The Community Takes Care by Shoba Ram

“Fasting during this Ramdan month and tired, I do not want to meet anybody. Another interview… so many people come here and interview us and no help has come to us”, says Syeda Begum from Ranaware in Srinagar, Kashmir.

“But why is your left foot looking scalded?” I ask her. “That was some hot water which tilted on to my foot a little while ago.”

Her ‘veneer’ of hesistancy to spend some time with us (3 counsellors from the Kashmir ActionAid Office) fell away with this.

“My family story has appeared in the newspaper.” She goes up the 8 rattling wooden steps to her single room apartment built out of wood for the flooring and tin sheet on the roof and mud and stone on the walls. Out she comes with the yellowed-envelope having the local Kashmir newspaper cutting of 2005.

Gorgeous Syeda Begum, about 50 years or even younger but age telling on her because of her trying days, was widowed when her 4 sons and 2 daughters were all less than ten years old. Her husband was a vegetable vendor. Begging (in her words, ‘the community helped out’) was what she did to take care of the family and she got her older daughter married to a vegetable vendor.

Lovely large eyes filled with mist of the entrenched sorrow. The year 2003. “My eldest son of 23 was a member of the militant group and one fine afternoon, he charged into this little passage [serving also as a waterpoint where a chicken is tied and they appear to use for defecation as there were telling traces of faeces flowing in the open drain] between the pavement and the stairway of the apartment followed by a wild group of men wielding weapons.

“The same fury with which they charged in they retraced their steps, leaving behind my now dead son in a pool of blood. The other 3 sons were not militants but in a short while we heard that my second son was smashed to death two lanes away.

“As if that was not enough, my third son, caught in crossfire, thought the best route to escape was jumping into a waterpath – a river – but in no time it swallowed him. My fourth son, mentally deranged, could be alive, but he left the house soon after that.

“If I use the Charka [spinning wheel] then I earn Rs50 a week. If my younger daughter of 15 who has dropped out school since two years spins, then we get another Rs50. For the rest, the people in the locality help me out.” In actuality she begs quite often for a living.”

But her daughter’s version differed slightly: “I do not like to spin. I want to go to school. But though the fees are only Rs500 annually, I have other requirements like uniform, food to be carried, stationery and school books, etc.”

“Would you like to do some skill-development course until the next academic year?” we asked her. “Yes. A nearby computer school has a 3-month basic course for Rs125 a month.”

While leaving the extremely clean house, assuring them of ActionAid visiting them again, I noticed on the fire a lone vessel with a maximum of 20 boiled slices of potato. It was 5.15p.m. – a little before the end of Rozhah (fasting). This would be their meal breaking the fast and yet she wanted to serve us tea.  

"I have given several interviews and received many promises of help. Today I feel very confident that all of you from ActionAid give me the assurance of coming back to help my daughter and me," says Seyda. "All this while, I have been telling people that my daughter stopped attending school because she did not want to study. With you, I have let my daughter herself express her apprehensions as I feel a sudden closeness to you. Please have some tea." 

We descend the precarious steps, balanced in a flimsy manner due to the caving support wall which was damaged in the 2005 earthquake.

Here is a mother affected by violence (till date not knowing who killed her sons) and occupying a house damaged by the earthquake. How can her daughter build a future?

(Syeda Begum did not want her photograph taken)

Shoba Ram is publisher and chief editor of Books for Change and was part of the team who produced the report ‘The Jammu and Kashmir Earthquake: Damage and needs assessment’. She traveled as part of an all woman ActionAid team which included counselors Shabana, Saudia and Akeela.