself to tears and has hidden a photo of Numan. The family members, she says have snatched the photo multiple times. “They do not want me to cry, they do not want me to look at his face, his face always reminds me of his childhood, how he learned walking holding my fingers and the thought of him being in the grave is unbelievable to me,” she told The Kashmiriyat.
“Numan was a teenager. He didn’t even have a mustache, he left home early morning and a few hours later, we received the bullet-riddled body of my son. The killing of our son has torn my heart apart. The pain is like being burnt alive,” the mother told The Kashmiriyat. “In Kashmir mothers suffer the most.”
She has been taken to the hospital several times after she complained of anxiety. “the doctors say she should stay away from the photos of her son or any of his talks, that might trigger her,” Ashraf told The Kashmiriyat.
However, while I speak to the family, I see his mother trying to hide her face constantly, she perhaps was weeping. It is almost 3: 30 pm and the noise of school children returning home makes her run to the window in absolute joy. “She looks through the window every day and keeps telling me that Numan is at School and will soon come back from school.”
Here in Kashmir, we do not have a right to dream, we do not have to right to think of our future, because you never know which bullet will pierce your body and when. “Our right to life is at stake,” he said.
Before the parents of Numan broke down, they told The Kashmiriyat, “In other parts of the world, sons usually take care of their parents in their old age and when they die they shoulder their coffins. But in Kashmir it is different. Many parents have no sons left to shoulder their coffins.”
“Few people cajole us that parents whose sons get martyred and win a place in heaven. But do you know what parents go through, how much they suffer?”