June, 2010 When Kashmiris witnessed the June Drop of 118 Apples.

(Tufail became the first victim to June Drop) Ahmad Kashmiri It is said that the tragedies on one hand tarnish the very social fabrics of the nations and on the other hand bring a whirlpool of ideas, opinions and flashes to the suppressed lots. And for that purpose writers happen to be on the frontli ne who synthesizes sentences, paragraphs and the titles innovatively by utilizin g and correlating the native maxims, beliefs, facts and the concepts that any pa rticular nation upholds. Apple as a fruit represents Kashmir in many ways, beaut y, innocence and climate are some of the examples. There is a saying, An Apple A Day Keeps The Doctor Away meaning this fruit is much fruitful for good health. Ma ny celebrated writes have used apple symbolically in their prolific write ups wh ile writing on the turmoil of Kashmir. The world celebrity writer and Booker Pri ze winner and intellectual, Arundhati Roy after visiting kashmir in 2010, wrote an article entitled Kashmirs fruits of discord, in New York Times on Nov 8, 2010 , wherein she resembled the children with the apples writing, ..It was apple seaso n in Kashmir and as we approached Shopian we could see families in their orchard s, busily packing apples into wooden crates in the slanting afternoon light. I w orried that a couple of the little red-cheeked children who looked so much like apples themselves might be crated by mistake. The news of our visit had preceded us, and a small knot of people were waiting on the road. June Drop is yet another phenomenon related with apples which refers to fruit tree s particularly apples natural tendency to shed some of their immature fruits. Fr uit trees often set more flowers than they need for a full crop, to offset sudde n loses from weather or other cultural factors. The experts reveal this June Drop as, Bottom line is that June drop is not just nor mal, its actually good for the tree. Its helping you too. Youll not only get larger fruits, but the branches of your fruit trees wont be so heavy they need propping up. By the way, its called June drop With June Drop in apples, one can get satisfied for it being beneficial for the other fruits and here the apples. But even a single fall cant be withstood when i t is the case of lives and not to speak of thinking of it when the life is of a human being that too a teenager. But ironically Kashmir witnessed the June Drop of its innocent children in year 2 010, which started in June month but did not stop till November wherein the live s of 118 youth were consumed. Kashmir, a piece of land on earth, some call it paradise, has always been a tre asure of human resource in all respects. World celebrates/ observes the occasion s and developments emerged out of the utilization of human resources viz politic s, freedom, religion, science, technology, inventions, discoveries, personalitie s, children etc etc. but Kashmir is a different dish to taste in all respects. H ere Human Resource itself is unwanted, indigestible and an unpalatable thing and i ronically saying that even June Drop swallows up this human resource. This is an irony that where we would have celebrated and enjoyed the outcome of human resource, there we are made to mourn even for our children when they get killed and then on their anniversaries.. We mourn the killings, we mourn the rap es, we have here disappeared fathers, departed sons, widowed women, half widowed young women. We are a nation being suppressed at every point. Our leaders, inte llectuals, religious scholars, think tanks and teen aged youth are murdered for no sin other than being the defendants of the basic HRs. The year 2010, with reference to HRs in Kashmir, is all important for those peop le of the world who love children and for that matter Kashmir witnessed the June Drop for their children. When this June Drop occurred, the king on the regime was n either a child nor an old man but in- between, meaning that much years have not passed since his childhood, further meaning that he could realize the pain and ago ny when a child or a teenager is killed. But alas! Is it that, he did not feel pain of a father or a brother? Had he felt, and then this June Drop might have not

engulfed our 118 Apples. In Kashmir, the killing mayhem started on Jan. 8, 2010 with the killing of Anaya t Khan, 16, of Dalgate Srinagar when the paramilitary forced killed him in cold blood. Till April 24, 6 more teenagers were killed in the different parts of the valley. And it was June 11, this year when the June Drop started with the innocen t falling of Tufail Ahmad Matoo, 17, of Srinagar who was coming back home from his tuition centre and was hit by a tear shell. June 19 witnessed the killing of Ra fiq Ahmad Bangroo 24, who was with his people protesting the killing of Tufail a nd others including those three innocent kashmiris who were killed in a fake enc ounter in Karnah. Then the sky of Kashmir witnessed Fall- outkillings almost daily or sometimes the toll showed a higher graph than those of days. But the sky never turned Red. The space does not permit here to list the killings that took place in 2010. How ever the heart-piercing part of the story is the killing of those children who wer e of the age of 7 to 9 years, who were just coming out of their infancy. Tawqeer Ahmad Rather of Delina Baramulla is one among them who was put into grave just at the age of 9 years. More heart rending is the killing of Sameer Ahmad Rah of Ba tamaloo who was not killed by any bullet but was brutally beaten to death in hi s lawn. All the 118 killings have such tragedies that volumes of books will not suffice. Not only males but females too were not spared. Fancy of Batamaloo and Mubeena Akhtar of Sopur are the two, here to mention. In a short span of 4 months Jun- Oct, most of the teenagers were dropped, world ra ised voice but this June Drop did not stop in Kashmir. The teenagers who were kill ed were almost all reading in schools and colleges. I remember Iqbal of Tangmarg , who was a distinction holder in his studies, was a Khateeb (who would give ser mon on Fridays), who when recited Quran, his voice would resemble with the voice of Immame Qabba, who after his graduation had the dream to join Madina Universi ty for higher studies. In the backdrop of human rights, indeed, with all meanings and definitions, a c ommoner can conclude, that HRs range from life to laugh. While as life being the p rimary HR, there are other rights too vital for its health. And I remember the a ct of a civil administrator, Deputy Commissioner, who in a Tangmarg village, all owed Ahad Shah, a heavy weight and tall man, to speak aloud and plead his case o f nut tree, who (Ahad Shah) earlier was forbidden to speak aloud in front of dep uty commissioner by the subordinate officers. Deputy Commissioner made the subor dinate officers understand that Ahad Shahs loud voice was well according to his p hysique and body structure and if he was not allowed to speak aloud he would not express himself fully and would develop psychological distress. The first thing that we find in Islam in this connection is that it lays down some rights for man as a human being. In other words it means that every man whe ther he belongs to this country or that, whether he is a believer or unbeliever, whether he lives in some forest or is found in some desert, whatever be the cas e, he has some basic human rights simply because he is a human being, which shou ld be recognized by every Muslim. In fact it will be his duty to fulfill these o bligations. The first and the foremost basic right is the right to live and respect human li fe. The Holy Quran lays down: Whosoever kills a human being without (any reason like) man slaughter, or corruption on earth, it is as though he had killed all m ankind ... (5:32) Immediately after the verse of the Holy Quran which has been mentioned in connec tion with the right to life, God has said: "And whoever saves a life it is as th ough he had saved the lives of all mankind" (5:32). Thus we pray that let this June drop for the benefit occur to our apple crop onl y and not to the crop of our youth comprising teen agers who are the sons and da ughters of the parents, pupils of their teachers and the future of kashmiris. (The author can be mailed at ahmadkashmiri@gmail.com)