A BURDENED SOUL Man as he claims is the cream and crown of God's immense and limitless creation . Undoubtedly he has been bestowed with magnanimous brain power that allows him to reason and assert. He can learn and reciprocate things and can look for relationship between them that contributes to his intelligence. His quest for experimentation leads him to understand and frame conclusions. Among other things that make him to stand tall above others is his immaculate power of communication ,which leads to sharing of thoughts and experiences .He can develop new skill and can hone it to perfection .His unquenching thirst for this perfection and relentless efforts make him to reach his goal ,and after reaching there he sets higher ,tougher and better targets for himself which satisfy his inherent zeal to conquer the unconquerable and tread the ways not scampered . A question arises is Man purely Mechanical? Does the big "M" in his name point to that? Is Man just an amalgam of much hyped special senses of smelling, tasting, seeing, hearing and touching? Is it all about the quantity, all about how much and too much? Has everything turned so organic? Cutting through the fog one feels in the present times man is a human phenotypically and the attires and attributes, of compassion, honesty, diligence and conscientiousness have become a heavenly affair, a Godly one. Uncommon is the word for these like the hyped yet unavailable common sense . It could have been just an ordinary day for him but his look turned my day not so ordinary. Not much he was having with him just a ferrying boat ,besides the helm to pave the way in not so exotic waters of Dal .I would not have been there but for my friends who took me to shrug of the sloth and boredom of a few weeks full of undeclared curfews and declared hartals .After walking some distance we had decided to have a ride ,a shikara ride to let free our caged bird of desires .But it had not come to the wildest of my dreams not waters but i am going to be rippled .An ever inquisitive nature made me ask my helmsman ,a boy hardly aged a decade & half how long he has been carrying people around. A simple protrusion of his lower lip plus a negative movement of his head and the utterance that, I don't remember summed it all for me .His head didn’t match his shoulders, a mature head on tender and not so old ones . As oftenly he struck his helm to propel his mini ship ,it wasn't the water only that was rippled but my heart too .As we began to talk it unfolded many a miseries .It was those that had turned his growth to be "precocious ".He had grown his age by years and before him i looked not more than a toddler that moves here and there after everything bright ,leaving less bright aside .He had lost his father from the times he didn't remember ,from the times immemorial for him though he had some memory traces left of how his father used to amicably make his only son a nature literate by letting him see with his own eyes the virgin beauty of dal .He did remember though little how his father in the very shikara would make his son move in its vastness .Those times the ride was for fun and frolic ,now both things have gone out of it .It had turned only into an occupation to fill the ever hungry bellies of himself and the dependents ...which included his grand mother ,mother and a little sister. Wasn’t he one among the lot who was begotten after tying votive rings over many a shrine? A son of life’s longing for itself. Vivifying had been his fate, cruel rather and the hell hole for him was the veil that had been deliberately put around the demise of his father .He had heard multiple versions ranging from natural death to an accident ,from forced disappearance to being a victim of cross firing but the version that he held dear and true was different from those all .On one sultry afternoon his father was picked up by some veiled persons ,from his house who had an orgy of killing that came to lime light when few days later his family members found his body on some brazen and uninhabited piece of land .My helm man couldn’t recollect the happenings properly because of the purposeful play on part of his family to conceal the truth from this young soul .It might had been an effort on part of them to save his mind and soul from the tectonic impact of a loss of a loved one to an unforeseen enemy .But for me they hadn’t had the last victory because what lies in ones destiny nobody knows for sure .He was one among the many that held their helm high and participated in the Shikara march against the land transfer .Few of his friends had put the green flags on electric poles and mobile towers .Well what drove him to such acts I hadn’t the courage to ask but surely the loss was a reason for him .Similarly for others they might had been having their own varied reasons .
Out of sheer force of habit people tend to frame conclusions which being premature need to be redrawn later .What led to the spectacle of thousands of people thronging the streets against the land transfer that widened enough to encompass the freedom sentiment as well was not only the land as such ,it was result of deprivation on economic ,political ,psychological and emotional fronts .This was smoldering inside the mettle of every conscious inhabitant and land proved to be a vent that left the lava out .In part of the rescue measures like declared and undeclared curfews the Govt. tried to set things right that seemed to work for them partly but in reality they widen the deprivation sentiment and fuel the fire .Another eruption is in making and the electioneering cant be a sure vent as the lava is too hot for the ballot boxes to hold .
I hope my helmsman knew it too.
ARIF HUSSAIN SARMAST
Email;arifhsarmast@gmail.com
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