The Exception

 

The shrine of Bibi Baria, located in the outskirts of Srinagar in Kralpora, is a shrine exclusively meant for women. The structure is a concrete one, with the main door leading to another where Bibi Baria’s grave is. The grave is surrounded by three windows and a door which usually remain closed. It hides behind green and black glittering curtains on which the names of Allah and some verses from the Quran are inscribed.  Between the two doors there is a space which women use to circle around the grave, some with their eyes closed as tears roll down their cheeks while they narrate their ordeals to Bibi Baria. Wishes of conceiving a child and curing different ailments are common in this shrine. 

This shrine is believed to be of the 14th century. Bibi Baria was the daughter of  Saif-ullah, the then governor of Kashmir (in the era of Sikander). Saif-ullah was actually Seeh Bhat, a non Muslim who was always discriminated against for being from a lower cast in the era of Budshah. “He converted to Islam and became very strict towards Brahmins who later left the valley and shifted to Punjab. ‘Kashir ruz kahai ghare’ (Kashmir is left with only 11 houses) is a phrase of that time and it is believed that Saif-ullah was the reason,” says poet Zareef Ahmad Zareef. After seeing the dedication of  Saif-ullah, Mir Syed Ali Hamadani (popularly known as Shah-i-Hamadan, accompanied by 700 Sayyids spread Islam all over Kashmir) decided to marry his son, Mir Mohammad Hamadani to the lone daughter of Saif-ullah. But Bibi Baria died shortly after her marriage.   

Women who come to visit this shrine are now long time visitors who believe all their wishes have come true. People especially women come to this shrine throughout the week, but on Fridays, women come in the hundreds to offer their prayers in separate halls, specifically meant for prayers following the Imam in the nearby Masjid. The shrine and the Masjid are separated with a wall, and both have their separate entrance. Young girls who haven’t even entered their teenage years also come here, and strongly believe their wishes might come true one day. more 

Public Inconveniences

Doctors have advised Muneer Ahmad to take lot of fluids as he has kidney stones. He works in an insurance company and most of the time he is on the move – meeting clients. He says he has to face embarrassing moments when he needs to go to a bathroom, as there are a just a few in the whole city.

“I use the wash room very frequently no matter if they are without water or are stinking because otherwise I get a terrible abdominal pain,” says Muneer.

Recently while travelling on Zero Bridge, he felt the need of using a bathroom. Luckily there was one nearby. “When I looked for the public utility, it was closed. I was left with no option but to urinate in the open,” says Muneer.

Most public utilities are either in or close to Lal Chowk and in other parts of the city are only a few and far between. Visitors to Srinagar and those who work there have to face immense hardships due to the lack of public conveniences.

Women have to face more problems on this count. Saba is a working woman and leaves home early in the mornings. Once, she needed to use a washroom near Qamarwari but could not find any. Being a girl she hesitated to ask people for public washroom. “I entered a big house. When I knocked at the door a woman of my mother’s age came out. I asked her to please let me use their washroom but she replied, ‘we don’t have a washroom.’ While coming out of the house I saw a school nearby and went there to find a washroom instead,” says Saba. more

Mysterious Minds

Uzma was admitted to a government hospital for abdominal cramps. Doctors advised an ultrasound, which revealed alien objects in her perforated intestine. A subsequent surgery led to the removal of those “alien objects”—polythene, pins, plastic, the handle of a shaver and needles; objects which she had consumed over a long period of time. Despite the alarming results, she feels she hasn’t done anything wrong; she has no interest in knowing what is happening around her, and is seemingly lost in another world. 21-year-old Uzma, the only child of her parents, is a schizophrenic.

Uzma prefers to remain silent, and hardly shows any interest in talking to anyone—family, doctors or others. Her family says she has been stressed because her mother has been pressuring her to qualify the MSC entrance test of the University of Kashmir, which she has already failed once. The pressure lingered since she failed to qualify the MBBS entrance test.

Besides this, family members do not believe that Uzma has any other health problems. However, the doctor treating her says, “She is a case of paranoid schizophrenia (thought disorder) and has been under psychiatric treatment earlier as well, but due to family reluctance, she stopped taking medication, and finally tried to harm herself.”

Schizophrenia, a mental disorder, is characterized by a breakdown of thought processes and by poor emotional responsiveness. It most commonly includes auditory hallucinations (hearing voices); delusions (bizarre or persecutory in nature), disorganised behavior, disorganised thought and negative feelings. According to doctors, an individual should show at least two such symptoms for six months, in order to be diagnosed with schizophrenia. But people with bizarre delusions can qualify without even waiting for six months. This disease has an onset from the age of late teens, but there have been some patients also who have been diagnosed as schizophrenic at the age of five. It is a rare condition, and worldwide it has a prevalence of one percent.more

Years Of Solitude

Octogenarian Fatima lives in her 37-year-old divorced daughter Shaheena’s house at Zoonimar. Before moving in into her daughter’s house, the mother of two sons and three daughters lived alone.

“My daughter may provide me the last drop of water on my deathbed, this may be why she came back,” says Fatima. Shaheena is divorced, with two children aged 10 and 15.

The family of four lives in a “two-room” house where only a six by seven foot room is functional and a small corridor serves as a kitchen. The other room is just four walls. The house is bereft of a latrine. A bathroom came after five years of struggle.

Fatima once lived happily with her husband, Khalil Muhammad Bhat, and their children. Khalil used to process Pashmina thread. “Those days such shawls were either exported or bought by rich people as these were very expensive,” says Fatima. Khalil’s earnings were sufficient for the family until he died of a heart attack, leaving Fatima to fend for their family.

