The plight of forgotten people

Overlooking the mist-veiled Nigeen Lake in the garden of the revered Hazratbal Shrine, on a warm winters day, there were several poor dwellers from the valley inundated with pain and suffering. Carrying the weight of fetters of poverty, they had descended from various corners of the valley to lighten their agony in the vicinity of the holy shrine where worshipers regularly beseech the mercy of heavens.

A thirty-year-old widow, with a veil of poverty over her face, bespoke the battle to meet her ends ever since her husband became a victim during the epoch of political conflict. With her sorrowful eyes brimming with tears of blood, she whispered that she and her two children have no one to support them in their seasonless lives. Due to poverty, she is unable to fully feed her children and buy them warm garments for the winter to cover their emaciated bodies. She painfully remembers when her husband’s family drove her out of the house six months after her husband was killed. To support her children she, along with her children, begged for alms near the shrine. Sitting next to their mother, they looked stealthily at the nearby candy seller who was surrounded by children buying candy. While lamenting her loss her children, fettered by starvation and poverty, greedily ate dry bread kneaded with tears and sweat of a widow and orphans.

Sitting a few yards away was an elderly couple who, worn out by age and poverty, lost their only child to an endless era of bloodshed and fratricide. Their tears bespoke their sorrow. With deep pain and tears glistening in their eyes, they remember the moment when the bullet-ridden body of their only son was delivered to them on a day that would change their lives forever and make them vulnerable for rest of their lives. Now, during the winter of their lives, they feel alone, unvisited and unsupported. Their frail bodies are shadowed by wings of poverty and their inflamed hearts filled with the agony of loss. Their overflowing cup of sorrow is consuming their strength and hopes.

Not far from them was a 13-year-old orphan boy whose parents died a few years ago. Like a bird with broken wings, he now lives in a local orphanage along with other orphans, with their childhood crowned by poverty and installed on the throne of suffering. Without parental guidance, their lives have become like a ship without a rudder. Due to the death of their parents, they will spend the springtime of their lives with insecurity sowed in their hearts. Their childhoods have been stolen by the wave of death engulfing the valley. The orphan’s sorrowful eyes and tattered garments reflect the hardships his budding soul has witnessed. The cutting truth of his orphaned life and the veil of anxiety covering his innocence will quiver anyone left with a shred of conscience. Emptiness filling his heart was overflowing through his eyes.

Wounded by the arrows of adversities, there are thousands of such victims of inclement political weather of the valley. The drudgery of everyday life has placed a crown of thorns on their heads. Their fall into the bottomless abyss of poverty and despair is the result of the apathy prevailing in our society. Their plight undermines humanity as they find no willing hand to help them. The cries of these orphans, widows and other victims, created by the conflict, fall on walls of silence and indifference. A mist of indifference has blurred our senses to see the suffering around us. We seem to have deserted the notion of sympathy as we yet have to imbibe the virtue of compassion from the afflictions surrounding us.

These wounded souls are disappointed with their politicians who have mastered the craft of double-dealing, corruption and lying; a legion of pygmies promising much but delivering next to nothing. They pity their priests who sell prayers for money and insinuate that their suffering is the curse fastened on them from the heavens as a result of their sins. Prayers of these cobweb spinners and empty tin-pots do not ascend beyond the black clouds of ignorance and false reverence.

​As the holy relic of the prophet in the shrine is displayed at noontide, these wounded souls raise their withered hands heavenward with eyes welled up with tears, in supplication to beseech the heavens to relieve their suffering.  Their sighs would even quiver the soul of stone. With every prayer rising from the bottom of their bruised hearts, they invoke God to induce awakenings in the hearts of their brothers who have become heedless to heart’s whisper and blind to their poverty. While praying, they are burning their soul as frankincense for His mercy to deliver them from the weary ceaseless turbulence of existence. They are hoping their prayers will evoke compassion among the people, priests and politicians, which will deliver them from a life of destitution, emptiness and loneliness. At the venerated Hazratbal shrine they are sowing new seeds of hope in their hearts, hoping for the upcoming spring to bring a fresh breeze in their seasonless garden carrying the fragrance of compassion that will soothe their wounds.

( This article was initially published in the Rising Kashmir, India)