The bullet in the wall
It was close to midnight and 90-year-old Puro Devi was fast asleep on a small cot in the confines of her home. After weeks of continuous rain, the night was calm.
A loud bang on the iron gate affixed at the entrance to her front yard woke Puro up with a start. The creaking of the gate continued but Puro didn’t have the courage to get up from her cot. She knew what was happening. Loud thundering sounds had disrupted the night. The Pakistanis had violated ceasefire and the tiny village of Suchetgarh near the Border was caught in the fire once again.
She lay there unmoved. Her eyes wide open. “If I die today, it will be on my cot looking at the ceiling of my house but not while staring at the land of those Pakistanis,” said Mai, as she was fondly called by locals, to herself when a gush of air six inches above her chest took the breath out of her. A bullet cut right through the brick wall of her house and went above her. Mai’s eyes opened in shock at that instance, closed tightly as she hummed prayers in continuous repetition.
An hour later, four BSF jawans came and woke her up. “Mai! Are you okay?” “Yes, I’m fine. I don’t know. Something hit me I think. I’m not sure. I didn’t move from the bed. I was very scared. I thought today is my last,” Mai rattled out words so quickly that the jawans could barely understand the crude Pubjabi she spoke. The jawans searched the entire area. One of the four jawans stood in front of the bed and stared back at Mai. “Mai! There’s a bullet in the wall. It’s a miracle you’re alive,” tears came rolling down Mai’s eyes who had no idea what that gush of wind was.
This was the nth time Mai had experienced such gunfire. She lost her entire family due to continuous cross border firing and had only been waiting for the day when she would be shot as well.
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Yesterday I visited the Border near Jammu at the Octroi Post guarded by the BSF and then also strolled along the fencing to the small villages that have existed for decades now.
Several families stay at the border and can’t leave because that’s their home. Government won’t give them compensation if they leave and all they have is their farmland to earn a living. But the constant fear that they live in is inexplicable. They live on the edge, where they don’t even know if they’d have a family tomorrow or not.
It’s not the fear of death, but the fear of losing a loved one that has permanently clawed into their existence. Most of them have even rebuilt their homes over and over again because everytime there’s gun fire and heavy shelling, their houses are broken.
It’s nothing but heart wrenching to see these villagers who’ve learnt to live in fear, have witnessed bloodshed as a matter of fact and accepted loss as a way of life.
Originally published at http://iknoorkaur.wordpress.com on August 9, 2015.
