A year has passed

I want to congratulate all you Kashmir bloggers. Thanks for an exciting year of blogging. MashaALLAH, Kashmir bloggers completed its first year. I have read so many wonderful and eye opening posts throughout this year, alhamdulillah. Keep up the good work. I am looking forward to learning more from all of you. InshaALLAH we will open up the gates to a better tomorrow. Aameen.

Let's go on strike. Oh yeah?

Benazir Bhutto is assasinated in Pakistan. Kashmiris are observing strike. Why Mr. Geelani? What is this strike for and against who? It is a sad event. A leader and 20 people have been killed in a brutal way and solidarity with the people of that country is a nice gesture. Nobody is against that but why should we hurt ourselves. 9 kashmiris were hurt in the protests inside Kashmir. A day of school and work was lost yet again. People working for the government will be paid anyways and they will accept that money even when they didn't work. Why should a poor self employed Kashmiri suffer any further? For what? this doesn't even make sense at all. Strike is our only answer for anything that happens in this world which we deem to be against us somehow. Even a log would come up with a new method of registering its protest in as much time as we have spent going on strikes. We have mastered this art and I am sure nobody in this world can beat us at that. It is a shame.

I cry for you 'Oh Kashmir'

December 28, 2007. There are nine news items on the internet edition of Greater Kashmir. Six are about death (5 about Benazir Bhutto) and one about a kashmiri girl.
Seventh is about a brutal assault on a teenage girl whose face is permanently deformed, eighth news item is about molestation attempt of a girl walking on a Srinagar street, by some men under influence and the last news item is about kashmiri men urging a legislator to plead for the removal of an army bunker from a civilian area.
Each and every news is depressing. Things have started happening in Kashmir that were totally unheard of. People trying to kidnap a girl in the broad day light in Srinagar. Wait a second, where are we headed? Another girl is murdered and a third one is brutally assaulted. Her ten teeth are broken. How can one be so spiteful to do this?
Where is this hatred and violence coming from? Lots of questions and very few answers. We need to introspect seriously to find the cause of this breakdown of our social fabric. It is a social emergency. It is so shocking that it is hard to believe that we are talking about Kashmir. Kashmiris brutalizing other Kashmiris and so much violence against women. It is barbaric. It is horrible. Majority of the Kashmiris will still be shocked when they hear these news. Being shocked is not enough though. This silence is criminal. I am really shocked and dumbfounded thinking about all this. How can one be so brutal? How can someone not freeze when trying to hit a young girl on her face? This is inhuman and definitely not Kashmiri and far far far away from anything that Islam teaches us. Not related to any of these at all.

EID MUBARAK TO EVERYONE

May ALLAH make this EID a day of mercy for all of us and accept the HAJJ of those who performed it this year and of those who performed it in the previous years. May ALLAH grant the privilege of performing it soon to those who haven't performed it yet. Aameen.

Yes - how long?

I first decided to comment on Nayeem's recent post. But later, i realized this was better off a post than a comment. All of us have been in the same situation, trying to figure after all when is it going to end? When will we breathe free? When will we see light at the end of the tunnel? But to be honest, when Allah says in the Quran, " 13:11 …. Verily, God does not change people’s condition unless they change their inner selves" i always think of kashmiris, as if this verse has been cut out for kashmiris - yes me, you - us. We are talking about young ones losing lives - how often have we seen the relatives and parents of the same young ones sell the blood of that martyr for loose change. We talk about the system, even a death certificate cannot be made unless someone is bribed. We talk about morality, and how do our own sisters go out from our own houses. We talk about equality, when has a kashmiri grown out of caste system? We talk about Islam, what is it that is practiced in astaans? We talk about law, who pays the electric bill on time, heck who even pays it. We talk about our kashmir, who destroyed the Dal and the forest cover? We talk about atrocities, ask the lady in pain why she can't get the anesthesia and then look that guy in the eye, who sold it even before it reached the hospital. We talk about being fair, remember the price you had to pay for the chicken just half hour after the highway closed down? We talk about education, visit the professor of a government college, visit him not in the college, oh but visit him at his house where he is teaching private tuitions. We talk about care, look at the white coat of a doctor who is at his private clinic and not in the village he is supposed to be, and you will see the coat is not white anymore. We talk about work, try walking on the bridge that the engineer built, alas the bridge is but a few strokes of ink. We talk about economy, look in the heart of a guy, who applied for a bank loan, without an intention of ever paying it back. We talk about honesty, wait... what does that mean again?

