At times, my mother would request the landlady to allow her to use their personal toilet, as she couldn't bear the horrible stench in the makeshift toilet. The landlord's toilet was at some distance from ours. It was terrible; we were bereft of the most basic things of life. Eight of us lived in a small room. A curtain and a sheet were used to create a partition in the room for privacy. It was a room not even fit for cattle. But this is where we lived. We had little choice.
In the mornings and evenings, all of us would carry buckets and small plastic containers to the tube wells to get water. The nearest tube well was half a kilometre away from our hovel. Rainwater was used to wash utensils; fresh water had an unusual earthy colour and odour to it. Rain bought misery and centipedes. Centipedes crawled into our room through the windows, and hid under the bed sheets, below the pillows, in the crevices along the walls. Grandmother called these creatures sunhari sarap (colourful snakes). During the monsoon, snakes and scorpions came out of the anthills and other crevices in the ground, and entered our room. The government provided 500 rupees every month as relief. Sahita Samiti, a Kashmiri Pandit organisation, distributed milk, blankets and old clothes. People were reduced to nothing. We lived in extreme deprivation.
I lost my grandfather in the early years of exile. He suffered from depression; his inconsolable longing for his house in his village in Kashmir took a huge toll on his health. His health deteriorated and on the day of Mahashivratri, he left us. My father, the eldest among his brothers, had to bear the responsibility of the entire family.
In 1993, we shifted to Jammu. We sought refuge in the migrant quarters at Muthi. These quarters had domes. There were no windows in the damp and dingy room. Perpetual darkness reigned inside our room. No more than three people could sleep inside. Yet we had to make room for one another. In an adjacent room, a dozen members huddled together. Some people constructed small ventilators in the walls to let the light into the rooms. The ceilings were very low and one could barely stand erect. We had to crawl. We lived for fourteen years in the one-room tenement at the Muthi Migrant Camp. The conditions were inhumane. The dark camp alleys leading to the quarters were frightening. Mornings were gloomy.
Each day was an ordeal; a fight every moment, a fight within. Survival became a struggle; living through the days became a nightmare. The living conditions, the dark locales, pallid days, scorching heat, constricted lanes, mobile water tankers, the din of utensils, long queues for water, verbal spats among the migrants, a tap of water for 200 families. These constituted our dreary days. People scrounged for things as if they had lost their minds. In the camps, the mornings were noisy with people gearing up early in the morning to collect water. Not a single day went by without a fight for water. It was as if everyone had gone mad. The elders looked dreary and burdened, finding their way out of the dark rooms, hoping to escape the appalling conditions in the camp. With each passing day, they grew weak, and pined for shade and cool breeze. They didn't get the comfort they craved, they were anxious, uneasy all the time. They would talk to each other during the day. One could see them on the streets, in the middle of the road, in the shade of a tree, in the community hall, organising meetings, preparing memorandums, thinking of ways to return to Kashmir, hoping for the militancy to end there and normalcy to return.
For years together, my parents woke up early in the morning to line up the buckets and containers for water; the water supply lasted for no more than 15–20 minutes. This extreme mental and physical routine weakened them; they looked as if they were suffering from a long-term illness, and turning into decrepit beings. Sadness engulfed us all.
My parents withered in the endless summers, inadequate spaces and the stifling heat. We slept in snatches during the night. Many of us didn't even have fans or coolers. The nights and the cries of distress were never-ending. Our bodies were drenched in sweat all the time. Hiding all day from the blazing sun was a routine game. Finding a corner untouched by the sun on the camp streets was a daily affair for the elders. A raised platform or the shade of a tree became places for the migrants to play cards and gossip. There was nothing else to do. They had nothing to do all day long except discuss the political situation in Kashmir. The elders with ashen faces looked frazzled and wilted as if they were carrying a permanent burden on their shoulders. Elders were often seen loitering in the camp vicinity, expressing their longing through inane soliloquies and monologues.
