By: Mudasir Maqbool, Chief Reporter, ICN
PULWAMA: Wahibugh village, which is situated on banks of Romeshi rivulet in South Kashmir’s Pulwama district, is setting a impeccable example of communal harmony. In this village, which is 5 kms from district headquarters, ailing Paray Lal Pandita, who is head of one among 7 Kashmiri Hindu families locally known as Pandits, believes that the whole village is his family. This belief was tested and reaffirmed after Paray Lal got bedridden.
“I was detected as a patient of diabetes 10 years ago and 3 years back suffered a stroke due to which I lost my eyesight,” Paray Lal told ICN, lying on a sick-bed in his modest two storey house in Wahibugh. He had undergone a surgery but couldn’t regain his eyesight. “There is hardly any sight in one of my eyes and the other eye has very feeble sight “, he further added. Though, he has an obedient son to look after him but he found his Muslim friend Bashir Ahmad Dar as crutch. Whenever he is bored inside his sick bed and desires to go for a walk around the village, he sends a word to his Muslim friend, Bashir, who comes rushing within no time.
Bashir holds his hand and walks with him around the village. When people meet them in the way and they pay customary greetings to Paray Lal, Bashir helps him to decipher who is paying the greetings.
“It is not only me who helps Paray Lal to walk around, whenever I am not present at home, he calls up my brothers or anyone from the Muslim community who make themselves present at once,” Bashir said, adding with him he enjoys the walk and feels at ease than others.
“Here I feel all villagers are members of my family but I have a strong attachment with Bashir,” Paray Lal said, adding that he not only walks with him around the village but also accompany him to Srinagar whenever he has a consultation with his doctor.
“Bashir supports me on one side and my son on other side while walking into doctors’ cabin in Srinagar,” Paray Lal said.
Paray Lal, a retired branch manager in Indian Postal Department, said that he had friendly relation with Bashir, who is a farmer, for many years but the relation became intimate after he became diabetic.
Bashir and other Muslim neighbours of Paray Lal live decent lives these days. Bashir narrates that years ago they were living in poverty and often would face shortage of finance to marry their wards. Those days, it was Paray Lal’s father, a kind-hearted landlord, who would lend a helping hand to such parents.”Not one or two he helped dozens of Muslim families in kind and cash to marry their wards,” Bashir said, adding that such was his nature that he never ever confided it to his family members that he had helped Muslim families but when he passed away the families who were helped by him revealed it themselves.
Paray Lal treaded the same path before he was bedridden, he used to spend his part time resolving land disputes or family disputes among Muslims.
“They have more faith in me than members of their own community,” Paray Lal said, adding he also used to give free of cost tuition classes to Muslim kids from class 10th to 12th.
“Here we live in complete harmony and feel we are made for each other,” he said. A true tale of secular India from the valley, when the lynching mobs kept attacking and abusing Kashmiri students after Pulwama terror attack.
