A Long wait!

Farhana Rakshand

Losing a loved one is pain forever. Once he/she is gone there is no return back. Life becomes ugly as it reveals the truth which is the reality of every human being. Death is inevitable that we all agree. However, the minimum expectation we have from our life is the probability factor. We expect that our loved one should live a good amount of life before saying adieu to everyone. I remember when I lost my father my life turned upside down. I never expected that my father would leave me in the middle of the way. Although, he had lived a long and full life contrary to the life that people live in Kashmir. The probability factor of living a long life is very low in our valley.Recently one of our family friends got killed in an encounter. Such a series of mishaps are inevitable particularly with one who is working in the police department. The unfortunate incident brought tears in everybody’s eyes since he was too young to depart from this transient life. Such occurrences have made lives of Kashmiris not ugly but obnoxious. Imagine a young bud getting plucked off before blossoming into a flower. In this way, the whole garden gets ravaged. Slowly and steadily Kashmir is turning into such a garden where buds are plucked off before blooming. The devastated garden is left with blood and tears where expectations of full blooming flowers seem improbable. The dying population needs some source of rescue that can help them to breathe a sigh of relief. People who proceed for an unknown journey leave behind broken souls who have no destiny to carry forward their lives. My father’s departure was due, due to his ailing and old age, yet my heart is longing for him to spend another 5-10 years with me. I can very well understand how much the bereaved families must have been yearning for their lost family members. The debatable issue is not only losing the lives of people but losing lives at unripened age even before actualizing their different aspirations pertaining to their career or otherwise. So it is easy to say with certitude that a person who is somehow related to the police force or any terrorist organization is destined to die. Whereas people who are nowhere involved also die without any fault. They pay the price of living in an unrest zone. Even amidst this bloodshed, the remaining population goes through the pain of missing their loved ones. The grieving family when asked how they cope with the pain their answer lies in waiting for the judgment day or their own death particularly if they are elderly ones. They are only waiting for the unknown world which is yet to come. And that world would be revealed to all of us in different turns. Their purpose of life is nothing but waiting in a long queue which the cruelest thing that can happen to anyone. When we wait for our turn in a long queue whether it is at the airport ticket counter or form filling counter or at doctors clinic the agony and angst we go through for a short period of time is incomparable to the permanent agony of parents who lose their sons in the course of action. Both the sides and the side which lies in between are all at loss except for those who run the overall show. The group who would keep up the show going would feel the grief in case, God forbid, they lose their loved ones due to some other improbable reasons meaning the minimum percentage of the probability factor.

(The author is working as an English and French Trainer in Bengaluru!)