Srinagar, January 29, 2021: The Bakerwals said that due to the pandemic, they could not earn sufficient enough to travel back to Rajouri and other Jammu region areas due to weather conditions while the authorities may not be able to electrify our tents or provide us piped water, but at least they could have given us the blankets or woollens to help us fight these harsh winters” in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
Zareena is throwing pieces of wood on the glowing embers in her mud chullah (clay stove) inside a tarpaulin tent pitched on the foothills of snow-topped Wasturwan right outside the campus of Islamic University of Science and Technology (IUST) in south Kashmir’s Awantiora area of IIOJK.
Frozen to the bone, her 4-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter are sitting near the chullah trying to keep themselves warm. “We are used to harsh weather conditions but this year it is too cold,” says Zareena.
Zareena gets antsy and cuddles her children as she begins talking about the death of two children of a nomadic Bakerwal family due to the intense cold in Kulgam district two weeks ago. “They too were living in a tent like we are,” Zareena says while letting out a deep sigh.
“How the family would have buried its two children in less than two days, I shudder to think! The thought makes me go weak in the knee,” Zareena adds.
According to Zareena, her husband’s top priority was not to arrange food for the family, but to fetch firewood to keep the chullah burning throughout the night.
Although Zareena herself is not dressed up warmly, she has bundled her children up in woollens to protect them from the bone-deep chill.
Belonging to nomadic Bakerwal tribe, Zareena along with her husband and children could not return to Rajouri in Jammu division as part of their seasonal migration ahead of winter owing to the lack of money.
“Due to the pandemic, I could not earn sufficient enough to travel back to Rajouri,” says her husband, Mohammad Aroof who does menial jobs at construction sites.
The Bakerwals are the goat and sheep herders who trek with livestock between plains and alpine pastures. The family of Aroof, however, owns only a single goat. “We are badly off. Many of our cattle perished over the years and now we are left with a single goat, which feeds milk to my small children”, said Aroof.
Some 8 to 10 families are putting up in black, yellow and blue tarpaulin tents in the area. A well-nigh similar scene could be seen in other shelters in the area.
Shabir Ahmad, 28, and his wife are sitting with their knees drawn up to their chin on a thick worn out mat in front of a burning chullah in their tent.“It is the chullah that keeps us alive in this frosty winter otherwise we would have frozen to death”, says Ahmad.
Some women of the community said that they had to slog several meters through the snow to fetch the water. “Government may not be able to electrify our tents or provide us piped water, but at least they could have given us the blankets or woollens to help us fight these harsh winters”, says a woman.
She says that it could have made a huge difference if locals or the university students would have donated them their cast-offs. source GK