Source: tribuneindia.com
Why Kashmiri Parents Stopped Telling Bedtime Stories
To Their Children?
The
phone rang. My wife, Nidhi, was on the line. We were at a refugee camp for
Kashmiri Pandits and staying with some of the children and their parents.
“Rajat,
the children do not want to go to sleep. They have shared many incidents from
their life and now they are asking me….,” my wife’s voice became blurred as I heard
a loud laughter.
Earlier
in the day, the girls had shared with us their growing up in a small and congested
room with no privacy. They had shared being mocked by residents around the camp
who called them ‘campwalas’ (those living in a camp) and passed nasty comments.
They talked of being discriminated against in their schools, market for being refugees.
“Please
stay here for a night if you want to understand what we go through everyday.” Nidhi
and I had decided to spend a night after their request. Nidhi decided to share a
room with some of the girls, I with the boys.
The
thought of going back to our hotel’s comfort after a long and tiring day and a
grueling workshop was alluring but their appeal had held us back.
The
camp surrounded by a brick kiln throwing fumes wasn’t exactly a dream place to spend
the night but little did we realize it will teach us a lesson we will never
forget.
“What
are they asking you?” I asked her. “Can’t you tell them they have school
tomorrow and need to sleep? We do that
to our own child every day,” I told her.
“They
are pleading with me, asking me tell them a story as a condition for going to
sleep. I told them that uncle will tell you one tomorrow but they are saying
call uncle here and ask him to tell us right now. One of the mothers is saying
they haven’t seen this behavior before.” Then she asked, “Aren’t the boys doing
something similar?”
“They
are fast sleep,” I told her. “We discussed cricket, Sachin Tendulkar and why Indian
cricket team is not in form and the gym they have built up. That was the end of
it.”
My
mind went through the day’s workshop in slow motion. Our team of psychologists
and art therapists had conducted a workshop. The children had expressed many
themes, their families running away in the middle of the night, their fear that
they will be raped (the slogan that blared from mosques was that leave your
women behind in Kashmir to create Pakistan) and their humiliations of being
refugees in their own country, I thought as I walked towards their room.
I
had thought a story or two would suffice. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
After exhausting my stories of ‘panchatantra’, stories from the epics, they had
fallen asleep as we switched of the lights and I went back. Two of the girls
had laid their heads on my wife’s lap during the story telling. Some of the
mothers had stayed awake watching their daughters’ unusual request.
One
of the mothers shared they had always kept the lights on while they slept.
Darkness was terrifying for the children and even the families. Almost all families
slept with the lights on.
Why
do we tell bedtime stories to our children? Bedtime stories are a universal
feature of mankind and are rituals followed across all cultures. They have been
there since the beginning of human civilization. It is a ritual that as much
helps children as it does to parents. Parents want to give their children
something to last them through the dark night of separation. We want our
children to feel safe and loved and cared for. We impart our inner selves
during those moments of story telling to say the world is a safe place for them
to grow up. When there is a silence and stories stop from parents, children
know something is wrong. They guess, surmise and find out and create a meaning that
the world is not a safe place to be.
That
is why story telling is one of the first things that parents stop during a war or
after a mass exodus as a refugee. They stop telling children stories and they go
to sleep terrified often having nightmares and dreams. Massive trauma disrupts
the normal processes of our mind by flooding us with affects and experiences
that cannot be contained and they turn the world of stories upside down.
The
historian Haydon White once said that a narrative or story telling is as much
about culture as it is about humanness. Story telling is considered by social scientists
as a tool that translates knowing into telling and the way a culture transmits
its values to the next generation. Story telling teaches the child the capacity
to organize his inner world.
The
next day we asked some of the mothers why they had stopped telling stories to
their children. “Yes, we did tell stories when we lived in our homes in Kashmir
but ever since living in the camp we stopped. What story do we tell now?” one
of them they asked.
“There
are two stories here. One is of where the world was a safe place once upon a
time and things happened predictably. The present one is where we are alone after
facing atrocities, of rape, murder and loss of home.”
As
that morning progressed many women shared stories of being raped themselves. As
Nidhi listened to narratives of trauma after trauma we realized the women had
been silent about it.
“Why
didn’t you speak up?”
“When
we were running away, one of the police officers told me, “Go and lodge your
case in India. This is Kashmir. If you try to lodge a case you will be raped
again,” one of the woman told her.
“What
about the men?”
“The
men carry a guilt and feel ashamed they had to run away and couldn’t stop the
attackers. They know they couldn’t protect.”
The
generation that followed the exodus carried those horrors within them. They
passed it on to the next generation on whom fell the task of healing their
parents and grandparents. They felt a loss of not just their homes but some
whose bodies were violated. This healing may take generations.
I
had asked one of the parents when will they tell stories again, she had said
after Article 370 is over and we go back to our homes with dignity. The first
step in healing is Justice.
For
the generation that ran away, their stories became fragmented, dissociated and got
lost. They began to keep secrets of what they went through. Whether it was sexual
assault or humiliation of families running away, it happened for only one reason.
They didn’t belong to the faith of the majority and refused to convert as a
condition for staying back in their homeland.
Will
the Kashmiri Hindus once again tell stories to their children now that Article 370
is over and abrogated? Will they build stories of resilience, of hope and courage
that will tell them the world is a safe place for their children and that India
cares for them, assuring them of a world where they will never have to run away
from their homes again?
Will
the Kashmiri Hindus of future add a story for their children and grandchildren to
describe what happened on 5th August 2019, a story of hope and new
beginning? A world where they can imagine living with respect and dignity as
equal citizens? A story that could lessen the horrors of 19th January
1990 and the years after that. We may not be able to restore to them what they have
lost, but we can say there is Justice and Hope and the world hasn’t forgotten
them.
Rajat
Mitra
Psychologist
and Author of ‘The Infidel Next Door’
Link for my book ‘The Infidel Next Door’ on Amazon.in
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Link for the book on
Garuda Publications
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