#5thaugust

Credit: Mahdihussain23 (ig)

So it’s 4th of August, 2019. A year back from now, I remember exactly what happened. I was talking to my cousins and we were all discussing why so much army is being let into Kashmir, why have we been advised to stock up ration and other essentials. Fast forward to 11:55 pm, one of my cousins from Delhi texts me, asking me to download some movies so that I can watch them when the internet is snapped. I reply by telling her that we have wifi/broadbands, only the mobile internet gets snapped usually. She’s tells me to do it just to be on the safer side, I reply by writing “ok”. Suddenly the whatsapp shows the connecting sign and that “ok” is never sent. Internet stops. I call my friend to ask her if her net is working and we are in the middle of the conversation and the I can’t hear her anymore. I check the time, it’s 12:00, 5th August 2019. I’m shocked. I try switching my phone off and on again. No network. All the signal bars are gone. I go to sleep thinking “we’ve seen worse, it’ll be okay in 2,3 days”. Next day we wake up, switch on the tv since no phones or internet is working and we see the News channels showing the parliament of India. We see those ministers giving speeches of how this policy will bring “development” to our state. I’m still not sure what’s happening. I ask my mom, she has tears in her eyes. She says, “ They scrapped the article 370 and took away our statehood.” I’m still confused. What article? What statehood? How ? Why? So thats why they snapped all communication? That was the reason for the truck loads of army men? I go to check if the landline phone is working so I can call my cousin. Dead.

We can’t contact anyone. Anyone.

My flight back to college is booked for 18th August. I’m positive that everything will be fine by then. Nope. Nothing.

I leave. I go back to college. When I open the social media finally. Read about everything that has happened I’m in shock. I’m on my bed in the hostel room crying and crying. Nothing else. Just crying.

I wasn’t able to sleep for a week. At home with family everything seemed normal since we had no idea what’s happening outside and what the government of India has done. But Facebook, Twitter and everything else gave me an idea about how bad they fucked us up. I couldn’t sleep for a week. I couldn’t contact my family. They had to go to the DC office to make a call to me.

Now it’s 4 August 2020, curfew has been imposed. We are all at houses waiting for the phones to go out of network and our internet to be snapped again.

Deep down we know we how badly fucked up we are. But we’ve seen worse. So let’s see how 5th August turns to be.