Showkat Nanda (26) has a Postgraduate degree in Mass Communication and Journalism with a specialization in Photojournalism, and works as a Feature Writer and Photojournalist for Rising Kashmir, a leading English Daily published from Srinagar. He loves documenting social issues through photography, and has also got a national award for a short film in 2006.
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There is no hope in her life. Quite literally. Living in a windowless tin shed where the sun never shines, this woman does not know how many more years of pain and loneliness she has to spend to “return” to life again, if that ever happens .
I met her in 2006, a month after she had completed her second sentence. Kapoor Jan of the village Lala-ka-Ban in Pakistan Administered Kashmir has many “distinctions” to her credit. She married twice, was jailed twice and crossed the Line of Control five times only to find herself in an abyss of uncertainty and wretchedness. She could not find the life she was looking for. The reasons seem beyond her understanding.
For Kapoor, everything was perfect until she was married to Javed of Uri way back in 1985. That was the first time that Kapoor crossed the LoC, as a 14-year-old bride with countless dreams of a happy life in her eyes. But sufferings started dawning on her when her husband crossed over to
”Azad Kashmir” (the term used by Pakistanis to refer to the region that Indians call Pakistan Administered Kashmir) for arms training in 1990.
Waiting for Javed took two more years from Kapoor’s life. In 1992 she decided to find Javed and crossed back to the other side, but to her disappointment he was never traced again. Lala-ka-Ban seemed the only refuge for her.
After spending ten more years at her parent’s home Kapoor was remarried to another man, Yaqoob Mir, again a resident of this side of the LoC. But no sooner did she begin dreaming again for a better and stable life than a harsh revelation opened up in front of her. Yaqoob – whom Kapoor still claims to be her “everything” – turned out to be married man with six daughters. After being tormented by Yaqoob’s older daughters at his home in Indian Kashmir, Kapoor fled again. And while crossing over to the Pakistani side, she was arrested for the first time. Kapoor spent six months in jail and was eventually pushed back to her parents’ home in Pakistan Administered Kashmir.
But even here, the respite was short-lived. Her parents and brother urged her to go back to Yaqoob as their marriage had not been ceremonially annulled. Kapoor, not knowing what was happening to her, once again started on a cross-border journey that was going to fetch her nothing. This time, again, she was arrested. After completing her second sentence in 2006, Kapoor Jan was sent to the Uri Police Station to be pushed back to the Pakistani side once again but that never happened. Since then she lives there waiting only to die.
Kapoor Jan in 2009. Photo by author.
Kapoor Jan, now 40, looks much beyond her age. I visited her again last week. Nothing really has changed about her conditions from 2006. She continues to live in the same tin shed, even in chilling temperatures. It’s where she performs all her daily rituals: she eats, sleeps and uses the same room as a latrine. There are a few policewomen who look after for her whenever they get the time, women who deserve many thanks for her survival.
But still, a lot of things have changed below the indifferent surface. Kapoor Jan has lost her mental balance. This time, she talks very little, in a voice barely audible, keeping her eyes fixed on the ground. There are long pauses, painful silences one needs a heart to understand. Sometimes,
she would ask all of a sudden, “Why didn’t Yaqoob come?” And you are left with no answer.
She still believes that she would again visit her birthplace. Sometimes her thoughts would go back to Lala ka Ban. She pronounces the name as “Lalay ka Ban”, a term that means the jungle of tulips. At one point she starts talking about her childhood friends and looks away as tears welled into her eyes, quite inevitably. She tries to laugh but cannot hide her tears.
Unable to understand the intricacies of politics, Kapoor keeps childishly asking me why she is living a life so difficult. Now with the growing hostility between India and Pakistan after Mumbai attacks, Kapoor’s dream of going back to Lala ka Ban may remain a dream forever.
I am yet to understand who is responsible for Kapoor’s ruin – Javed, her parents, Yaqoob or the governments of India and Pakistan who created and continue to shed blood along this imaginary line, only to tear apart people’s lives. India and Pakistan may be proud of their Swadeshi nukes and may claim to defend their 1.2 billion people with full might. But the story of this “border queen” puts a question mark on the capabilities of both the countries to give their citizens a basic life of dignity.
Kapoor may not look the world in the face again. She may meet her end in the same windowless tin shed which has become her world. Living to a ripe old age means many more years of loneliness and pain and she doesn’t wish for it. I think both India and Pakistan are responsible for Kapoor’s ruin as they neither sent, not accepted her back. Because they could, if they would.
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