Insha And The People In Her Life

 
“Even babber-sher was here,” Insha says laughing. Peerzada Muhammad Shafi Shah contested from the Khag constituency of Budgam in the District Development Council polls in 2021. He lost the polls but it is popular on social media sites for his gaffes. He calls himself baber sher (lion). “He was shouting about the BJP,” Insha says with a sardonic laugh.
 
Insha says the scars of July 12 in 2016 are fresh in her mind when a volley of pellets left her face and eyes ruptured and took her months to heal from the trauma. 
 
“How could I forget it,” she says. 
 
On July 11, 2016, Insha and her family members had taken refuge in an upstairs room of their house in the village. 
 
On the day, Insha was preparing to visit her uncle’s house, who had died five months ago. “It was his first Eid and we were all planning to be there,” she says. She heard tear gas canisters being fired outside her house.  She went towards the window to have a glimpse of the commotion outside. Her house is located adjacent to the road. As Insha opened the window, a pellet gun had been fired at the window, blowing the window and her face. “I fell down. I tried to recite Quran but I couldn’t,” Insha says. “My forehead was burning from the inside. I thought it has been shattered by a bullet,” she says.
 
“She was on the floor. I saw blood flowing out of her face,” says her father.
 
She was taken to the district hospital Shopian, around 15 km from her residence, but the doctors there were horrified to see her pellet-ridden face. “Up to district hospital Shopian I could hear what people were saying but I was unable to utter a word,” she adds.
 
The doctors at the Shopian district hospital referred her to Srinagar Sheri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital. She was in a coma for the next four days. Once she came out of coma, she was not able to see. “It was all dark. My eyes and forehead were all bandaged. I thought I have a deep wound on my forehead and once the bandage is removed I will be able to see,” she says.
 
In July 2016 Insha’s badly wounded face outraged Kashmiris all across the valley forcing the Peoples’ Democratic Party-led government to step in. The cornered Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti promised all help to her. After a month-long stay at the SMHS hospital, Insha was moved to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. She remained at the AIIMS for about two months. During her stay at the AIIMS, Chief Minister Mufti visited her.
 
It was at the AIIMS she heard her father talking to another person that her vision will not return. “I wept bitterly that day. Till then I had some hope. My father then started consoling me that my eyesight will return,” she says as her father looks towards her.  
 
On September 13, 2016, Insha was taken to the Adiya Joyti Eye Hospital Mumbai where Dr S Natrajan, treated her for around 24 days. Dr Natrajan, who was the Director of Aditya Jyoti Mumbai and also the President of the Ocular Trauma Society of India, visited Kashmir thrice in 2016 and operated eyes of over 200 pellet-hit victims. He was a well-known name in the valley for treating pellet victims. According to Insha’s father, Natrajan told them Insha has no perception of light, which means she has turned blind. “And we lost all hope,” he adds.
 
Insha and her family moved to Delhi from Bombay for another check-up at the AIIMS before returning home in the first week of October 2016.  As she had become the face of Kashmiri protests that year, scores of Kashmiri students studying in different universities went to meet her and talk to her.  They would bring presents to her. In the next two months, she developed an affinity with them. She thought they are her friends. As she returned home, they forgot her leaving her emotionally bruised.
 
 “I have no friend now except my mother. She is everything to me,” she says.
 
Her father says Insha was initially shifted to Delhi from SMHS for eye treatment.  But Insha raises her voice to correct her father. “Papa, you don’t know. I had no forehead. I was referred to the AIIMS by the doctors at the SMHS and my forehead was operated and repaired. You don’t remember,” she says pointing towards the scars on her forehead.
 
“The doctors at the AIIMS conducted four surgeries on my forehead to repair it,” she says raising her voice while her father mutes himself. “I was in the ICU for seven days at the AIIMS,” she says.
 
Her father says she was very calm before she was hit by pellets. “Now she become very angry,” he adds.
 
Since 2017, she has visited the SMHS hospital for a check-up regularly as scores of pellets are still in her body, and she also visits a private hospital for the past two years.
 
According to the health department of Kashmir, around 10,000 people were wounded in the protests that erupted after the killing of Hizbul Mujahedeen militant Burhan Wani. Of 10,000 wounded, 6205 protesters were hit by the pellets during the turbulent summer and 1100 have pellet wounds in their eyes.  Most of the people who had pellets in the eyes were described as visually impaired.
 
Sedow is a picturesque village in the vicinity of the Hirpura wildlife area. Over the years the area had remained peaceful except protests in 2016.
 
In 2017 Insha qualified matric. During the examination her helper would read out question papers to her and she would tell her answers to pen down. 
 
