Women Of Kashmir

I talked to my mother that day, about us fleeing to some other safer place. She held my hand and said to me “ you don’t run away when your house is being robbed, you throw the robbers out, R.” She kissed me goodnight but, under the quilt in bed, all I could think of was her resilience, courage, that, day in and day out, she was working in the hospital when she could’ve just stayed home, but she took her oath as a doctor way too seriously but more than that she took being a Kashmiri more seriously. It mattered more to her. So I went with her that day to the hospital. There are very few times where being a woman makes you feel powerful. That day, in the hospital, to see those nurses, in white robes, and doctors working tirelessly together made me proud to be a daughter of this soil. There it was, right there, not just a feeble feeling of a feminist victory but victory of humanity.
Those women working in the hospital were not just them, they everything that Kashmir was and wasn't. Here in the most militarized zone in the world were these women , fearlessly, working all night. They were much more than the societal tags that day.

Women of Kashmir with all your strength, your valor, your pride, your magnificence , your patience , your resilience , you are the definition of what woman is, in sum and total. You battered the mountains and crushed the rocks , with your blood and with granite of your courage you built the entire city. Then whose soil is this? Whose homeland is it?