M A I N   N E W S

Kashmir’s village of widows
Jupinderjit Singh
Tribune News Service

Chuk Seer (Srinagar), September 15
In the twilight of her life, 60-year-old Sarah hears news about the death of some persons in Kashmir and sighs, “There, now we will have more widows and some orphans too.”

Tears well up in her eyes as she looks at four widows in her own family besides almost 40 others working outside in the fields or cursing their ill-luck sitting in a corner of the thatched huts in this unique ‘village of widows’ on the Srinagar-Baramula highway.

More than a decade-long turmoil in the Valley has left an innumerable number of widows and orphans. This village has the unfortunate distinction of being termed the ‘village of widows’ as 45 such women live here after their husbands lost their lives in the violence.

Some of them were militants or suspected militants but a majority of the deceased were young farmers who were shot dead by militants either in the fields or point-blank before their wives and children. The women of this village did not opt to remarry.

Most of the women had come to this village as brides and, as per the cultural tradition, had vowed that only their corpses would leave the village. Despite all hardships, they are somehow surviving. Their only focus now is to bring up the children.

“Sahib, bahut kum aadmi bache hain. Sirf aurtein hein (Very few men are left. You will find only women here)” was the first comment of an old woman from the village to whom The Tribune team spoke.

Sarah, probably the most unfortunate one in the village, lost three sons and a son-in-law. One of them died in police custody while the militants gunned down the other three. Her house once reverberated with the laughter of her children and grandchildren. Today, silence of the graveyard pervades her house.

The four widows in the house still shed copious tears at the slightest reminder of the ill-fated time when they lost everything. There is an emptiness on the faces of the children, 20 in number, who try to understand the complexities of their fate much before they had a happy childhood and grew up.

“I feel like the whole world is on fire, and I am burning. My pain is like that,“ was Sarah’s response when asked how she felt. This was a telling indication of her plight and one could not probe more.

Her son, Abdul Rashid Mir, was shot in cross-fire between the Army and the militants who had holed up in a house in the village in 1993. Then her son-in-law, Abdul Ghani Bhat, was killed as he was suspected to be a militant a few months later.

In 1998, Sarah’s remaining two sons, Mushtaq Ahmad Mir and Mohammad Maqbul, also fell victims to the bloodshed. The former was shot by the militants while the latter was found murdered in an apple orchard.

The widows, Ameena, Haija, Halima and Jaana, still live in the house. Just close to their house lives another family of three widows. They were the wives of Mushtaq Ahmed, Abdul Zabbar and Mohammad Ali Sheikh who left behind the widows and 23 children. They, too, were either killed as suspected militants or shot by militants.

There are about 100 houses in the village and almost every house has lost one or more members in the violence. Some women migrated to other places with their children but 45 widows still live here. The politicians or social organisations have failed to come to their rescue. “The politicians come at the time of elections and promise to pay compensation apart from providing jobs to our grown-up children. We are still waiting when these promises will be fulfilled.