Another Vietnam in the Offing

Another Vietnam in the Offing

Yesterday, I walked in the scorching heat to reach home. It was as hot as hell and as choking as hundreds of tear gas cans thrown at innocent Kashmiris. I didn’t want but I had to go out to hunt for the day. Since I am a modern-day hunter and a food gatherer. I had a burning sensation in my heart and in my soul. While walking I was thinking over the plight of my people, innocent kids who need baby milk, ailing elders who are in dire need of medicine and general defenceless people who need day to day things to fuel their bodies.  Thinking of my abandoned people is an unyielding pain which is refusing to subside with any argument or the rhetoric. The ambit of this pain is expanding at the end of each day. It seems as if this nuclear cloud of emotions and grief is going to destroy those who initiated this chain reaction.

I missed every puff of my air, every droplet of water, every blade of grass, every beam of light and every word of my mother tongue. Last month on the same date, I talked to my father. It was August 3rd when he spoke about the bizarre uncertainty and today is September 3rd and still no news about my helpless, unaided and stranded people. I miss you, Dad, I miss every word you spoke that day. I recall that insecurity in your voice. I can only grieve at our plight, I can only cry and I can only mourn over our predicament.

Yesterday, the morning looked doleful and the day miserable. Yet I summed up my courage and engaged myself in some serious work in order to divert my attention but as the saying goes, home is where your heart lies. My heart is in a prison called Kashmir. My heart is with all those pellet victims whose eyes were haunting my cruel colonizers. My heart is with bullet hit youth who are in urgent need of medicine. My heart is with those women who are the first victim of the armed onslaught. My heart is with the children of conflict. My heart is with the people who have been imprisoned by the world’s largest democracy and once a colony of Great Britain. My heart is searching for peace and solace which India snatched by a malicious force.

Somehow, I spend the day by recalling my people but the night was too horrible for me. It hunted me like a ghost in a graveyard. The night was so long as I have been erected in front of my creator to provide every account of my deeds. This night was black as death, ghastly as an angel of death. My heart grew restless at every thought of my innocuous people. Like a rambler, my heart went out of my control. Like a rebel, it went back to the memories that I wanted to forget. Unable to sleep, I got up and burst into tears remembering how hapless and deserted we the people of Kashmir are. I am as lonely as my fellow Kashmir under the tyranny of 900, 000 armed forces who have impunity to kill anyone under the provision of draconian law called AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act).  Where on the earth have people been kept under month-long communication blockade? What another area on this earth is highly militarized as Kashmir? Kashmir for sure is turning into Aleppo with inhuman deadlock, however, it has the capability of turning into Vietnam and Afghanistan.   The deadly calm for longer is a sign of a massive tsunami. This brewing volcano of my people will bring another US – Vietnam in front of the world and another shameful exit of the US in Afghanistan.  This will happen sooner or later. There is another Vietnam or Afghanistan in the offing as tyrants can’t enjoy tyranny for longer.