Tasenda

I should have done have done this a long time ago. In the last three (or is it four) days of curfew. I have been intending to write. But I have made up some brilliant excuses to excuse my self from writing. I have been playing games on my ancient computer or else I have been reading about superheroes and comic books on the internet. And once in a while, I check out the death toll. There is something which is gnawing at my heart. Every night, I hear sounds in the distance. They sound like women and children screaming. To shut their voices I talk to my half sleepy friends on the phone till I am bored to the point of exhaustion and fall asleep. But even in my sleep the voices are not shut out. They invade my dreams and my thoughts. I am dream that I am trying to set up a date and then suddenly without a warning, the dream changes, I am being chased in a dark alley which has no end. I cannot see what is chasing me, but its closing on me. As that thing grabs me, cold sweat breaks out...

Enter Ward No 16 of historic SMHS hospital here in troubled times where countless patients lie with bullet hits with anguish of one getting suppressed on seeing the resilience of other. In this non-descript ward lie Farooq Ahmed from Bandipore; Nazir Ahmed from Sumbal; Gowhar Bhat from Dalgate and Rouf Majeed from Sangrama. All of them have bullet wounds and suffering from tear smoke trauma. The ward has twelve beds and four of them have people with bullet injuries. In one corner of the ward, second year student, Rouf Majeed sits alone. “My father has gone down to get something,” he explains. “I was a part of a 2000 strong protest at Sangam. When we reached near the CRPF camp, suddenly someone from the CRPF side started firing. I was running when a bullet hit me in my back. Then I ran holding my chest for some time until I passed out. I don’t remember anything after that,” he said. Doctors say that Rouf has a pistol wound. “It’s a short range weapon injury probably a pistol woun...

WITNESS Muhammad Tasim Zahid Srinagar, Aug 3: I have tears in my eyes as I enter Maisuma. The remnants of tear gas sting my eyes. Police is standing at a distance as protestors, mostly teenagers, shout at me to close the lights of my Bike. I comply as the group tries to burn a truck tyre on the road. As men in the roads swear vengeance, the women wailed silently and quietly in an old school building. I climb the narrow stairs of the school and enter a room which a sign declares as assembly room. The room is full of women as someone points me to an women who is hardly in her late 30's. Her cheeks are pale and drawn but she is hardly in the room. Neither the oaths of vengeance nor the silent wails of women seem to have an effect on the young widowed mother of Asif Mehraj, Shammema. She is sitting almost impassively among the women. As Women around her wail, her pale face grows darker. A teargas shell hit the heart of Shammema's 16 year old son during the protests....