Leaves and Barbed Wires

This fall in Kashmir, hope moves silently like the leaves of the trees

Amit Sengupta Srinagar

It's the time of 'the fall' in the paradise. The Valley is flooded with yellow leaves, falling as silently as the night falls after a sudden twilight. This is still a twilight zone, beyond this or that line of control, but its amazing beauty still seeks to break the thresholds of the discarded and glorified barbed wires which traps the body and soul of Kashmir. If Srinagar is the heart of Kashmir, then the security forces' barbed wires, used, in disuse, rusting, shining, in vicious circles of iron and spike, symbols of both State power and State terror, lie scattered all over the city like living memories of 'occupation'.

The 'char chinar' stand in isolated glory in the shimmering Dal Lake, as tall as the sky, as green as the Valley, even as three women 'drive' a shikara through the huge expanse of its waters, from one shore to another. The chinar and the poplar and the deodar, they are interspersed with the yellow of the fall, serene and scenic, hiding ancient smells and sensualities. Surely, unexpressed freedom trapped in terror can become more beautiful then the usual stereotypes of beauty. As Schiller said, if the road to freedom must end in violence, then it must first cross beauty.

Young women cross the streets, in black burqas, their chiselled faces uncovered, their eyes like the trees in the fall. They cross the largely empty streets in the distant parts of the city and you want to stop them and ask, do you feel everything's normal, can you cross the street without fear, do you look back in anger or fear or mistrust, do you feel safe. An old man, his face mapped with lines drawn on the Khyber Pass, tells me a Sufi poem, as he leans on the wall of a broken, run-down house, once a typical mountain home with tiles with big windows facing the blue to catch the sun. His poem basically means that god often comes with the changing seasons but we miss him because the leaves are falling and they make no sound and we are distracted.

When army convoys pass through Srinagar, all traffic must stop. This is a war zone trapped in the normalcy of both real and artificial democracy. They are there everywhere, the para military forces with guns in olive green fatigue, in armoured vehicles, in bullet- proof jackets, inside bunkers, check-posts, camps, permanent buildings and discarded or occupied out of business hotels, on the streets and in the by-lanes, on street crossings, at traffic junctions, inside parks and on the pavements and outside schools, all over the Kashmir University even as girls play base ball, outside restaurants, coffee and dry-fruit shops and bus stations, across the Dal Lake on every shore,  outside the famous Hazrat Bal shrine, around the empty house boats, on over-bridges and old town inside-lanes, swarming all over the government areas and around politicians and ministers with multiple check-posts, inside public auditoriums, outside the loo, around the lunch table, beyond Srinagar at numerous check posts before Chasme-Shahi, the Mughal Garden and the Neshat Garden, across every half a kilometre toward Gulmarg, on the mountains across the terrain, inside the villages, every 20 yards as men and women work on the fields, through every mile and every little expanse of land travelled, leaning on deodar trees in the forests, outside guest houses and village homes, sitting on the village fences, smoking.

Young jawans with guns, from remote places of India, culturally alienated in this paradise of a completely different culture, always on guard, erect and alert, forever tense, guiding traffic sometimes, telling buses to move, unsmiling, tenuous, tentative, nervous and determined: the visible and omnipresent symbols of Indian armed power verses jehadi militancy, their hands on their trigger. “Things are much better now,” says a local. “The army presence is much less now. Things are returning to normalcy.”

Is it so? If this is less, then what is more? What was more?

Do you feel normal in crossing the street with all those guns and eyes chasing you, I ask a student. She laughs, as if it's a joke. “We have got used to it,” she says, and then she laughs again, as if the sound of the laughter can eliminate the silence of her discomfort in public spaces. In most of Srinagar, life seems normal, and Lal Chowk, the heart of the city, is bustling with life, with hundreds of school girls and women on the streets, some driving cars, others just enjoying the sun before the cruel winter sets in. The Kashmir University is throbbing with life, girls and boys move together freely, idealistic journalism students, like all journalism students, are brining out anti-establishment newspapers “with our own money”. Youngsters are not brooding of the past, they seem to be carrying no wounds of yesteryears, but they are angry and they have a vision and they want jobs.

The Kashmiri educated young is reeling with unemployment. There is no industry, no business, no small scale entrepreneurship, no public and private sector, no local enterprise. You look deeper and the wounds surface, like old wounds that refuse to heal. In this beautiful landscape and in this season of Vivaldi's violin, there are no tourists. The long-winding Boulevard Road on the shores of the Dal Lake, as beautiful as is name, is lonely and withdrawn; there are no foreigners hanging out. Even the NGOs seem to be shirking from what can be a potential global funding jackpot. The house boats are empty. Most hotels are empty. “It's much better during the summers. After the killing of the Gujarati tourists, there was a slump, but it's getting better.” Local optimism stretches the actual conditions. Tourism is better but it is still down. Tourism minister, Dilawar Mir says there is a conspiracy to brand Kashmir as unsafe. He is inviting tourists from all over the world and India to come and visit Kashmir. “We assure you complete safety. Tourism is growing. All are welcome,” he says. Not everyone is listening.

