I am at a point where I’m not able to Speak Up. I am part of a generation which has highly been radicalized. One lives in the world of uncertainty. From your life to social media accounts everywhere uncertainty prevails. As one is not sure to return home in evening from work, so there is no guarantee when your social media will be clamped down. The seeds of uncertainty in ‘Paradise’ are sowed deep.
Mir Suhail
It hurts deeply to see pellets, killings and chaos. I wonder if we will ever live without this sense of fear, the fear that you or your loved one will never return as they step out of the house.
There have been times when I have been struck by this anxiety and seized by apprehension. What if they blow us up? What if they burst in? Where is the nearest exit that I will be able to push my loved ones? How can I hide them? No, it’s impossible. We should not be here. What if something happens? What if…? I wonder. I worry. I worry that somewhere the homes or hospitals get targeted. Nothing is sacred anymore. I worry my cultural heritage will irrecoverably be taken away from me. There are un-wanted sounds everywhere now and then. After every incident, there is mockery of probes to pacify the sentiments. Every time I hope for the change and it becomes worse and more disappointing.
The current turmoil brought back memories of 2008-10-unrest, a year that devoured 120 lives .I thought travesty of justice has scaled up the heights. Yet again last year, we heard calls for blood donation, deaths continued followed by the mockery of probes and investigations by the system.
The scintillating beauty and mesmerizing meadows are no more soothing and pleasing. They have turned graveyards of ‘paradise’.
I am at a point where I’m not able to Speak Up. I am part of a generation which has highly been radicalized. One lives in the world of uncertainty. From your life to social media accounts everywhere uncertainty prevails. As one is not sure to return home in evening from work, so there is no guarantee when your social media will be clamped down. The seeds of uncertainty in ‘Paradise’ are sowed deep.
There are times when I want to escape my mother land. There are times I want to close my eyes, my ears, my mind and my heart to the suffering of this motherland for my own sanity and survival. But I give up this all after only realizing that its suffering is inseparable from mine.
The author is student of business studies and a student activist, hails from Baramulla. He can be reached at [email protected]
The article is from the print edition of April 5-11, 2017.
