The rose and the fire in its last lap around it

Status quo can be easily carried. It can be dragged. A slow fire can smolder over a long period of time, before bursting into flames. But flames have to die fast; they cannot go on at the slow pace of cold wars. So actual wars chuck out their own selves very easily. Intrigues but can drag on for months, years and decades, like they have been dragging in Kashmir since independence. Things picked up for a possible conclusion after 1989. After the eruption of violence, again there was a lean period, when Kashmiris had languorous dreams of Azadi, ISI counted their chances and laid out more elaborate schemes, and India tried to convince itself that Kashmir indeed is an inseparable part.

In the status-quoist mode, the issue can drag for another two decades, and another two, because that’s its nature. It sustains, it persists. It stays like that dull pain that allows you to carry through the day, staying there in the subconscious, and then striking now and then to claim the fact of its existence. Clear cut fractures don’t persist, because they aren’t tolerable, they cripple. It plops out. Either they stay or you. It’s either you or them. In status quo, all exist, and struggle through mildly painful air. Full blown pain forces us to stop somewhere.  

Well, it’s a point of no return for India. A belligerent India cannot accept the idea of independent Kashmir even if the whole world turns against it. It’s final. Period. And with India’s growing stature at the international level, and Pakistan getting isolated, American’s need for India as a buffer against China, it’s almost impossible that Kashmir issue will get too much of support internationally. But then simmering status quo again is bleeding India at many levels. Its feet get a drag.

Somehow the recent flare up, the real fire instead of the suffocating, irritating smoke, will drag the issue to a fast conclusion. Because how long a fire will burn? It eats itself. The only chance for the fire to survive in the long run is in smoldering slowly, taking rationed sips from the fodder of issues. So the burnout will stop. Well, unless India allows the post-burn hiatus to again turn into simmering status quo like it happened after 1996, when violence plummeted down after touching its bloody peak.

A fire is bound to burn to its finish. Hate can persist, but not all out bloodletting. Hate will persist for centuries, but real actions of violence have to meet their bloody end. The violence in Kashmir has touched a new high. If it goes on increasing, it will become irrelevant after some time. At least Kashmiris, if not India and Pakistan, will realize the futility of it because they are the people involved with real flesh and blood in the issue, the two other entities are the bloodless and boneless states. Peace will appear a good option then. What else can show the true colors of peace than the bloody colors of war? Wasn’t UN born from the ashes of two world wars?

The paradise is burning. It could have gone on smoldering for decades. But is that life? Stone pelting, mass protests, pellet guns, civilian casualties, blinded teenagers, missing youths, every Kashmiri on the boil with stone in hand and with a sense that they are giving their best for freedom. The worse it gets, the brighter it burns, the good it turns for India. Fire eats itself in the long run, it will stop on its own ashes. It will be worst for the present Kashmiri generation, but good for the next one that will build their lives afresh on the ashes of burnt dreams, and still better for India to come out of the status quo. It’s another matter if you can really celebrate a swanky house built on a mass grave. If you can, then you have all the right to feel victorious.

The flare has picked up to its conclusion. As the last of the crazy souls leap into it, holding to the most futile idea of independence, as the paradise gets wilted, as the heaven turns to hell, fiery tongues lollop higher, only to be crashed onto their own ashes.

Status quo is tolerable, even with incidents of violence here and there. But a full throttle fire has to die down. It dies when it has consumed everything. As they say, death is the beginning of birth. Let’s hope for a new beginning.