KAshmIR floods: Loss of relations and emotions!

Dear all,

100 died, 200 died, 1000 died, 100000 died, millions of people lost….no houses..no food…no medicine…..what does this all means when disaster comes? Just material loss…or more than material loss…? Loss of relations…loss of emotions….I have no idea it would be re-gained or not… but my own story says not..!!!!

Hope all well with you all! Unfortunately everything is not going so well in India. In last one year we have seen 6 major disasters: Uttarakhand cloud burst, Odisha Floods, Andhra floods, Bihar Floods, UP floods and now Kashmir Floods…no idea how many more disasters we have to witness…but the good part in all these disasters Caritas India has not just played the role of a relief agency, but a role of agency being with community and feeling the pain of disaster.

Last year I was supposed to go for relief work in Uttarakhand, and my mother called me ( she was trying to call number of times and my phone was in silent mode and finally after her 11 missed calles I called her) and the first thing she said in Bhojpuri (my local dialect) ‘Vinod deka o uttarakhand mein dekahtar na..ka hil ba..is disaster dard deta hein ‘ means Disaster gives pain and there not only the loss of resources, but huge irreplaceable loss of emotions and relations. Further on I had pen down few lines on it and understanding the pain of disaster. While writing on Disaster I felt that , it’s easy to even re-construct, re-build, re-do losses of materials, but what about human emotions-are we able to re-gain it? Still question in my mind and still no answer….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on9zOWJRrz4 Almost 12 days back when I saw a sudden news of Kashmir flood , for me ( who has born in Kashmir) is bit shocking, because almost 100 years back my grandparents had left Kashmir because of militancy and settled on the Bank of Ganga river. And for Kashmir we keep on hearing news about how many died in militants attack, how many killed in Kargil war, how many bomb blast and...we hardly heard about flood in Kashmir and flood which has taken hundreds of life. Flood which has made millions of people homeless… was surprising and shocking for people like me and thinking when there will be everything good in this beautiful valley of Kashmir? Ya allah when …when ….

Latest report (news) states that Jammu and Kashmir is battling one of the worst floods in decades with rivers in the region in spate due to days of incessant rain. Over 200 people have died and thousands are stranded across the state, including Srinagar. The Army, IAF and NDRF are doing a massive round-the-clock rescue and relief operation, with 86 aircrafts and 30,000 troops.

Caritas India is one of the first civil society organization tried to reach in Kashmir valley, unfortunately our officer who has initially reached Shrinagar , has not able to go out of Shrinagar airport, because of excessive flood situation and had to return back. Soon Caritas India had constituted another team-with a base in Jammu to support of relief operations and now Caritas team is in Kashmir valley –not just engaged in relief work , but also sharing emotions and sentiments of affected people. In times of emergency, despite best efforts, many people feel left out. In Caritas, we believe in adding value to what the government is doing with an aim to minimize the gaps between people and available resources. This is the way of Caritas working !

I request you all to please follow every day updates about Kashmir floods on Caritas India facebook (https://www.facebook.com/caritasindia ). Every day or better we can say every third or fourth hour we are updating about Kashmir floods. Purpose is not to share what Caritas Is doing, but share the challenges and making public in comfort that Caritas is in ground with God’s blessings and try to minimize the havoc about Kashmir floods in general public.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=843831505641000

Let’s do not just read this mail, but think from a point of Kashmiri how each one of us as an individual and organizational could make Kashmir not just beautiful, but a happy valley and families like my family would one day happy to return back to valley!

Vinod Pandey