In Kashmir, A Job Letter Arrives But The Mother Who Prayed For It Is Gone

Srinagar: All her life, Nargis Begum had dreamt of seeing her children secure government jobs. But when the appointment letter for the same arrived for her elder son, Saqib Bashir Khan, it was met with grief, not celebrations at their home in Uri village near the Line of Control (LoC) in north Kashmir, over 100 kilometres from the capital city.

“It renewed memories of our ‘mamma’. She was our world, but she is no longer there to see her dream coming true,” said Saqib. “She would offer prayers and fast for the day I would appear in exams for a government job. But we never expected the job would come as compensation for our mother’s death,” he said.

Nargis was among 16 people killed in cross-border shelling in Jammu and Kashmir in a fierce four-day armed confrontation between India and Pakistan from May 7. The government offered Rs 10 lakh monetary compensation for each family, and Home Minister Amit Shah personally distributed appointment letters to their families in Jammu's Poonch on May 30.

“We all know that compensation and government jobs cannot compensate for the damage that has been done to your lives,” said Shah, who travelled to Jammu’s Poonch after ‘Operation Sindoor’.

The military operation in retaliation for a terror attack in Kashmir’s Pahalgam that killed 26 people on April 22 struck terror camps inside Pakistan.

“However, it (compensation/appointment letters) is just to express the feelings of the Jammu and Kashmir government, Centre and people of India that we are with you,” the home minister added.

For more than six years, the family of eight had been struggling after their father’s health deteriorated, leaving them under debt of Rs 5 lakh, said Saqib.

“The daily earnings dropped as my daddy could not work every day as a daily wage labourer due to multiple health issues, including diabetes. My mother worked as a cook for a local school, earning a mere Rs 1000 to sustain the family. But with her death, our family has crashed,” he said.

In 2019, poverty forced Saqib to abandon studies beyond class 12 as the family could not afford the annual college fee. From walnut cleaning to construction labourer, he would pick daily wage work to sustain expenses until what he calls ‘a new beginning’ in April 2025.

For the first 25 days in April, Saqib said he worked as a dishwasher at a leading hotel in Srinagar. But he, alongside hundreds of workers from the hospitality sector, was laid off following the sharp decline in the arrival of tourists to Kashmir following the Pahalgam terror attack.

“But I never stopped applying for lower positions in both civil and Police departments,” said the 27-year-old, who is busy completing paperwork to formally join as a multipurpose worker in the J&K Animal Husbandry department.

“The compensation can give us regular income, and we can return our Rs 5 lakh bank loan incurred on our second sister’s marriage. But we are not happy. Happiness died the day we lost our mother. We were better off in poverty in the presence of our mother,” Saqib added.

Almost 15 kilometres from the highly militarised Line of Control in north Kashmir, Uri’s Razarvani village, falling along the main road, was among several border villages hit by mortar shells from Pakistan. Nearly a month later, the village is living under uncertainty with gaping cracks on concrete walls and damaged rooftops still evoking fear.

Residents like 52-year-old Zahid Hussain in Uri, who has been leading prayers at a local mosque for the last over three decades, said he has never seen this kind of intense shelling from Pakistan. “Many shells landed in our village. But we stayed indoors all those days while others fled their homes,” he said.

The Khan family was among hundreds of villagers from the borders to relocate to far-off, relatively safer places across Jammu and Kashmir. Saqib said their family locked their one-storey house and boarded two vehicles under the cover of darkness late evening to escape heavy shelling on May 8.

“My aunt, mother and sisters boarded one car. We followed them in another car,” said Saqib. A few kilometres into the journey towards Baramulla, a shell had hit the car in which his mother was travelling.

“A shell grievously damaged my mother’s jaw and throat, while a splinter hit the head of my cousin. The women were crying for help in the vehicle as my mother was bleeding profusely. But she could not survive till arriving at the hospital,” he said.

At that time, Saqib was accompanying his father, who had been left disabled by multiple lifestyle diseases, including diabetes. Fearing the shock would aggravate their father’s health, the family kept the death hidden from the father-son duo until the next morning, said Abrar Khan, his second son and a class 12 student.

“Now we are worried about Daddy. He developed diabetic foot due to uncontrollable sugar levels after our Mamma’s death,” said Abrar, with doctors advising amputation of his fingers. “There is none to look after us after him.”

Read More

1. Life Between Hope And Havoc: Uri Residents In Kashmir Hit By Shelling Flee Homes
2. Peace Returns To Poonch, But Madrassa Zia-ul-Uloom Grieves Qari Muhammad Iqbal's Death In Pakistan Shelling
3. Operation Sindoor: How The Indian Army Displayed Technological Supremacy Against Pakistan’s Aggression In Jammu Kashmir