They have silenced you the same way as they silenced many before
Dear Showkat Sahib,
I never wrote to you when you were alive. Yet in your anonymous assassination, I could not resist the temptation to write to you. My brother Bilal called me and told me you had been attacked. I made a few calls to find out more details. You didn’t make it this time. I was shocked and paced about in my room. Showkat Sahib, this is Kashmir. We are immune to pain and bloodshed. I brooded for some time and then tried to go along with my routine work. Hard as I tried to not think about you, your image of long flowing beard, thin disposition, sharp features, refused to let go off me. After a few hours I went out into my garden. Wistfully I walked around. The sun was going down and a sad haze had enveloped the skies. I gazed into the hazy hollowness of the skies, as the moroseness of the hills seemed to have cast a melancholic spell of mourning in the air. Yes, I believe- in bloodied Kashmir nature broods, cries, mourns, when a son of the soil is devoured. An uneasy feeling gripped me. One more gone, some more to go I said to myself, as I knelt and sat down in the garden. I bent my knees, brought down my head to the knees, burying it into my knees. Tears trickled down my cheeks and I began to cry. I will be honest with you Showkat Sahib. I was not crying for you. I was crying for my father. Every time a political leader is assassinated in any part of the world, my father dies again, the pain and helplessness surfaces ever again. I imagined scenes at your home, replete with helplessness, the mourning, the crying and in the process revisited the scenes at my home when my father died. Every such death reminds me that I had a father who was killed and makes me feel guilty of being a helpless bystander as the murderers wander free. The kin of those killed in the conflict in Kashmir are a creed apart- an extended family who may not know each other and cutting across barriers of age, gender, regions, caste are connected by a common bond of pain and helplessness. I call them, the mourners. With a heavy heart I welcome your children to this ever growing family of mourners. They are now a part of this family. From Mirwaiz Umar who joined this family at the tender age of sixteen to your son, this family is just growing. A growth we all could do without. How I wish your children had not joined this mourning family, how I wish no child becomes a part of this ill-fated family but destiny has set designs.
I am yet to visit your house. But any member of the family of mourners can with great precision conjure up the imagery of the mourning at your home. It takes a mourner to feel the pain of a fellow mourner. Wailing wife, sobbing daughters, sons desperately blocking the flood of tears, receiving the streams of people; Oh! you have an aged mother too and that multiplies the pain. What a strange confluence of ostensibly disparate, but actually coherent emotions? Sons and daughters mourning a father, mother mourning a son, brother mourning a brother and wife mourning a husband.
After your death officials of the J & K Police, visited me and many others. This is a routine visit whenever someone is killed. They come, advise and go, and wait for the next killing to come again. I was asked me to be careful. As they left- in wonderment I leaned back into the sofa, and the thought raced in my mind- will I also be killed? I went into a trance imagining me traveling in a car. At a traffic signal, two people quietly walk up to me and shoot me and kill me. The picture of the two assassins is retained in my eyes even after my death. I know them but can’t place them. My bullet ridden body is taken to my home. It is placed in the garden at the same place where my father’s bullet ridden body was placed a few years back. My body is surrounded by noisy mourners. Among the women mourners, I see my inconsolable mother. I go into a sub trance and make a quick prayer to Allah- “If this is to happen take away my mother before me”. Please Allah do not torture and burden her with the reception of one more bullet ridden body”. Members of my family, neighbours, acquaintances are all there spread in sad groups, murmuring. There is a steady stream of people and new entrants go near the crowd around my dead body lean on their toes to have a view of the face. Most of them would sigh, “oh oh oh hai hai hai” in Kashmiri language. I overheard one saying,” oh he has a young family”. I started searching for my two minor sons. They were not in the crowd. My trance led me to, what used to be my bedroom. My children were there- with Bilal's daughters, who seemed to be at a loss whether to comfort the young souls or mourn their uncle. They were having a hard time answering innocent queries- “who killed Baba? Why they killed him? Will he be going to Dadu? When will he come back? Who will get us toys? Showkat Sahib the sight of two young fatherless children stunned me and even in my dead state, I thought to myself- WHY ? My trance meanwhile went back to the mourners. It was decision time, where to bury me. Bilal and some friends were deciding where to bury me. Idgah suggested one of the mourners. “No, that can’t happen”, said another mourner- “He has fought elections”. They confabulated and finally Bilal suggested that Sajad will be buried at the ancestral graveyard in Dard Harrai, Kupwara. Leaving the house was a very emotional moment. I cried in my death, started missing my moments of innocence, my childhood and yes my children were there on my mind. Who will look after them? I prayed to Allah for one chance to hold my children in the tightest embrace, stroke their hair, cup their delicate faces in my hands and take one last and long look at them. It was not to be, I was dead, my time had been cruelly snatched and I left the world a sad man, worried about my young children, feeling insecure about them in the absence of the protective affection of a father. I rued the day I joined politics, I rued the day the day I was outspoken, but the die had been cast.
