Waiting for the day

Hajira Bano of Baramulla,who lost her 10-year-old son,Farhan Rafiq Buhroo,to police firing in June,says,“As Eid brings happiness,it makes the pain of the loss of a dear one even more poignant.”

Despite the overbearing pain,Eid-ul-Fitr is a day everybody looks forward to in Kashmir. The festival that follows a month of fasting and devout subservience to God comes as an award for the faithful: a promised day on which joy wouldn’t necessarily need an external cause to be experienced or denied. Its source,Muslims believe,is heavenly and warms the hearts from within.

Eid in Kashmir is also about the spirit of survival. It may spark a rush of remembrance,but it is also about forgetfulness,of coming to terms with the loss and moving on. There is evidence of this in the way people throng the streets and get busy shopping days before the festival. Bazaars suddenly lit up with activity. Banners go up across the crowded roads emblazoned with Eid Mubarak in Urdu,chaotic assemblies of customers can be seen outside bakery and mutton shops and the traffic piles up amid the throbbing sea of people.

On the evening before the festival,people sit back and wait,a long,agonising wait for the sighting of the crescent. The wait can stretch for hours after sunset,with people tuning into radios,television sets,calling friends and kin to get the confirmation. It is like looking for a lost key to joy. And for once,literally so.

When the Moon Sighting Committee finally speaks,loudspeakers across the Valley boom with the announcement of the crescent and the celebration begins. The dawn that brings Eid is nothing short of an epiphany. Bazaars close,streets go empty but the homes hum.

This year’s Eid is different. “It is a ‘calendered’ Eid,” says Muhammad Hanif,a seller of women’s wear at Lal Chowk,sarcastically referring to the long shutdown calendars issued weekly or every ten days by separatist hardliners led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani. But for an occasional one-day break,Hanif’s shop has been closed for the past three months. “Our peak business season has gone and with it a better part of this year’s earnings”.

The protest calendar has become a metaphor for the ongoing life in Kashmir. From dawn to dusk,everything that a Kashmiri does is defined by the calendar. Every direction,every instruction is followed by the people to the helplessness of the state government. Be it the marches,sit-ins,shutdowns,nocturnal sloganeering from mosques etc, life twists and turns as per the elaborately laid out daily schedule. A call for shutdown and the Valley turns into a vast sea of emptiness. Call for protests brings out hordes of rebellious,angry youth to the street who pelt stones,defy security personnel and dare death. And on an occasional day of break,Kashmir becomes normal again,shorn of the immediate history.

Kashmir has already been closed for 89 days. Businesses,transport,schools,even the majority of government offices are shut down creating an abnormal routine. There is a serious shortage of essentials. People struggle to get milk,vegetables and the ration.

Adding to the misery of businessmen like Hanif,this year’s Eid also finds itself squeezed in by the protest calendar. A festival of joy that usually sees hectic business activity two weeks before its arrival will now be ushered in by the continuing cycle of shutdowns and curfews. Eid will now be a cramped three-day affair.

The 11-day strike calendar announced by the hardline Hurriyat faction allows normalcy for Eid and the two days before it. Eid shopping has suffered. People have been forced to make purchases a week before the festival. One such break was the last Sunday before Eid. This brought people out in droves to buy new clothes for the festival. There was one more break on the day before Eid,the only time people could purchase food-items like mutton,chicken,milk and the veggies. There was also a strict call to people not to resort to extravagant spending on the day. What is more,celebration will have to be limited to the day. Joy beyond a certain limit is seen as anathema for it increases the sense of guilt towards the dead. Hence,a day after Eid,it will again be hartal and possibly a curfew. The current calendar ends on September 15 which brings Kashmir to a complete economic standstill for five successive days after the festival.

Eid itself is not free from politics. Separatists are determined to claim the day for themselves. There is a plan to march to Eidgah and turn the Eid prayers there into a show of strength. And if all goes according to plan,Kashmir this year may well have to settle for a curfewed Eid.

Eid wasn’t such a complex affair in Kashmir always. In the eighties,people recall,the festival had a certain traditional form,a deep spiritual aura,and an emotional resonance. But now Eid has lost some of its innocence and grown up alongside the unremitting conflict in the state,burdened with the tumult of the past two decades.

Celebration of Eid has changed on the ground too. For example,the Eid prayers. Smaller congregations at the mosques are now preferred over the massive,joint congregations at Eidgahs. Through the nineties,there would be no fireworks for many years for fear that it might alarm security forces and invite retaliatory fire. And it did on several occasions,leading to innocent deaths. People thus had to follow a new security discipline.

The situation has barely changed. Militant violence may have gone down,but everything else remains the same. Fear continues to rule the streets. Kashmiris continue to walk into bunkers. Night life is non-existent. There are no avenues of social recreation,not even cinemas. Small family picnics can become a hazardous affair. What fills the scene is a cynical interplay of history,memory and politics.

Will Eid change anything? “It will offer a one-day respite. Hopefully,” says Dr Sheikh Showkat Hussain,a Kashmir University professor. He adds that Eid can still make a difference if the Centre announces some goodwill measures like the release of prisoners.

But despite this tentative approach to the festival,Eid,for most people,is a festival that exists on its own,is its own world and its own award. “God commands us to celebrate the festival. It exists independent of the prevailing situation,” says Rafiqa Shah,a college teacher,out buying Eid clothes for her children.