Snow

Mummy! It is snowing! I cried.

Yes, it was just like that fairy tale.

Just like that dream.

The picture had indeed frozen.

Little snowy pearls in front of the great green conifer whirls.

With frozen snow islands at the tree feet

and the big brown mountain beneath.

They stopped and smiled,

Dazed perhaps by their own beauty.

I stood there too, in open mouthed wonder,

Thanking the Lord.

I had finally been blessed.

Blessed, as I saw the first real falling snow of my life.

As I saw the true colours of my land, for once in my life.

So whats the big deal, you may say.

When a Kashmiri sees falling snow 13 years after she is born, it is big deal.

When a Kashmiri sees that snow from the window of a hotel room and not her own doorstep, it is a big deal.

When a Kashmiri is as much a tourist in Kashmir as a Canadian, it is a big deal.

And when the snow that should have been the most routine part of your life comes as an out-of-world-surprise, you wonder what else you must have lost.

What other parts of you lie dead and buried in that soil.

The war against my identity seemed to have won;

I will always be an incomplete soul.

But the missing parts, ironically, have also been my link.

Because though today I don’t own an inch of land in my land, as long as that soil has my dead remains, Kashmir will be mine and I shall live.

- Radhika Koul is a high school student here in New Delhi. She can be reached at radhika.koul@gmail.com