Showkat Sahib I was there, I could see everything but nobody could see me. It seems my soul was there in pain, consumed with anger for being killed for no fault of mine, making my children fatherless. All the prominent leaders turned up at the burial site. They all delivered speeches and showered great praises on me. I saw one leader making a passionate speech and something bizarre struck me. The two boys who shot me often used to accompany this particular leader. Doubts started to arise in my mind. But I was overwhelmed by the emotionality of the burial site- familiar faces of party workers in a sad frenzy raising a din of futile slogans.
My trance shifted to my residence the following morning. People came there to offer condolences. Bilal was receiving the mourners. At a regular frequency fateha would be offered. My restless soul was watching. And then hell broke loose. Two young men came in. They were particularly distraught and hugged my brother Bilal and cried. I ran towards them peering into their face. I was shocked with disbelief. They were the ones who shot me. I tried shaking Bilal, shouted, cried and winced in pain, ”these are the boys who shot me. What are they doing here” Shorn of my physicality I was now a weightless, formless and invisible soul- a transcendental wanderer in pain. No one could hear me or see me, but I had to bear the torture of seeing everything. One of the damn fellows’ had the audacity to get up and deliver a mourning speech. The damn fellow broke down twice while delivering the speech. Showkat Sahib the pain of two murderers coming to pay condolences was far greater than the pain of being murdered.
I came out of my trance and was shaken. I went to bed thinking about you, the abruptness of your death, the last moments of your life, the sound of the blast, and its physical impact on your body and the dawning of that moment, when you knew that they had got you and your possible thoughts in those last moments. In the morning I saw the newspapers. Your photo was prominently displayed. I touched your face on the paper and moved my fingers across your face and stared affectionately at you and then my eyes shifted to the photo of the Jinazah. Thousands and thousands of people packed into Lal Chowk. I smiled. Death is an eternal reality. Showkat Sahib we all have to die one day. But in death, in pain, in being abruptly separated from your loved ones, in all the travails forced upon your family, the day still belonged to you. Few are lucky to have such a heroic farewell. Every adversity poses a new challenge. In this battle you have won the first round. You sacrificed your life for saying what you believed in. The onus of success or failure of subsequent rounds falls on us, the nation for which you sacrificed your life. If the murderer has the liberty to roam free and mourn you, Showkat Sahib, they win. If we are able to uphold the dignity of your sacrifices and disallow the liberticidal goons of murdering and mourning, we win, you win. My trance is a fiction, but fact is no pleasant. This is Kashmir and fiction overlaps with reality. A tiny lunatic fringe with castrated mental faculties, nourishing a supercilious contempt and disdain for liberties, for realism have taken upon themselves to rid Kashmir of what their delusions qualify as wrongs, and these cowards believe in the power of anonymous violence in silencing the voice of masses. Irrespective of our win or loss you will remain my icon for daring to say what you believed in. You are my Kashmiri hero. May Allah bless your family and may the heroic farewell inspire others to lead.
