We have a covenant to keep!

Blessed are you to have this life,

Blessed by the One, The Creator of life.

Full of trials, full of tribulations,

Come out trumps to gain felicitations.

Felicitations in this life, the short life,

And in the life, the everlasting life.

This life has a purpose, not in vain,

To gain peity that blessings may rain.

In the short time of this life,

Full of trials and trials, this life.

Use everything given by your Lord,

To please and please The True Lord!

Remember Him through night & day,

Don’t bark at fellows and do not bray.

Love for all and hatred for none,

Is the secret ingredient to be united & One.

Harbour for none, malice and envy,

Greet everyone with peace and harmony.

Live your life with no discord,

As decreed by The One God!

He always wants his servants be happy,

It’s only us who get scrappy!

For few days of worldly life,

We tend to mess up the eternal life.

Picking faults with others is so easy,

Bravery is sincere repentance from fallacy.

Delve in yourself, deep and deep,

Because you have a covenant to keep.

Life is a test, don’t fall asleep,

Because you have a covenant to keep.

Because you have a covenant to keep,

Because we have a covenant to keep!


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The story of unsung Malalas

“Everyone is worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there really is an easy way – Stop participating in it” – Noam Chomsky

It has been more than a week since Malala Yousafzai, a 14 year old Pakistani school girl was shot in the head by gunmen while coming back from school and is now under treatment in UK. While mincing no words, this really is a dastardly act and any sane person with reasoning capabilities would agree. It is no surprise then that this cowardly act has seen condemnations pouring in from all around the world – from the US administration and from other countries and even from unexpected quarters like the ageing singer Madonna!  While as the attackers have, reportedly, rejected her going to school as the reason behind the assassination attempt insisting, rather, that she was attacked for being an America sympathizer and an Obama patroniser, I guess this act cannot be justified in anyway. However, the fact that needs to be analysed in this context is the skewed approach and the continual selectivity in the way world powers condemn acts of such magnitude or even more, depending upon who is the perpetrator and who is the victim.

I consider Malala lucky on two counts – One that she survived the assassination attempt and Second that she has the whole country (or the world) behind her, thanks to the widespread media coverage this attack received. This is not to say that media should not have given such coverage but the emphasis I want to lay is upon the fact that there are still many civilians (including girls, including children) around the world who die a silent death at the hands of the ‘unofficial’ terrorists. The following lines highlight some of these.

While Malala has been offered medical care by many countries, no one even tried to speak about the glaring acts of human rights violations perpetrated in the past, by the same people who are now offering medical aid to Malala. There was no media coverage, no lectures of democracy and freedom from the pulpits of the White House because the perpetrators on those occasions were on the other side of the line – the line demarcating separate nomenclatures for same acts performed by different people.

A few months earlier this year, in March, 17 unarmed civilians (including 7 girls and a 9 year old) were murdered by an American solider in the Panjwai district of Kandahar in Afghanistan. Even the dead bodies were not spared and were burnt.  This time around the US President did admit that the incident was “absolutely tragic” but was quick to add, “but generally we are proud of what the troops have accomplished in Afghanistan”. One wonders what is this accomplishment the US president was referring to – a war ravaged country, a lost war or a whirlpool of human rights abuses? In the Iraqi town of Haditha, in November 2005, 24 unarmed civilians were gunned down by the US marines which included seven children and a toddler. The perpetrators of this act were initially booked but are yet to be convicted, after the passage of 7 years! These acts form just the tip of the iceberg of the sponsored terrorism meted out in the name of war against terror. 

What about Abeer al-Janabi, a 14 year old Iraqi girl,  who was killed along with her family members by five US marines after being sexually assaulted? The dead bodies of those killed were then burnt in order to put the blame on sectarian violence. In this case as well, the guilty are yet to face justice and the people pretending to be the harbingers of democracy, freedom & equal rights seem to be busy in condemning acts by others while patronising much more widespread and heinous acts of terrorism and injustice done by their own men. On a similar count, what about the thousands of children in various cities of Iraq who are born with defects caused due to excessive exposure to radiations as a result of the US sponsored invasion? What about the staggering number of civilian deaths arising due to the continuing drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen & Somalia?

According to independent sources the number of civilian killings in the drone attacks in Pakistan alone is nearly 3000 which includes nearly 200 children. How many teenaged school kids were lost here without a trace? Without even the smallest mention by the big media houses which these days have dedicated prime time programs for Malala?  Tariq Aziz, a 16 year old school boy was killed along with his cousin, 12 year old Waheed Khan when a American drone hit the vehicle they were travelling in, in 2009. Tariq Aziz had only the previous Friday attended the anti-Drone conference in Islamabad. He was planning to use photography to document the drone attacks in his area. He had volunteered to help upload the pictures and was killed within 72 hours after returning home.  

