Yesterday, my son celebrated Diwali with his university-mates in Berkeley, California. But he committed an “unpatriotic” act: he did it with his Pakistani friends. They too were unabashedly “unpatriotic”. They are Pakistani Muslims but joined the celebrations with an Indian! Also, Saima, who calls me “uncle”, sent Diwali greetings from Karachi and she had celebrated Diwali there with her Hindu friends.
Such greetings are nice, but sometimes you hesitate to even greet.
On September 25, 2016, I got a phone call from Abdul Majeed. I had hesitated to call him for two months. I had greeted him on July 7 on the occasion of Eid ul Fitr but had hesitated to call him on Eid uz Zuha as Kashmir was under aerial surveillance.
Could I begin the conversation with “ Mubarrak ho . How are you?” when scores of people were lying dead, pellets had blinded a couple of hundreds, and thousands lay wounded in the Kashmir Valley?
Abdul Majeed called me, and that make things easier. The curfew was lifted. To be free — this time it was to be freed of the curfew — is a great feeling, and he expressed it by calling a person who lives in Bangalore, so far away from Kashmir and whom he has met only once.
Abdul Majeed is the Principal of the Government Girls’ Model Higher Secondary School in Kulgam. He is interested in science. So when he learnt that the Vigyan Prasar (VP), working in collaboration with the Astronomical Society of India (ASI) was to hold a teachers’ workshop in Srinagar, he planned to invite us as resource persons to his institution. I and my friend Purushottam Tripathi from Nav Nirmiti in Mumbai went there to conduct a workshop on “telescope-making”, “day-time astronomy” and “light-related hands-on experiments”. We made the girl students do the experiments themselves. They made the parts of the telescope with their own hands and aligned them. And when finally they got the image, what a thrill flowed from their eyes! All this happened in May 2016.
Workshop over, Majeed- saab made a request, “Why don’t you stay here for two more days? There are many more children from other schools: they too can learn these things.” But our return flights were booked already, for the next day. We made a promise to come again, soon.
Here I met Khurshid, an experienced science communicator who does hands-on experiments as part of his lectures. He said, “Come, we’ll set up a telescope on the mountains; no one knows the nook and corner of Kulgam, its valley, the trekking routes and so on better than me. I will choose the spot from where we can get the best view of the stars.”
The curfew having been lifted, Khurshid, Ishtiyaq and Manzoor Javaid saab have gone to Kargil on sky-watch. Their minds are surely not tension-free but that is what they have to live with. A little relaxation is like a breath of air for them!
Would I like to revisit Kashmir? Certainly, to keep my word with my friends there, to respect their warmth, to meet the sparkling young students in Majeed saab ’s institution, as fresh as a flower and lively as the brook that flows through the school premises, and to be with Khurshid, Ishtiyaq and Javaid saab , watching the sky from the best spot in Kulgam. But what I dread most is the eight-layer security-check at Srinagar airport: much more than what I have seen at airports in Kuwait and Tehran! Is the State really so insecure, being stalked by “ferocious stone-pelters”?
Kashmir is an integral part of India, but we need 600,000 security personnel to have some 69,00,000 people remain integrated with us. With more soldiers the integration is believed to have become stronger, as we are told by the media. People whose fingers are on computer keyboards remind us of the sacrifices of our armed forces, telling us about “fitting answers”, “surgical strikes” and so on. But they would not join the army themselves, nor would their sons, daughters or sons-in-law, ever. They will congratulate our soldiers for keeping us secure. Fortunately, Majeed- saab ’s school is “intact” though the students are afraid to attend the classes.
For me, any death is to be mourned. Of those killed and blinded, some may have ended up as Khurshid’s prospective companion sky-watchers. And the soldiers killed in Uri would have been happier returning home with Nav Nirmiti’s portable telescope in hand as a gift from Khurshid, rather than be sent home in a coffin. I wonder if gallantry honours after death are as precious as the fulfilment of a life when you do not have to shoot at stone-pelters or be on perpetual alert against infiltrators and do not have to be ready to return fire.
The soldiers’ families can answer that. Only they can tell us about sacrifices so my son can celebrate in Berkeley, I here, and the “plastic patriots” in the social media. But the last thing a soldier wants is a war.
(The author was a scientist with the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore, and is now president of the All India People’s Science Network. chatsab99@gmail.com )