(Sajad Lone is Chairman People's Conference can be reached at lone.sajad@gmail.com)
Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/SAJJAD.LONE
I never wrote to you when you were alive. Yet in your anonymous assassination, I could not resist the temptation to write to you. My brother Bilal called me and told me you had been attacked. I made a few calls to find out more details. You didn’t make it this time. I was shocked and paced about in my room. Showkat Sahib, this is Kashmir. We are immune to pain and bloodshed. I brooded for some time and then tried to go along with my routine work. Hard as I tried to not think about you, your image of long flowing beard, thin disposition, sharp features, refused to let go off me. After a few hours I went out into my garden. Wistfully I walked around. The sun was going down and a sad haze had enveloped the skies. I gazed into the hazy hollowness of the skies, as the moroseness of the hills seemed to have cast a melancholic spell of mourning in the air. Yes, I believe- in bloodied Kashmir nature broods, cries, mourns, when a son of the soil is devoured. An uneasy feeling gripped me. One more gone, some more to go I said to myself, as I knelt and sat down in the garden. I bent my knees, brought down my head to the knees, burying it into my knees. Tears trickled down my cheeks and I began to cry. I will be honest with you Showkat Sahib. I was not crying for you. I was crying for my father. Every time a political leader is assassinated in any part of the world, my father dies again, the pain and helplessness surfaces ever again. I imagined scenes at your home, replete with helplessness, the mourning, the crying and in the process revisited the scenes at my home when my father died. Every such death reminds me that I had a father who was killed and makes me feel guilty of being a helpless bystander as the murderers wander free. The kin of those killed in the conflict in Kashmir are a creed apart- an extended family who may not know each other and cutting across barriers of age, gender, regions, caste are connected by a common bond of pain and helplessness. I call them, the mourners. With a heavy heart I welcome your children to this ever growing family of mourners. They are now a part of this family. From Mirwaiz Umar who joined this family at the tender age of sixteen to your son, this family is just growing. A growth we all could do without. How I wish your children had not joined this mourning family, how I wish no child becomes a part of this ill-fated family but destiny has set designs.
I am yet to visit your house. But any member of the family of mourners can with great precision conjure up the imagery of the mourning at your home. It takes a mourner to feel the pain of a fellow mourner. Wailing wife, sobbing daughters, sons desperately blocking the flood of tears, receiving the streams of people; Oh! you have an aged mother too and that multiplies the pain. What a strange confluence of ostensibly disparate, but actually coherent emotions? Sons and daughters mourning a father, mother mourning a son, brother mourning a brother and wife mourning a husband.
After your death officials of the J & K Police, visited me and many others. This is a routine visit whenever someone is killed. They come, advise and go, and wait for the next killing to come again. I was asked me to be careful. As they left- in wonderment I leaned back into the sofa, and the thought raced in my mind- will I also be killed? I went into a trance imagining me traveling in a car. At a traffic signal, two people quietly walk up to me and shoot me and kill me. The picture of the two assassins is retained in my eyes even after my death. I know them but can’t place them. My bullet ridden body is taken to my home. It is placed in the garden at the same place where my father’s bullet ridden body was placed a few years back. My body is surrounded by noisy mourners. Among the women mourners, I see my inconsolable mother. I go into a sub trance and make a quick prayer to Allah- “If this is to happen take away my mother before me”. Please Allah do not torture and burden her with the reception of one more bullet ridden body”. Members of my family, neighbours, acquaintances are all there spread in sad groups, murmuring. There is a steady stream of people and new entrants go near the crowd around my dead body lean on their toes to have a view of the face. Most of them would sigh, “oh oh oh hai hai hai” in Kashmiri language. I overheard one saying,” oh he has a young family”. I started searching for my two minor sons. They were not in the crowd. My trance led me to, what used to be my bedroom. My children were there- with Bilal's daughters, who seemed to be at a loss whether to comfort the young souls or mourn their uncle. They were having a hard time answering innocent queries- “who killed Baba? Why they killed him? Will he be going to Dadu? When will he come back? Who will get us toys? Showkat Sahib the sight of two young fatherless children stunned me and even in my dead state, I thought to myself- WHY ? My trance meanwhile went back to the mourners. It was decision time, where to bury me. Bilal and some friends were deciding where to bury me. Idgah suggested one of the mourners. “No, that can’t happen”, said another mourner- “He has fought elections”. They confabulated and finally Bilal suggested that Sajad will be buried at the ancestral graveyard in Dard Harrai, Kupwara. Leaving the house was a very emotional moment. I cried in my death, started missing my moments of innocence, my childhood and yes my children were there on my mind. Who will look after them? I prayed to Allah for one chance to hold my children in the tightest embrace, stroke their hair, cup their delicate faces in my hands and take one last and long look at them. It was not to be, I was dead, my time had been cruelly snatched and I left the world a sad man, worried about my young children, feeling insecure about them in the absence of the protective affection of a father. I rued the day I joined politics, I rued the day the day I was outspoken, but the die had been cast.
