Letters, notes and TV messages come to rescue of Kashmir residents

Sumayyah Qureshi &M Aamir Khan

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, August 17

Kashmir has gone back in time. To the good old days when human lives were not subservient to mobile phones and Internet and people would communicate through missives — both brief and explanatory.

The letter, which is long dead and forgotten, has made a return in Kashmir, where the Central government has blocked all mobile phones, landlines, Internet and even the free movement of people. The mobile phones nowadays have but one function in Kashmir: They are used to see time and set alarms.

People in the Valley are back to handwritten notes to communicate with each other. This time, however, they deliver it themselves. The notes are hurriedly written, sometime illegible, on pieces of paper, on the back of a printed page, on the foot of used paper, on a receipt, anything which has some blank space for scribbling a quick line or two.

Being a newspaper office, we usually find such notes on our tables, left by well-wishers, friends, peers and journalists, who on not finding the person concerned in the office, drop a brief note, saying they were here.

Not only outsiders, colleagues in the office also leave notes on their table for someone they had been waiting to meet. The notes usually evoke a feeling of hopelessness, but sometimes hope too. There is a sense of urgency in every note.

In the Valley, where people have been forced to remain confined to their homes for the past two weeks, a handwritten note is all they have to rely on.

Another novel mean found by residents is reaching out through television or passing messages to people travelling outside.

Amid the clampdown, ‘’Gulistan’’ television channel has become the most popular means of passing messages. The channel, which apparently has offices at several places outside the Valley, has been airing regular text and video messages of Kashmiris living outside. At the same time, it has also been scrolling notices of cancelled wedding invitations and other local announcements.

“I was delighted to see the video message on ‘Gulistan TV’ of a relative studying in Hyderabad. His message for his family was - ‘’I am doing fine, hope you are fine too’’. But unfortunately, the communication has been one way. Nevertheless, we are glad to hear from him. Otherwise there has been no contact with our kith and kin studying or working outside,” said Majid Ganaie, a local.

“And the channel has also been running messages like cancelled wedding invitations regularly that are personally delivered by locals. Unfortunately, other channels, especially DD Kashmir, has made no such effort and they are only running government announcements,” he added.

Many others are passing messages through people travelling outside the Valley. “I wrote a letter to my family, living in a South Kashmir village, last week that was hand delivered by a relative who met me at my office. I had written that I won’t be able to come for Eid and they should not worry about me,” said a government official, wishing anonymity.

Naeema Jan, another local, said her children were working abroad and there had been no communication with them for the past 12 days.

“This is for the first time that we did not talk to our children on Eid. We are worried and they must be equally worried. A relative met us on Eid and he was supposed to leave for New Delhi. We gave him contact numbers of our children and told him to pass our message to them,” she said.

Jan regretted that not a single mean of communication had been made available. “I remember in 2016 unrest, mobiles were banned for a long time but later, post-paid connections, especially BSNL ones, were allowed. Similarly, broadbands and lease lines in offices were working. Unfortunately, nothing is working this time,” she said.