After class 10, 2018, Insha enrolled herself at the Delhi Public School Srinagar to study braille, a writing system used by people who are visually impaired, including people who are blind, deaf-blind or who have low vision. She got admission in the Delhi Public School through an NGO called Centre for Peace and Justice (CPJ). In Srinagar, the chairperson of the NGO Nadir Ali says he was more worried about her fee as no one would come forward to help her financially. He says one night he got a call from Ragu Raman, a philanthropist and advocate for accessible education. “Ragu Sir told me that he has seen Insha’s interviews and found her bright child. After a pause, Ragu Raman stated he would take care of her admission and I was relieved,” Nadir Ali says. Now Ali’s office at Rajbagh becomes another address for Insha.
 
The CPJ also hired a two-room set for Insha near their office. “So that she and her younger brother Nafee would stay at Rajbagh,” Ali says.
 
 
Like other Kashmiris, Nadir Ali along with some of his friends went to meet Insha in late 2017. At her house, he saw people had given her certificates. Ali says he felt an attempt has not been made to provide her education so that she could sustain herself. Ali returned from Insha’s village and started thinking how could he help her. He went back to her village and talked to her about her dreams. “Insha told me she wanted to study. I was moved by it,” Ali says.
 
Ali gave her his number and told her if she desires to study further, he would be willing to help her. “That time I had no idea how I could help her,” he says.
 
“You see everyone loves to share Insha’s story but no one comes to us about how to help her,” Ali says. In the past five years, Ali says, not a single Kashmiri has come forward with any suggestion of financial help to her.
 
After two weeks of his visit to Sedow Ali receives a call from Insha that she intends to study. Now there was a real problem for Ali. Where to take her to study braille, how to make her use her phone and learn her to walk without any help around. Ali says he went to the Delhi Public School Srinagar as they had a department to teach braille.  But the obstacle was money. Ali says then Raju Raman stepped in and paid a fee of Insha including the admission fee and her rent at the Rajbagh area. “That solved our financial concern. But the real challenge was how to educate her,” he says.  Initially, she would always cry and get angry. “She is torn by taunts of people who tell her she has got benefits from the government. Sometimes she says she is tired,” Ali says.  Ali says the government had promised her gas agency but it hasn’t been sanctioned so far.
 
At the CPJ, Shariqa Zargar, an employee at the CPJ, became her friend as Insha would regularly come to the CPJ to study. Shariq, a law graduate, belongs to the old city of Srinagar. She joined the CPJ in 2018. One day Insha came to the CPJ office with her brother. “It was perhaps her first day at the CPJ. She had come for a tuition. I saw her and I became very emotional. And I hugged her. I wept,” Shariqa says.
 
Like Ali, Shariqa also says Insha proved to be a tough student. “She would all of a sudden throw books away and start shouting that she doesn’t want to study,” says Shariqa. Shariqa would, again and again, nudge her to study.  Gradually, Insha started adapting to a new reality. “She finally accepted that she has to live in this darkness. And she realized this truth and it calmed her a bit,” says Shariqa.
 
Since 2018 Shariqa remains with her when Insha visits the CPJ. “Insha cooks herself. She welcomes the guests and she keeps her house very clean,” says Shariqa. At times Shariqa asks her how she keeps her flat so clean. Insha would say she checks with her hands to ensure no speck of dust is left on the floor.
 
 Shariqa has taken her to the University of Kashmir to see Iqbal Library as Insha had desired to see the library. The students of the University saw her. They recognized her. “But they didn’t come near us,” says Shariqa. “Whenever I take her for a walk, people recognize her but they usually don’t come near her,” she adds. Shariqa remembers Insha’s habits. “She sleeps early. She is a quick learner and has a sharp memory.”
 
Insha is all praise for her teachers at the CPJ.
 
“I want to do my graduation and qualify IAS exam. That is why I will be able to work for the blind. There is no awareness about children with disabilities and there is not any school except the DPS in Kashmir that teaches braille,” she says. She says she is averse to mixing people. “There are pellets still in my body. And I fear I shouldn’t get an infection,” she says.
 
Before the incident, Insha would stay at her home after coming from a local school at Sedow and complete her school homework till late. “When I was not blind my aim was to become a doctor. My favourite colour was navy blue and it still is,” she says. “I have a slight idea of the colour now but it is still my favourite colour,” she adds.
The day Insha passed her 12th class exam, the BJP celebrated it calling it the "shining success of a pellet victim." The party said Insha Mushtaq was blinded when Mehbooba Mufti was Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. But ironically the BJP skips it was PDP-BJP coalition government in 2016. 
 
Oblivion of this politics, Insha says she hates when people call her blind. When she goes on walks with Shariqa in Srinagar, she says some people taunt her. “Some come to console me. Some are crude and call me blind. Some gossip about me. Some tell me to my face that I have got benefits from the government,” she adds. “Some people ask me, didn’t the government give you this and that? They taunt me. I feel their sarcasm. How can people be so brute,” she asks.
 
 “If ever my eyesight returns, I want to see my parents once,” she says.