Showkat Sahib I was there, I could see everything but nobody could see me. It seems my soul was there in pain, consumed with anger for being killed for no fault of mine, making my children fatherless. All the prominent leaders turned up at the burial site. They all delivered speeches and showered great praises on me. I saw one leader making a passionate speech and something bizarre struck me. The two boys who shot me often used to accompany this particular leader. Doubts started to arise in my mind. But I was overwhelmed by the emotionality of the burial site- familiar faces of party workers in a sad frenzy raising a din of futile slogans.
My trance shifted to my residence the following morning. People came there to offer condolences. Bilal was receiving the mourners. At a regular frequency fateha would be offered. My restless soul was watching. And then hell broke loose. Two young men came in. They were particularly distraught and hugged my brother Bilal and cried. I ran towards them peering into their face. I was shocked with disbelief. They were the ones who shot me. I tried shaking Bilal, shouted, cried and winced in pain, ”these are the boys who shot me. What are they doing here” Shorn of my physicality I was now a weightless, formless and invisible soul- a transcendental wanderer in pain. No one could hear me or see me, but I had to bear the torture of seeing everything. One of the damn fellows’ had the audacity to get up and deliver a mourning speech. The damn fellow broke down twice while delivering the speech. Showkat Sahib the pain of two murderers coming to pay condolences was far greater than the pain of being murdered.
I came out of my trance and was shaken. I went to bed thinking about you, the abruptness of your death, the last moments of your life, the sound of the blast, and its physical impact on your body and the dawning of that moment, when you knew that they had got you and your possible thoughts in those last moments. In the morning I saw the newspapers. Your photo was prominently displayed. I touched your face on the paper and moved my fingers across your face and stared affectionately at you and then my eyes shifted to the photo of the Jinazah. Thousands and thousands of people packed into Lal Chowk. I smiled. Death is an eternal reality. Showkat Sahib we all have to die one day. But in death, in pain, in being abruptly separated from your loved ones, in all the travails forced upon your family, the day still belonged to you. Few are lucky to have such a heroic farewell. Every adversity poses a new challenge. In this battle you have won the first round. You sacrificed your life for saying what you believed in. The onus of success or failure of subsequent rounds falls on us, the nation for which you sacrificed your life. If the murderer has the liberty to roam free and mourn you, Showkat Sahib, they win. If we are able to uphold the dignity of your sacrifices and disallow the liberticidal goons of murdering and mourning, we win, you win. My trance is a fiction, but fact is no pleasant. This is Kashmir and fiction overlaps with reality. A tiny lunatic fringe with castrated mental faculties, nourishing a supercilious contempt and disdain for liberties, for realism have taken upon themselves to rid Kashmir of what their delusions qualify as wrongs, and these cowards believe in the power of anonymous violence in silencing the voice of masses. Irrespective of our win or loss you will remain my icon for daring to say what you believed in. You are my Kashmiri hero. May Allah bless your family and may the heroic farewell inspire others to lead.
(Sajad Lone is Chairman People's Conference can be reached at lone.sajad@gmail.com)
Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/SAJJAD.LONE
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