Jehlum

War on either side.

Embers in the sky like stars on earth, splinters flying and an acrid taste of anger in the air.

She thrusts her boat into the dark clear waters of Jehlum. Another loud noise reverberates, startled she reaches out to catch the arm of a ghost. A grief saved for a later time.

The boat creaks and squeaks, she places something wrapped in a shawl on the boat. She wonders if the boat can survive the weight of the wrapped bundle, she wonders if it can survive the weight of her grief… a grief saved for a later time…

Drenched in dust, ashes of a forgotten past and forgotten warriors, she braves the atrocity of war and jumps into the boat. Another loud thunder bellows, she reaches out again, all in vain… tears diffidently careen down her face leaving a trail of black, like the streams of Jehlum on which her boat gently floats.

The riverbank fades slowly as she scutters from one edge of the boat to the other, holding the wrapped bundle close to her rapidly beating heart, whispering something lightly. Patience and luck are all that is needed now… unfortunately she has an abundance of one, and severely lacks the other.

Her thoughts float like the boat, she remembers a time when she was young. She would come to the banks of Jehlum, with her friends, and throw stones in the river and count the bounces till they inevitably sink. She would talk of young boys and marriage, of her ever-growing youth and sinful pleasures. They would laugh and scamper like a flight of swallows, upon hearing their mothers’ distant scolds.

Adolescent dreams of running off with a man, who would take her inland, to cities of blinding lights and towering buildings. Wealth, happiness and a family. She never wanted to be a sheep herder, a village woman with the burden of an earthen pot on her frail shoulders, weaving Pashmina shawls for a living as her loved ones get crushed like grass under the stomping feet of two nations fighting to claim a land that they themselves destroy with each tedious march.

She reaches out again, to feel the arm of her husband, now feeding the tall grass somewhere in the war ridden lands. For once, she hoped the fates would change, somehow all of this becomes a dream and she wakes up next to him and he would comfort her, like he used to, by saying “Shh… It’s just the rain… It’s just the rain”.

She remembers her wedding, a beautiful affair with a man she had never met. She remembers the shivers, tightness in the throat, anxiety, excitement, fear? Maybe. A reservoir of emotions, but everything went to rest when he held her hand for the first time. A firm grip of a man willing to keep her safe, a man willing to love her till his dying breath… and he did, didn’t he? He really did…

She remembers her home, her herd of sheep that she had begun to like, she was doing better than she had imagined, till the war broke… months of fire and embers, of inciting news, and a village pillaged by rape, war and famine.

She had escaped somehow, with some prized possessions and a bundle wrapped in a shawl. And here she is now.

Jehlum had been crossed. Dust and gunfire blurring her thoughts and vision as she jumps in the murky waters carrying the enwrapped bundle close to her heart… Her heart, that beats faster with each step… half stumbling through the mud, a long yearning smile almost makes its way to her face…

Suddenly…

A loud noise pierces the air, a gunshot and silence followed.

She falls to her knees, eyes popped wide open. Dark and violent silhouettes of men disappearing slowly on the other shore. It was too good to be true; she places the bundle on the ground, blood stains tainting her prized possession.

Almost as soon as that, a gush of blood pours out her chest and covers the ground below like the first rays of sunlight in a dimly lit room. She starts to unwrap the bundle, hurriedly, as time quickly ticks, she feels no pain, just an enormous onus of misery …

And there it was… there she was… her only purpose in life… the bundle unwrapped, revealing the face of a baby, her baby… smiling, oblivious to the torture her mother shielded her from.

She says something in Kashmiri, time for weeping was over, she won’t let her daughter remember her like this… broken, desperate and dying…

She runs her fingers in the water of Jehlum and writes something in mud on the baby’s forehead. She prays for might and strength, picks up her baby and starts walking, as far as she can, as far as the Gods will allow her.

More shadows appear around her, hazy and smeared in blood… friendlier shadows, trying to hold her as she falls. The last essence of life drains from her listless body, but not before she passes the bundle to the unfamiliar men. They carry her away from shore, tend to her wounds and look away in dismay for destiny had concluded her story with a woeful lament. Another man holding the bundle in his arms, pulls the shawl down and notices the begrimed letters on the baby’s forehead.

It makes him smile, for he knows what the letters mean. He knows she will be valiant, resilient, ready to brave the war the stubborn nations fought.

She will resist, persist, bloom and flow in the nature around her in sheer magnificence... She will do her mother proud.

The letters will be her name, a warrior child baptized in blood and war, the letters glimmering proud –

“Jehlum”

The child that survived blood and war…

“Jehlum”

Like the river that will see countless more…