Globalization

I am tempted to write this event that one of my friends narrated to me.
A kashmiri living in the US started a software development center in Kashmir. The office in Kashmir had a US phone number so that the US customers could speak to the support group if they had any questions about the company product. ....
Scene: An employee in the Kashmir office picks up the phone and starts dialing..91 (Country code for India) followed by 194 (area code for Kashmir)...and some number..
The call doesn't go through but something happens after a few minutes. These gentlemen get a call from a Police department in the US (Name and city withheld). If you haven't already figured out...the call went to 911 (see the dialed numbers again). Here is an excerpt of what followed (gentlemen in Kashmir will be referred to as GIK):
911: Sir we are from...(Name withheld), Is everything okay there?
GIK: (baffled)Yes. (Hangs up)
After some time...
911: Sir, are you sure no one called from that number and everything is okay?
GIK: Yes we are fine (freaks out).
It didn't end there. After 10 minutes they get another call....
Cops: We are outside your office building. Can you step out please.
GIK: Which office?
Cops: (They give the office address in the US)
GIK: But we are not in the US. We are in Kashmir. (Sorry)
Globalization is funny.

How long.........................................?

I am picking up from where the previous post left off.
Everyday I read about death and destruction. Death of humans, our environment and everything that we have always been proud of and the destruction of all that we earn.
It is really frustrating that you can't even walk out and say what you want in Kashmir? Open your mouth and a bullet will make a hole in it and shut you up for the rest of your life. We will cry hoarse, demand investigations. An enquiry will be ordered or may be not and after a few days it will be back to business. Life as usual.

Something has to change. The way we react or the way we act has to change. Call it the resilience or the helplessness (I am more inclined to call it the latter), a kashmiri has to move from protesting about one thing to another. Unless we protest about the protest itself I doubt anything is going to change. How can we put an end to all the injustices that keep happening in our kashmir?

I am unable to make sense of all that is going on. A snapshot of last 17 years is ridiculous. Bullets fired on unarmed people even when they are asking for a school, people cane charged when they ask for water supply or electricity which could help them keep warm in freezing winters, people catch cops burning their houses, people are stolen and never show up again, girls are sexually exploited by politicians. Are we going to continue talking about how ridiculous the situation is or are we actually going to take any real steps to bring in some positive change. All that is going on is unfair and unjust. How long will it continue? We are talking about humans here.

Not News

December 15th 2007 saw the death of young Zahoor Ahmad Mir at the hands of the police in Magam, Kashmir. This is not news in Kashmir. Young men are killed every day - militants, civilians, victims of encounters, policemen and others.

Zahoor was killed when police opened fire on a protest demanding the government create a college in Magam.

Inhuman, absurd and bizarre.

Again, this is not news in Kashmir. Kashmiris remember how, in the past, protests against electric supply shortages have ended with loss of life. Kashmir ranks among the many parts of the world where life goes cheap.

The inhuman, absurd and bizarre is not news in Kashmir. What can be more inhuman, absurd and bizarre.

