Srinagar: The Fire at Purkhoo camp engulfed everything that for decades the Kashmiri pandits had accumulated here in Jammu, everything they possessed after years.
Displaced and traumatized families lost whatever little they saved from the blaze. From the ashes, hope reared its head. The Ehsaas Foundation, an NGO based in Srinagar, did not back down to this challenge. Relief camps at Bohri Kadal were initiated, and volunteers from every nook and cranny surfaced.
Food and more food, blankets, and clothing, the feeling that they are not alone to lose everything all over again. What greater comfort over the physical support is knowing that they are not only to lose everything, and what the foundation assisted with were these things.
It is more than helping them. It is letting them realize that they are being watched and cared for and not forgotten.
Volunteers Zahoor Malik and Burhan Nazir said, “It has shaken us deep. Sometimes it feels like we are putting a bandage on a wound that would never stop bleeding; all we could do is give them a respite.”
Relief at Purkhoo Camp is not food and groceries, but the strength to face tomorrow. That is what it feels like in a world they claim to have let them down several times.
And then relief camps become symbols of unity and resilience in a strife-torn Kashmir that shows here that in Kashmir, amid ashes of hate, compassion remains.
