Kashmir: The Lost Paradise

Dear Kashmir,

How are you? Or, should I ask, how are your burns, your injuries, your wounds? They hurt, don’t they? Some years ago, my social science teacher once said, ‘Kashmir is heaven on Earth!’ I believed her. And why would I have not. Ever since then, I have craved for witnessing your beauty at least once in my life. You are like a candy, that the ten-year old kid in me has always starved for! Like the flower that would bloom only once in my lifetime.

Photo by Life Of Pix from Pexels

But then the ten-year old brain was surprised to see your distraught and marred face. All along these years, the wish has been like a show-piece on my drawing room shelf because your glory is in captivation of some evil designs which I failed to comprehend. Your aura seems like a gorgeous orchid farm trapped in an avalanche. As ‘they’ keep on intruding your pacific soul, I hide my face in agony and dismay. Even today, every now and then, when they bring your testimonies upfront, I wonder if they display the truth ever. I wonder if you like being played on, like a catch-throw game. I wonder how bad the darts being thrown on you, pierce.

The last time they recorded and presented your testimony, I tried to go close and hear your heartbeat but couldn’t differentiate any. It was more of “boom-thud” rather than the normal “lub-dub”. It felt like you wanted to tell the world that you are not okay with the surgeries being performed on your body, in the name of ‘peace treatises’. Maybe you do not like them all glaring at you with those ravenous eyes and trying to procure your sanctity. Maybe we fail to realize that you are even more unsafe and vulnerable than the women in India. Maybe we still can’t decipher what is refraining you from becoming that paradise again from the virulent combination of blood and quietus. Maybe we won you constitutionally but never won your heart!

Alas, I can never cure your pain. Nobody else can. The amount of trauma you’ve been through is prodigious and can never be verbalized. But I hope and I pray that the next time you come in front of the mirror you don’t have to see your blood-stained, bruised or amputated body. I am resting my pen now, believing that you will be back as my ten-year old brain had pictured you, soon.

Your distant well-wishers,

 Ish
 Sam