There are only two 'spots' where you can buy booze; drinking, it seems, is out. And there is hardly any night life. Who's going to walk out on the streets with all those guns everywhere, and the absent jehadi lurking in the shadows? Of the two bars, Hotel Broadway, once occupied by the army, has a bar. It's as empty and lonely. The bar-tender, Ghulam Azad, is a sad-looking man of immense kindness. “My name has Azad,” he says. “But I am a Ghulam.”

Things are not hunky dory really though militancy is tangibly less. But anything can happen anytime. We cross heavily fortified Tangmarg in Baramulla in north Kashmir, and there are tense stories still doing the rounds. On October 3, in a fierce and massive gun-battle between “a group of militants who arrived recently from across the border” and troops of the Rashtriya Rifles at Ringwari village went on for 32 hours and more, leaving two Majors and nine militants dead. Some soldiers were critically injured and five houses, where the militants had been hiding, were destroyed. Army authorities called it the biggest encounter in Kashmir in the last five years.

Local journalists inform that the State and army has become more 'smart'. “They don't have to go for overt repression. Their intelligence system is much more refined. They have a solid dossier on people, including those they are following. If someone visits a village, they will know. Things are much more subtle,” says a journalist. Memories of the recent fake encounters of innocent people, the sex scandal involving the top brass in Srinagar, the Pathribal killings and the Chittisingpura massacre still haunts the landscape. Almost everyone knows someone or the other who has died, has been killed or who walked across the border for training. “The wounds are so deep and we have suffered so much, it's impossible to forget,” says a young, jobless local.

An editor of an Urdu daily says, “Things seem to be better. The Centre gives huge amount of money, where does it all go? No one wants to do anything for the people, no regime. There is no hope from even young politicians like Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah.” She says, as do most Kashmiris, including cops this reporter spoke to, the big mistake was made in the 1980s when the local Kashmiri militant leadership was not allowed to participate in the democratic process and jailed. That triggered off the Azadi movement. “Those days the Azadi leaders were genuine. Now they seem to be fake, obsessed with violence, often operating like the Taliban.” Locals still remember that Chechens, Talibans and even a mercenary from Oman were earlier caught or killed in Kashmir. Not anymore.

Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad is upbeat. He claims he is on a fast-track road to development: building roads, schools, colleges, health centres, hospitals, community halls, public places, a new secretariat, a new museum, a new haj pilgrimage centre, among a host of “good news” activities which is ignored by the media. “In the last two years we have done what has not been done in the last 17 years and the Centre is backing us. You come before the end of my tenure and see for yourself the real evidence of what my government has achieved. New railway lines are being built with active help from the Union railway ministry. The Union ministry of rural development has initiated several grassroots schemes for Kashmir. “Kashmir is top on our priority list. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is a big success, and so are other projects like the mid-day meal scheme. I am whole-heartedly working for Kashmir's rural people,” said Union Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh in Srinagar. Azad said that corruption and human rights violation will not be tolerated. He said that “custodial disappearances” have been drastically reduced and custodial deaths etc will not be allowed. “We have even punished senior police officials,” he said.

But there are still miles to go. Hospitals don't have beds. Maternity wards have one bed for two mothers. Doctors have fled and so have nurses to other parts of the country. The government is asking doctors from Karnataka to come here on deputation. Working in rural areas might be made compulsory. Trauma cases are still on the rise. Thousands of people suffer from depression and psychological stress. There have too much of death and dying, violence and disappearances of hundreds, assaults on women by all concerned, jehadi repression and State terrorism, alienation and despair.

Things are calm. Apparently. But occasionally, like an inevitable tide of distrust and pain, the anger breaks the barriers and the barbed wires come back to life. Thousands of people come out on the streets in protest against “army atrocities”.  In late October this year, as this reporter crossed the outskirts of Srinagar, a SMS arrived. Hundreds of people have blocked the highway near Kupwara. Why?

On October 19, the army arrested a soldier for allegedly killing a teacher in Kupwara district as massive protests sparked by the incident spread all over. The teacher, Abdul Rashid Mir, was killed “accidentally” by a bullet after he was stopped by security personnel at a check-point to ascertain his identity, army sources said.

This check-point story moves like a long narrative, repetitive and hidden, waiting for the next check-point story. While the leaves fall, silently falling, making a magic carpet in diffused yellow, reminding us of senses and sensualities, and that woman crossing the street.