Parallel Parking In Downtown Srinagar

Six months after that fateful day바카라�August 5, 2019바카라�succumbing to inactivity, Kashmiri user accounts would drop from WhatsApp groups like flies. It had the world worried. It had my world worried. Kashmir had been blacked out by the Indian state for a record period; long enough for WhatsApp to deem them/deem us, non-users/non-entities. WhatsApp groups with Kashmiri presence were being emptied. A communication blockade unlike anything ever seen. Truly unprecedented. Mobile internet, phone calling, Wifi, landlines, postal services바카라�decimated/redacted in one fell swoop. Redacted바카라�that wonder of modern war machinery; digital, intangible, ambiguously and infinitely negotiable in nature. Unprecedented.

Mothers waited in queues outside dreaded police stations of the most dreaded, purely homegrown Jammu and Kashmir state police; hour-long queues at the tail-end of 30-second surveilled calls. Not unprecedented. 바카라�We are okay here. How are you? Okay, you take care; people are waiting in the queue behind me. Don바카라�t get into trouble바카라� Beep. Slam. Next call. The queue, also surveilled, moves another miserly step toward the much sought-after landline in the local police station.

바카라�And yes, don바카라�t grieve to anyone. Be careful바카라�.

Away from their homes, Kashmiris in parts of India and other parts of the world started exhibiting symptoms of the siege: nightmares of genocide바카라�the true makings of a well-planned fear psychosis; a successfully executed siege. Characteristic reminders of the trauma that the memory and psyche of those times had left us with were the dreams that we had, and still have바카라�vivid, horrid nightmares of murder and genocide. Both consciously and subconsciously, a lot of us resorted to self-harm to keep these dreams at bay; sometimes gagging and waking up to find a bleeding mouth from having bitten down too hard on the tongue in agony; shoving an entire hand into the mouth like a wooden spool bitten down on in times of war; twisting a bone; spraining our necks from having tossed and contorted around too much; hitting and injuring our heads on the bed-boards; perpetually trying to run from whatever it was that we were seeing in our nightmares, and then finding ourselves sweating on the cold morning floor with deafening and piercing radio static running through our bodies바카라�a whole body raging with a numb tinnitus. We had lost any semblance of space, and any semblance of time.

Kashmir was constitutionally up for grabs. 바카라�Buy the exotic Kashmiri land바카라� (with what money?) and 바카라�marry the exquisite apple-cheeked Kashmiri women바카라� was the refurbished two-point policy of settling in Kashmir for the now enabled Indian upper-middle and bureaucratic class. A new game had been found to get lost in as the conflict raged and the conflict-ed plunged to their deaths. The most accurate history lessons were left out바카라�that Kashmir, the land, is cursed. That if you own land here, you own the curse too. That if you peek into the heart of Kasamira, it turns you to stone.

The middle class, as always, unknowingly recruited by the state, subscribed to a dream, paying for it, as is often the case, with the scavenged scraps of their conscience.

Whatsapp groups and rallies spoke of a collective heave of relief and celebration in the Indian subcontinent. 바카라�Finally바카라�, they exclaimed in erogenous harmony바카라�forever unified once again, and to the tunes of the cries of Kashmiris languishing in prisons. People dreamt and salivated over a world they would most certainly never be a part of. Cheerleaders of bureaucracy, customers of democracy.

The middle class, as always, unknowingly recruited by the state, subscribed to a dream, paying for it, as is often the case, with the scavenged scraps of their conscience. The middle class, now going home with compact SUVs바카라�those cars which are SUVs, yes, but not quite, were up in diligent arms to serve what they thought was the motherland. The faux SUVs, like the faux autonomy, the faux luxury, and the faux power of the middle class바카라�of the Indian subcontinent, harvested and contained masterfully by a sly wedlock between the political elite and the capitalist brass.

In the midst of this celebration for bringing home a desolation, only an ailing Kashmiri would fly back into a blacked-out prison, airdrop into an active war-zone, just to be home. 바카라�If there is heaven on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here바카라�바카라�. What is it about this land, people wondered, that made Kashmiris return to such tragedy, such madness, such mad masochism. This is why Kashmiris don바카라�t get ahead in life, well-meaning Indians said. 바카라�They revel in their own tragedy. They return to their death.바카라�

***

Back in Kashmir, back home, surrounded by the impounded, embargoed silence of those imprisoned at home, an Indian 바카라�tourist바카라� flew into the freshly liberated vale, and unfurled the Indian flag along the banks of the world famous Dal lake on a hot and desolate August afternoon. A myena바카라�the bold and boisterous myena바카라�chirped away awkwardly in the distance. The dusky ravens in the poplars croaked; gawking and gasping at the strange colours of the Indian tri-colour. Watching from their homes in parts of India, viewers and subscribers of democracy cheered. A military sigh, a military heave of victory.

Hoo-ha, cheered the Indian citizenry.
Hoo-Ha, cheered the military.
Hoo-ha, screeched the compact SUVs.

A much deserved celebration of a nation which had made it through the annals of development and civilization, overcome poverty, prejudice, polio, classism, casteism, disease, and now the ever evading, only remaining eyesore of the civilized, unified Indian Society바카라�Kashmir. The Indian State claimed once again that the hearts and minds of Kashmiris had been conquered. Kashmiris, the elusive specie, had been won over.

I must now compel you, the reader, to revisit with me yet again, what followed the midnight on the cusp of August 4 and August 5. A zodiac of occupation. Signs of human-life and gadget-life were amiss. Data was officially contraband. In the best of times바카라�the subsequent months following the blackout when things seemed 바카라�normal바카라�, people came out onto the streets, rather shyly, rather slyly, like an orangutan freed after a life behind bars, and exchanged news and pirated movies which were flown in from New Delhi바카라�the capital city of the aspiring superpower. Ingenious ways of proxies were found, and unprecedented speeds of data transfer were unlocked.

Meanwhile, at the International Defence airport in Srinagar, waiting in queues by the now-half-tilted railing outside the departures gate, under the gigantic Indian flag blowing and dropping hoarsely in the bewildered wind, strange people with weary faces were handing out notes to stranger people바카라�landlocked castaway Kashmiris handing out notes to commuters flying out of the now erstwhile Kashmir: messages to be sent to their kin outside Kashmir. 바카라�We are okay바카라�, these notes said. 바카라�Grandma passed away last month. I am sorry you couldn바카라�t get the money for college admission in time. Let us hope for next year, or the year after that, or the year after바카라�

Don바카라�t come home.바카라�

(The author is finalising this book. Views expressed are personal)

Tabish Rafiq Mir is a Srinagar-based writer, photographer and illustrator