3
" We all are busy in our lives handling our homes, work, various issues, ailments and so on… sometimes we don’t have a second to spare even for our own selves, so caught up with life we are…But, despite our problems, despite the pressure of anything, despite all kinds of challenges we face in our daily lives, if we can still just pause and stop to look at someone else’s problems, if we can just smile at the other person, believe me, we would have not only made someone’s day but will also feel that our own burden has become lesser and our problems may not appear to be that big after all! That’s the beauty of caring for others. Have you noticed how much at peace those people are who walk up to a perfect stranger and lend a helping hand, without being asked to and without expecting anything in return? That is what unconditional caring for others and helping others do to you. That is what service, good deeds and kindness do; they help the receiver as well as the giver. "
7
" There were six hundred thousand Indian troops in Kashmir but the pogrom of the pandits was not prevented, why was that. Three and a half lakhs
of human beings arrived in Jammu as displaced persons and for many months the government did not provide shelters or relief or even register
their names, why was that. When the government finally built camps it only allowed for six thousand families to remain in the state, dispersing the
others around the country where they would be invisible and impotent, why was that. The camps at Purkhoo, Muthi, Mishriwallah, Nagrota were built
on the banks and beds of nullahas, dry seasonal waterways, and when the water came the camps were flooded, why was that. The ministers of the
government made speeches about ethnic cleansing but the civil servants wrote one another memos saying that the pandits were simply internal
migrants whose displacement had been self-imposed, why was that. The tents provided for the refugees to live in were often uninspected and
leaking and the monsoon rains came through, why was that. When the one-room tenements called ORTs were built to replace the tents they too
leaked profusely, why was that. There was one bathroom per three hundred persons in many camps why was that and the medical dispensaries
lacked basic first-aid materials why was that and thousands of the displaced died because of inadequate food and shelter why was that maybe five
thousand deaths because of intense heat and humidity because of snake bites and gastroenteritis and dengue fever and stress diabetes and
kidney ailments and tuberculosis and psychoneurosis and there was not a single health survey conducted by the government why was that and the
pandits of Kashmir were left to rot in their slum camps, to rot while the army and the insurgency fought over the bloodied and broken valley, to
dream of return, to die while dreaming of return, to die after the dream of return died so that they could not even die dreaming of it, why was that why
was that why was that why was that why was that. "
― Salman Rushdie , Shalimar the Clown