They were ageing rapidly; many collapsed and died in the streets. The scorching heat was unbearable; many succumbed to sunstrokes and snakebites. Deaths became a daily affair in the camp. The migrants lived through this tumultuous journey, battling desolation, toiling day after day.
The elders were the only connection to my native land. I longed to listen to the stories of the past, to connect to our native land. Their memories were what I depended on. I feared losing them all. I always carry this fleeting fear of losing our language. I fear losing our identity. Kashmir was always a topic of discussion; it never went off our hearts and minds. The elders still carry this undying hope of going back to their motherland.
We waited for the summers to end. Our cramped one-room tenement with the killer dome radiated with heat from the scorching sun. Evenings went by like a flash. Heat was our biggest enemy. The soaring temperatures in Jammu rendered us insane. We had nowhere to go. The rooftops and walls of our room went on baking us throughout the day. Evenings for the camp children, elders, men and women were spent in consoling one another and offering words of comfort. An electric pole stood on the other side of the road where camp people used to sit and discuss the affairs of the community till late evening. The discussions ranged from Kashmir to surviving in Jammu to relief and ration to the apathy of the government.
Everyone ignored us as if we didn't exist. As if we didn't belong to this land and to this country. The authorities didn't care for us as if we were not humans. We became a burden for everyone. Our exodus should have stirred the conscience of the government, both State and Central. But it didn't.
People went on waiting. We grappled with a deep sense of homelessness. They thought that the situation would become normal and that they would return to their homes. Little did they know that even after twenty-five years, their return to the native land would still remain a distant dream.
The children of exile had to bear the brunt of the exodus. Exodus had a major impact on their education. The makeshift room constructed using old bricks, wooden planks and iron sheets was our kitchen, drawing room, study, prayer room and bedroom. The kitchen meant everything to my mother; she had demarcated a part of the room for cooking. The cooking area was lined by a cemented slab, some space created for us to sit, an elevated space used to wash our hands and utensils. Father created a shelf on which he placed pictures and idols of our deities. We prayed.
This cramped little kitchen served us for fourteen years. We shared space with insects, rats and cockroaches. When the lights went off, these little creatures came out of the holes, scrounging for food. Our kitchen served as my study also. I never had the luxury of having my own room; the kitchen was all I had. I created a cave-like corner for myself by placing pillows around myself, and I studied inside this cave. I carved out a little world of mine in these cramped spaces. A friend's father ran a small shop next to his room. The dwelling was blocked from any source of light from the outside.
The toilets reeked and the horrible stench in the latrines made us curse our wretched lives. We were engulfed in a foul smell all the time. There was one latrine for the entire block. In the beginning, these were makeshift latrines, then after years, they were plastered with bricks and cement. One latrine was to be shared by 20 families living in a block. Before relieving ourselves, we used to throw buckets of water inside; the toilet was all stained black, and it was filthy. The toilets blocked every now and then and the municipal vehicles would come once in two months to empty the pit. The pipes of the vehicles leaked at many places, and, at times, the block would be covered with filthy water. For the camp-dwellers, it became difficult to stay indoors all the time; the air reeked of a bad stench all the time. The women folk of the block would clean the area and scrub the surfaces of the block, flushing out the faeces with water. My grandmother once aptly lamented: 'We are in hell, and every day is a struggle—for water, for space, for comfort, for fresh air.'
I did my school homework in our makeshift kitchen; it was so hot in the afternoons that nobody visited us during the day. The roof of our room caved in many times when strong winds blew. Summer storms and lashing rains would destroy our shelters. There were times when we had no roof over our heads. We had to sleep in the narrow alleys in the camp. Powercuts that lasted 12–14 hours a day became a routine affair. In the night, some people slept on the pavements along the roads, on the rooftops of the quarters, and in the narrow alleys between quarters. Our room didn't have a flat roof. The roof was dome-shaped. During the powercuts, children, women and men sat helpless in darkness. They would sit on the roadside and wait for the power supply to be restored.