As only 16 days are left until we complete a year of the August siege, and are still under continuous lockdown, the internet restricted from full speed, I thought i’d write a thread about my experience, and I hope you all will as well below.

I wasn’t in Kashmir when the article was revoked, I was in Dehradun for an MUN conference. It was the last day of the conference, and the students of my school and me were sitting at the table in a hall(1/n)

The notification bell rang on one of my friends’ phone, it said “article 370 and 35A revoked: Amit Shah” at first I really couldn’t believe it, I had to open my phone separately to see if it was, and to my surprise, it was.(2/n)

My mind couldn’t process anything happening at that time, I just wanted to get in contact with my family, but that wasn’t possible. My sister had messaged me the same day at like 2 am in the morning saying they’ve shut down the internet(3/n)

And the calling services, I thought this was just another one of their shutdowns at that time, didn’t think much of it, we as Kashmiris have seen this all our lives so it didn’t really surprise me. So when I got the news of the abrogation, knowing that the calling services(4/n)

didn’t work, I started calling all of my family out of panic, I was paranoid, I was anxious, my mind wasn’t functioning, I was having a breakdown, infront of hundreds of people. No one picked up my call, I felt alone, I felt helpless(5/n)

Once I calmed down, there was this boy from WELHAM that screamed in utter joy “hahaha Kashmir hamara hogaya” hearing this, I couldn’t control my anger and started abhsing him infront of everyone, trilingually.(6/n)

He was then removed from the hall and we were taken outside to calm down by the teachers and other staff members, I was at the verge of crying, my eyes couldn’t hold it much longer and I started to cry, it was not something that i’d experienced before(7/n)

After the ceremony, in which I got 3rd position, we left as early as we could. In the hotel there was a sense of paranoia in everyone of the students. We’d heard from somewhere that the roads were going to be closed, the airport would be closed(8/n)

We thought we had no where to go, almost everyone was crying, thinking about Kashmir, their Kashmir, and their families, it was literal mental torture, I cannot think of the absolute mental torment the people that live outside Kashmir, because even for that one day(9/n)

when I couldn’t contact my family, I was broken. Back at the hotel, we planned to go to Delhi by bus and stay there until the situation calmed down, and then go to srinagar. But in the end we just wanted to go home, and we did, we reached home the next day and (10/n)

Kashmir was a zombieland, no one but the army ruling over the roads like over lords in a dystopian future, it was scary to say the least. The next month was spent at home doing literally nothing, contemplating and sometimes playing cricket, but never going out(11/n)

When the Landlines opened up, it was like a breath of relief, it felt like the world was only limited to our landlines, of course, it was the only way we could communicate with our relatives and what not(12/n)

the future was uncertain, we didn’t know what was going to happen because we didn’t have the internet that told us the news, we just had the propagandist Indian news channels and Barkha Dutt filming apples that somehow became the symbol for normalcy(?)(13/n)

The next two months were the most mentally torturous months i’d ever spent, it was like we were in prison, well, we were and still are in a prison, and it messed everyone’s mental health, and I mean everyone’s, literal torture(14/n)

When the calling services opened up, it was like the world was limited to out phones only. I would call up my friends and that somehow improved how I felt, but it felt like these services were given to us by the government as a grant, like they allowed us to(15/n)

it felt like we owed them something, it felt wrong feeling happy in a situation like this.(16/n)

This happened a year ago, and we are still under lockdown, in our homes with businesses shut and the economy of Kashmir crumbling down; the settler colonialism is increasingly becoming more and more apparent(n/n)