Both of Fatima’s sons had dropped out of school when they were still in 5th and 4th grade, and her daughters did not go to school at all. All her daughters started doing embroidery on rugs and clothes from a tender age. For the next ten years, things returned to a relative normal life. Fatima married off her children at very young ages. Her daughters contributed for their own marriages. more

The Lone Survivor: Nanak Singh

I was 46 years old in 2000. I was a government employee in Animal HusbandryDepartment. I remember that night, while coming out from the Gurdwara we saw some uniformed men with faces covered running in our streets.

They asked us to remain there as they were conducting a search operation in the area. Some of them had already entered into the houses and had called some of the male members out. They told us they just want to talk to us. I was living near the Gurdwara and they had asked some of my family members also to come out. In total we were 19 people standing in a line. I remember they asked us ‘do you play Holi’ as next day it was the Holi festival. We told them it is not our festival so we don’t celebrate it. Then they asked ‘do you want to drink wine’, they were carrying alcohol bottles with them.

I remember they were calling a man as ‘CO Sahab’, who instructed them to check our identity cards and then let us go. They asked us to show our identity cards and with that that CO opened a fire in air and with him started the other uniformed men. They fired a barrage of bullets on each one of us but before that they asked us to face the wall of the Gurdwara so to fire at us from the back. We all fell on the ground but luckily every bullet targeting me just pierced through my pheran (I have preserved that pheran). I was lying among the bodies. They shot around 15 bullets on each body.

After the shootout the CO asked his men to see if anyone among us was still breathing then shoot another bullet. Then they checked with torch lights and shot single bullets again. Ironically, this time a bullet hit which fracturing my right hip. I still managed to remain silent. Then, I put my hand on the wound which was bleeding profusely. They were about to leave by then and they were laughing loudly. They were calling each other with the names Pawan, Bansi, Bahadur and then finally they left while shouting ‘Jai Hind’. In that incident I lost my son, brother, four cousins and uncle. more

LIFE OF A MASSACRE

On the surface Chattisinghpora is like any other of the thousands of Kashmiri villages, nestled in the Himalayan surroundings. But a few minutes into conversations with the villagers here, one is engulfed with living tragedy and grief. This village is distinguished by a Samadhi, a memorial to the 35 villagers, members of the Sikh community who were brutally gunned down by ‘unknown’ armed men 12 years ago late night on March 20. The Samadhi reminds the villagers, every day of their life, of that horrible night when they witnessed a ‘river of blood’ flowing down the village dirt tracks. The massacre grabbed global headlines as it was carried out while Bill Clinton;the then US president was on an official visit to India. Chattisinghpora has lived under constant trauma ever since. Those left behind, the families of the victims, as of course their Muslim neighbours, feel that they may never get justice as the perpetrators remain unidentified.

Neelam Kour, a mother of two has brought up her kids all by herself. The children, daughter (14) and son (12) don’t know anything about the night of March20, 2000 in which their father and other three other family members were killed. They think their father works in Army, posted far away and he doesn’t get leave to see his family.

The husband of Neelam had his electrical business and that fateful night while coming back from his shop he was stopped by the ‘men in uniform’ who had already cordoned off the whole area. In some time he was fired upon along with his younger brother, two uncles and 12 others– all residents of Showkeen Mohalla. Neelam recalls, “We got so scared when those uniformed men with covered faces were running in our lanes. Myself, my 18-months-old daughter and my mother-in-law were all alone in the house. We were so frightened that we couldn’t even once see what was happening outside. All we could do was to hear the noise coming from outside.”

Since Neelam’s house is beside the Gurdwara in Showkeen Mohalla she was able to hear the guns being fired including that initial shot fired in the air “may be to give signal to the other murderers who were waiting in another Gurdwara, Gurdwara Singh Saba Samadari Bagh where 18 more were killed and later one injured succumbed to his injuries”. more

Not Stopping Yet

From his appointment in the mechanical engineering department as a section officer, to his retirement as AEE (Assistant Executive Engineer) in 1998, Haji Abdul Aziz Dar has had a somewhat smooth life. However, at that point, all his children—four sons and a daughter—were either still unemployed or studying.

“I didn’t have enough money to make them doctors and engineers,” he says. “So they simply did their graduations.”

Haji Aziz had completed his BE in mechanical engineering before joining service in 1964.

Now, after 14 years of retirement, Haji Aziz is still earning. He works as a supplier and contractor to various government departments. “It is the duty of every parent to make their children independent and to marry them off, so I had to work again (after retirement).”

He has only married off his daughter and the elder son. All of his sons work in the private sector.

Haji Aziz says he could have lived a “luxurious life” like his friends did, but he did not want to spoil his hereafter - life after death. He claims to have never taken “bribes and commission.” “If I had taken bribes, my sons would have been doctors or engineers,” he says.

In addition to his motivation for ensuring his children settle down, Haji Aziz says his passion for work did not allow him to stay home. He has been a footballer and played in various inter-state tournaments. “I am 70; I don’t take any medicines and never complain of any old age symptoms like my friends do. I feel it is because of my habit of being active throughout my life,” he says. “After all my sons are married, I might assist my elder son who is running a computers sale and service business.”

Busy and healthy

Ahmadullah Shah, an electrical engineer started his career in 1971 when he got the job of a section officer in the electricity department. After progressing steadily in his career, Shah finally retired in 2007 as AEE. He has good memories of working in the department. “Ours is the department with which people are never satisfied - the great electricity department,” he says with a smile. more