Something’s up in Kashmir, but who would your average Kashmiri complain to?

As I write this from a very beautiful campus in NCR, security forces have started entering my aunt’s school, the refrigerator at my home is struggling to cope with the excess foodstuff forcefully thrust into it, my friend is in a queue outside a petrol pump, and my little cousin must perhaps be kicking his Scootie to keep his favourite Vicky tennis balls in stock. Normal. This is all normal. It happens in a place like Kashmir. After all, my family—like the whole of Kashmir—is staring at a several month-long curfew.   

So where is the twist? Or an anticipated apocalypse, one may say? 

Here it is. The saffron-donned Amarnath yatris who came to have a glimpse of the revered ice Shivling are leaving the Valley, as they have been recommended to do so by the administration. No, not recommended but advised. De facto, ordered! “Non-local” students at my alma mater, NIT Srinagar, have started leaving the campus—again, on the “orders” of the administration. Tourists are going back without even seeing serene valleys like Gulmarg or Doodhpathri. Poor fellows! Rumours are that they are being ferried into the dakyanoosi State Road Transportation buses by the people at the helm of affairs. 

These are rumours though. Rumours!  But in Kashmir, they say, “News can be wrong but not rumours.” “News told, rumours heard, truth implied, facts buried,” some unknown author Toba Beta has rightly said. Amidst all this chaos, what is more ironic (or should I say worrying?)  is that all the regional parties of the state who are usually at each other’s necks are holding meetings at midnight to prevent attempts at “erosion” of the state’s autonomy. Perhaps they smell something in the air—something huge.  

Even by Kashmiri war-hardened standards of “normalcy”, this is abnormal. Farooq Abdullah meeting Mehbooba Mufti!  

So what is brewing in Delhi? As per some “experts”—whom many fear to be scholars from Whatsapp University—the entire state is being trifurcated. Jammu will be a separate state, Kashmir and Ladakh will be union territories. “Amit Shah is in command. Now Kashmir problem will be solved for once and all,” my new flatmate uncle, whilst chopping vegetables, yells at me with such enthusiasm that I almost feel like a fool for a moment. We had just started to discuss Kashmir. I immediately shift to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Tum aek gorakh danda ho.  

But many fear the abrogation of Articles 35A and 370. That looks very plausible, it’s been on the agenda of the governing Bharatiya Janata Party for a long time. And now seems to be the time.“Is it possible legally though?” my friend, a material sciences expert at Indian Institute of Sciences, Bengaluru, asks me over the phone. “Legally!” I retort. “What is ‘legally’? Who is the current CM of the state you are sitting in and how?” And remember, this is no Karnataka—it’s Kashmir.  

Fear in the Valley is discernible. If nothing else, Twitter feeds stand testimony to it. The mayor is not allowed to enter his house. District Magistrates claim everything is fine and yet issue advisory after advisory.  Additional troops are being called in; seven lakh is a small number, after all. The Army is on high alert. So is the Air Force. 

But “everything is fine”. 

Actually, everyone on the ground knows it’s not, including the ones who pass it.   But who would the poor Kashmiri complain to? There is no state government. The Governor himself is confused over how to pacify people who have emptied grocery shops into store-room almirahs and refrigerators. 

For a population that has lived in the thick of roaring gunshots and earsplitting blasts all their lives, living amidst speculations and rumours may be a better option. This may be yet another phase. But if the rumours turn out to be true, there’s no knowing how things will go.