Similarly, in Yemen and Somalia, the number of civilian deaths as a result of drone attacks far exceeds the number of ‘terrorists’ killed. Although, the definition of ‘terrorist’ in itself is an altogether ambiguous issue! Reports suggest that the ‘success’ rate of the drone attacks in eliminating ‘terrorists’ stands at a dismal 10-15 %. As a friend aptly put it on twitter, “The attack on Malala is a national tragedy, but drone attacks are a national strategy”!

One can only wonder how the perpetrators of worst kind of institutionalised terrorism claim the moral ground to condemn acts like the attack on Malala? It is pertinent to mention here that the TTP, deemed responsible for the attack on Malala, became a dreaded force only after the US drones began to strike at will in Pakistan, killing innocent civilians in the garb of the ‘War against terror’. And then they have the audacity to blame the growth of TTP on the so called ‘radical Islam’ when, in reality, the roots of almost every terrorist act lie in their own hegemonic policies. 

This write up first appeared in the Thursday, 25th October edition of the Daily Greater Kashmir.

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And we voted for you!

Rupees 482.7 lacs, reads the signboard as the ‘Project Cost’ of the road  supposed to be completed by this time. On the same road, in my village, while strolling back home from Masjid one easily enjoys the privilege which no VVIP (don’t know how many V’s to append!) in this country enjoys – the privilege of inhaling a mouthful of dust emanating from the withering road as the tippers and Chevrolets (or Marutis) zoom by! I don’t know who to blame? The government, the concerned engineering department, the executing agency, the district administration or the contractor! I guess this privilege is being selectively offered to the people of some particular areas only. The following lines are a testimony to this. Being a frequent visitor to the Summer capital, I often stare at the double or even triple black topping of the VVIP roads once such a person is expected to visit the valley. The yellow lines carefully painted along the sides of the road in order to give the VVIPs a royal feeling once they travel along with their long cavalcades (which stall every other traffic movement while they are travelling). And then coming back to my place, I sometimes feel like using my skull cap in place of a handkerchief whenever I forget to carry one to avoid the above mentioned uninvited ‘privilege’! And I wonder we were supposed to vote for this!

            The autumn this year has been a pretty silent affair, at least in our part of the Valley. Partly because Kashmiris now have enough of money to outsource the harvesting work to the people from Bihar, Bengal or UP. While the labourers from outside the state do the harvesting work in the place which fetches them one of the highest wages in India, we are busy watching T20 and Bollywood, which are fetched Direct-to-Home thanks to cable TV and ever so competing DTH services. The other factor to the silence of the Autumn this year has been the absence of a proper irrigation facilities. Now, here, I may be asked to complain to God instead of the government as the rains have been irregular. But then it was not the case of irregular rains in the previous years. Lift irrigation schemes, foundation stones of which have been laid by ministers who may not even be sitting MLAs at this time, lay defunct. Further with paani, there are neighbouring villages who seem to have to wait till eternity to get a glimpse of the water tanker for fresh potable water for daily consumption. The mere sight of the water tanker sends the whole womenfolk (as well as kind men) into a tizzy with some even coming out with ‘jajeer naer’ and any other vessel capable of storing water! And for water for other purposes, it is the same old saga of women carrying pots on their heads to the neighbouring streams. I guess we were supposed to be part of the great Indian success story and we were supposed to vote for this!

          Since the last time we voted for Bijli, Sadak and Pani, much water has flown down the rivers in our state giving motion to the turbines of the likes of Baglihar, Kishenganga and other power projects but the hours of curtailment for the common Kashmiri remains the same. I wonder is it the illegal hooking on power lines which the shrewd among us are adept at OR is it the ambitions of the Indian corporation which controls the prized power projects that contributes more towards the curtailment? Now that the other favoured alternative to bijli has been capped to 6 per year on subsidised rates, we are made to think and go retro or metro! Retro in the sense that there are less choices left like food cooked on chulha for a candle light dinner or metro in sense that we are going to have FDI that will bring KFCs, McDonalds with which a pizza is just a phone call away (no need to cook on our own)!

          While as most of the people, even in the government, justify the elections in the context of delivering basic services like bijli, sadak and paani, the dismal delivery of such services (if not absence thereof) makes one think, “Were we supposed to vote for this”? 

This article first appeared in the Monday, 15th October edition of Greater Kashmir

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