What goes around comes around

It is a chilly winter evening, the hour is still in single digits but it is so dark out. The evenings seem longer than ever. Destiny has bought my friend in search of bread to this remote corner of the planet. The same situation that i was in about 6 years ago. Recollecting old days is definitely one of the cherished past times. We started talking about the 12th class examinations. He used to go to Tyndale Biscoe and i used to attend Jawahar Nagar Higher Secondary(JNHS). Even the name in the former case is fancier than the latter. Incidentally, we were in the same examination center (Amar Singh College) for our 12th boards. We were musing on the fact that when students of Biscoe broke all records of violating academic integrity during the additional mathematics examination. When this mass copying was reported in the center, ironically, our (JNHS) physics paper got cancelled instead of their Maths paper. My friend mentioned, ridiculous as it was, the only reason he had spent a fortune to get enrolled in Biscoe was the fact that their papers never got cancelled no matter what they did. He mentioned that his investment yielded immediate fruit when in this case our paper was cancelled instead of theirs.

This was year 1996 and the joint secretary of the Board of Secondary Education was in cahoots with Tyndale Biscoe for some vested interests unknown to us. Mass copying in the additional maths paper by Biscoe students was reported in Amar Singh College center. Jawahar Nagar Higher Secondary shared the center with them. Anyway, to cut the long story short, JNHS physics paper was cancelled but nothing happened to the students from Biscoe. The students of JNHS alongwith their parents went to the Board of Secondary Education where they were met with a horrendous response from the Joint Secretary. 'You guys dont know how to raise your children. They copy and now you come to support them. Students of Biscoe are from good families of the society.You guys are nothing compared to them'. These were the words used by a person who was sitting in a position of the Joint Secretary of the 'Education' system of Kashmir. Given that we were the underdogs and stakes were high, we asked him now what should we do. He asked every student to pay a fee of Rs. 400/- so that we would be able to take the exam again with the summer zone Jammu students. All of us immediately did that and were waiting for the announcements of exam dates. One fine day a notice in the local Urdu newspaper asked all students whose papers were cancelled to pay Rs. 200/- and they will have to reappear in new center locations within Kashmir. Things were such that even this was a good news. On reaching the State Board office, we were baffled when we asked about the 400 that we had already paid. 'What 400?' was the answer that we got from the Joint Secretary. 'If you want to take the exam pay the 200, its your choice'. Well, so much for a choice! We paid this money again and took the exams. A few months later, we took the Engineering Entrance Examination. The results were announced and 5 out of top 10 students were from JNHS - the same students who were accused of copying.

Destiny had it so, we joined the Regional Engineering College, we came to know that the daughter of the same Joint Secretary was studying there. It was a widely known fact that this girl had an affair with a faculty member from the Mechanical Engineering department and she used to copy in the exams on his behest.

Funny as it was, 'how to raise your children' and 'good families' were the words used by the father of the same girl. Allah could not have given this guy a better punishment. I have put this behind me, as i sit in a remote town in the planet, thousands of miles away from the place where all this is still in practice, the thought comes to me. The system in Kashmir might be so corrupt that he got away with all this, but justice was partially delivered by the Supreme Authority - the Authority that is Incorruptible, Just and True. What goes around has to come around!

Recent article in Greater Kashmir

This recent article in Greater Kashmir was one of the best examples of how a person can ridicule himself without even understanding it. The education minister called for 20% reservations in the missionary schools which vindicates nothing but the fact that they have hands down accepted their own public institutions as complete failures. Why does the Education minister not talk about upgrading the public school system? I personally hold a firm belief that the schools in which the minister is asking for reservations are hyped and parents enroll their wards looking more at a status symbol than a dedicated search for better education. At the same time these institutions maintain an unwritten policy of catering to the affluent class. We have many schools in Kashmir that are doing a great job at education and at the same time upholding the cultural and ethical values of the society (a fact where these schools miserably fail). Iqbal Memorial, New Era etc. are a few to name here. Instead of looking for reservations, we should have a setup of education that beats these missionary schools by parsecs and then automatically these schools will be less sought after and we will reach our goals of a better education system upholding our social values accessible to all economic classes of the society. This is where organizations like KEI® are indispensable and gives us even more reasons to get up and make a difference. Ridiculous as they are, the statements like the ones made by the education minister will at that time be nothing but redundant.