Jammu ,June 1990 : Kashmiri Pandits in the Snake-Bite and Heat-Stroke Ward, GMC Jammu
They had come from a cool climate. They had lived their whole lives in the valley where summer evenings brought a breeze from the mountains, where nights remained bearable, where shade was plentiful, where water was cold from the spring, where the body had never been taught to endure the burning plains. In June 1990, they walked on the roads of Jammu when the temperature rose to 43 degrees Celsius. They had never experienced this heat. They had never walked in it. They had never waited in it. They had never stood in queues in it. They had never slept in it. They had never been forced to live in it without a roof, without a fan, without cold water, without rest. The heat did not come as weather. It came as punishment. It came as a second exile. It swept them. It struck the old first. It struck the frail first. It struck those whose bodies were already tired from the uprootment journey, from fear, from hunger, from sleepless nights. The elderly men and women who had left their homes with little more than a bundle of clothes found themselves walking from office to office under a sky that rained fire. They walked to the banks to see whether their accounts had been transferred. They walked to the relief office to see whether their names had been entered. They walked to Geeta Bhawan to see whether their dear ones could be located. They walked because no one came to them. They walked because no list was complete. They walked because no system was ready. It was confusion. It was disorder. It was a city unprepared for their arrival and a people unprepared for the city. The sun beat down on their heads. The tar melted under their feet. The air burned their lungs. Their sweat soaked clothes stuck to their bodies. Their mouths dried. Their legs trembled. Their eyes blurred. A high temperature seized them. Vertigo seized them. Loss of faculties seized them. They forgot why they had come out. They collapsed on roadsides. They collapsed outside offices. They collapsed in queues. They were carried to hospitals by strangers. They were carried by sons who were themselves exhausted. They were carried by neighbours who had become family in the camps. The wards filled.In one week, twenty-one died in hospitals. In one week, seven died in one ward alone. The numbers were not statistics. They were fathers. They were mothers. They were grandmothers who had told stories by the hearth. They were grandfathers who had tended orchards and taught in schools. They were men and women who had survived a lifetime in Kashmir only to die of heat in Jammu.
The Government issued advisories. The advisories asked people to stay indoors. The advisories asked people to drink water. The advisories asked people to avoid the sun. But the exiles had no indoors to stay in. They had tents put on open lands. The tents trapped the heat. The tents offered no shade from the sides. The tents turned into ovens by noon. The ground beneath them burned. The air inside them did not move. Children and old people gasped inside them. At night, the heat did not leave. It stayed in the earth. It stayed in the canvas. It stayed in the body.
And at night, another terror came. Snakes came out of the fields. Snakes came out of the open land where the tents had been pitched. Snakes stung many. Many died of these bites. The bites came without warning. They came in darkness. They came while people slept on the ground. They came while mothers held children close. A cry rose in the night. A leg swelled. A face turned pale. Breath grew short. The body went cold and then hot. The victim was rushed to GMC Jammu. GMC Jammu had many coming with deadly snake bites. The casualty ward saw them through the nights. The doctors saw them without rest. The nurses saw them without pause. The antidote was brought on priority. It was brought because lives could not wait for procedure.
At the same time, the heat-stroke cases also kept coming. The hospital had no time to choose between one tragedy and another. Ice slabs were brought into the hospital. Ice slabs were laid on the floor. Elderly Pandits were put on ice slabs to save them from deadly heat strokes. Their bodies burned with fever. Their skin burned to the touch. Their pulse raced. Their breathing failed. The ice cooled them slowly. Rarely did any person who saw that scene forget it. Rarely did any doctor who worked that night speak of it without pain. Rarely did any family that stood beside a slab of ice believe that this was the fate of a people who had lived with dignity in their own homes. The old men who had once walked with pride in Srinagar lay motionless on ice. The old women who had once kept homes, kitchens, shrines and courtyards lay with wet cloths on their foreheads. Their hands were wrinkled. Their feet were cracked from walking on hot roads. Their eyes were closed. Many did not recover . The ward became a place of waiting. It became a place of prayer. It became a place where the sound of a monitor was the sound of hope. Families waited outside. They waited without food. They waited without shelter. They waited for a word from the doctor. The city outside continued. Traffic moved. Shops opened. Offices functioned. But inside GMC Jammu, time had stopped for the exiles.
Inside those wards, the whole story of 1990 was written in bodies. It was written in heat. It was written in venom. It was written in exhaustion. It was written in the silence of those who had no one to complain to. No one had planned for this. No one had imagined that a people who had fled for their lives would die not of bullets but of sun and snakes. No one had imagined that tents would become furnaces. No one had imagined that open land would become a field of danger. Yet it happened. It happened in June. It happened in July. It happened when the summer was at its cruelest. It happened when help was slowest. The tragedy was not only in death. It was in the manner of death. A man who had lived eighty years died without a room. A woman who had raised five children died without a fan. A couple who had never left the valley died within days of each other in different wards.
The memories of those days did not fade. They stayed in the minds of those who carried bodies. They stayed in the minds of those who held ice to a father's forehead. They stayed in the minds of those who watched a mother shiver on a slab of ice. Time may heal wounds but memories are stubborn. They do not vanish. They return in summer. They return when the temperature crosses forty. They return when a snake is seen near a house. They return when a hospital siren sounds. They return when an old person complains of dizziness. For years, this tragedy remained untold.
For years, this subject remained unfilmed. Other filmmakers chose to ignore it. Other films chose easier stories. Other cameras turned away from the ward. Kudos to Maharaj Shah for showing this tragic aspect in his film Azadi made in October 2026. It is the first film to depict this tragedy. It is the first film to take the camera inside the heat and the fear. It is the first film to show the ice slabs. It is the first film to show the snake-bite and heat stroke ward.Praise is due to the creative vision of Maharaj Shah, who saw what others did not see, who remembered what others chose to forget, and who gave the dead a place in memory that no advisory, no file and no relief list could ever give.
( Avtar Mota )
CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.
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