Ralive, Tsalive Ya Galive

Intriguing isn't it 

Yes for you all would find this title irrelevant meaningless or just yet another set of words from regional dialect. But these words changed the course of life of lakhs of people and their coming generations.

The words mean surrender (convert to Islam), leave, or perish. Given the choice what would anyone of us opt for.

Please read this.

Ralive, Tsalive ya Galive. This slogan was reverberating from local mosques and streets, some local newspapers also published threats from terrorist organizations warning Kashmiri pandits to flee their homeland.

It was the night of 19th January 1990, days were cold and nights were long and bitter.

Masses of Muslims who were considered friends and neighbours suddenly changed their stand and were shouting slogans and banging the doors of their brethren with whom they had shared their breads and butter till that tumultuous night.

Suddenly a new slogan erupted out of nowhere. 

Asih gatsih Kasheer Bhattav baghair battehnew san) (We want our Kashmir without Kashmiri men but with their women folk)

What would a man of even a little sanity would do under those circumstances.

It was a black night the night when all was lost and the last night when we all were together.

We all had to leave our house in the dark of night as terrorists were targeting each house every night killing the males of household and raping and kidnapping the women.

We all were sitting huddled in that cold January night sweating with fear, uncertainty, desperation and almost a sure death. As provocative communal slogans from mosques incited the Muslims to give a final push to kafirs(Hindu ) and convert Kashmir to a pure Muslim place. Kafiro ko maro slogan (kill the hindus) was piercing the silence of valley.

Our hearts were throbbing with every single foot step or even whisper of wind. There was complete dark as electricity connections were cut down, I could see the faint gleam of light that was pouring through the key hole of the door. The world outside was plunged into orgy of bloodshed and destruction. The temple outside my home was besmirched with blood.

There was a mirage of hopelessness that hardened with every passing minute.

The experience was heart wrenching and exceedingly ferocious than the threshold of pain one had been accustomed to suffer over the years, any person would be benumbed to the core of the soul seeing that betrayal,

Betrayal by none others but their own friends neighbours and so called well wishers.

We left our homes and souls there at that evenful day.

Mass migration happened and within a week s time almost all Kashmiris had left for other options.

Packed in phernas and warm clothes we landed to Jammu Udhampur and other places and were hit hard by another shock of hot weather. So many Kashmiris couldn't survive the sudden spurt in temprature.

 It seemed as if the whole world was conspiring against us and testing our patience.

Thirty years since then ..

We survived and are living with dignity, our heads held high, holding respectable positions,but still we carry in our hearts an unheard prayer to the God to let us live peacefully and die gracefully in our Homeland.

And when I return to my village I want my friends to engrave an epitaph on my grave.

"Here rests a man whose name was written on water"

The "Paradise on Earth" is now titled as "A beautiful war zone."

The fabric of community was broken, the new generation born outside Kashmir is alienated to the culture and rituals.

The great migration can be forgotten if we don't pay attention to it. It is part of my personal history, even though I haven't been an eye witness to it, the pain of it flows in my nerves.

It is writ large on our foreheads "YOU HAVE BROKEN OUR HOMES DARE YOU BREAK OUR SPIRITS."