To "care" is Human

by Koushambi Mukherjee (India)

Making a local connection India

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It is rightly said that ' We don't take trips, trips take us'. Being a travel freak since childhood I feel travelling is the best way to shape one's personality and one can never grow fully unless he travels out of his comfort zone. The obsessive need of travelling runs our family. From childhood I learnt that travelling is the best way to overcome stress. So after my stressful board exams in 2012 my parents decided to take a trip to Kashmir valley. Now travelling to Kashmir has always been considered highly risky because of the continuous problem arising there due to political and terrorism issues, but we decided to take the risk. We reached the capital Srinagar one fine morning. Arrangements were made for us to stay in the lavishly decorated house-boats in the middle of the Dal lake. Food was provided by the owner and for all other things (drinking water as well), we had to travel to the shore using the small boats (shikaras) provided by the house boats. The day was awesome. The lofty mountain surrounding the lake, the sunshine reflecting in the little waves of the lake water and the occasional appearances of clouds proved to us why this place is called 'The paradise on the Earth'. In the evening, the vendors reached to us in the house boats by their shikaras with the hot teas, local ice creams (gulbadan) and vivid collection of junk jewelleries. The family of the owner of the house boat stayed therein, and their kids joined us in all these merriment. Though we didn't understand one another's language much, we ended up having a good time. The problem started at night. We heard sudden sounds of firing from the shore and came to know that some fight outbroke between the army and the miscreants. We were terrified because we were well aware of different stories of these miscreants not sparing the tourists as well. Above all these we didn't have drinking water. At that time, the owner of the houseboat, the chacha, came to our rescue. He asked us not to freak out and he would not let anything happen to us. He asked his sons to fill our bottles with drinking water from their kitchen. He requested us to go back to our rooms and try sleeping. Though we were somewhat assured, we couldn't sleep the whole night. But throughout the night we could sense the old man being alert. His sons came thrice to check on us and assured us. Next morning we were supposed to head towards our next destination Pahalgam. Early in the morning, one of chacha's son went to check if everything was fine in the shore and they arranged for us to leave towards Pahalgam in their known vehicles. Chacha gave his number to my dad and asked us to inform him as soon as we reach pahalgam safe. Not only that, he told us to call him if we were in trouble in any part of kashmir and if we ever decide to travel back to kashmir, his house boat should be our only go-to-go. My dad wanted to pay for the drinking water (which they had to buy at high prices) but chacha said we were his guests so it was his duty to help us and duty cannot be bought. Incidents like this remind us that, at the end of the day humanity wins. Though the political monsters might try to create differences based on religion and other issues and few people may become puppets in the hands of the war mongers, a large section of people still listen to their hearts. And as professor Dumbledore said, " We can come from different places and can speak in different tongue, but our heart beat as one".