[Reader-list] Can Yoy Define My "GAON"

[Aditya Raj Kaul]

Monday, September 29, 2008  CAN YOU DEFINE MY
"GAON"<http://thusoosugandhi.blogspot.com/2008/09/can-you-define-my-gaon.html>
An
Article by a 13 year old Kashmiri, refugee in her own country.

Link - http://thusoosugandhi.blogspot.com/

Kindly comment on the blog

"All of us wait eagerly for our vacations just because of two major
reasons.Firstly we get a little relief from studies, secondly we get time to
visit our village.

I came to Chandigarh ten years before and joined my school when vacations
were very near.My friends inquired from me where my Gaon was.I was
speechless just because I never knew what the word Gaon meant?But as they
told me the definition of Gaon meant where all your relatives live and where
you go to spend your holidays.That very night i asked my parents and they
told me, we don't have a Gaon,we hail from a city.On asking,they told me it
is in Kashmir known as Srinagar,"Shall we go there?"was my instant
reaction.They said nothing as they thought I would forget after some days
but I didn't.

Whenever my father used to listen to any news about Kashmir, I used to be
dragged happily, towards the news as my Gaon's name came on TV.

But as the days passed, months and years went by, I grew up and understood
the real ground situation of my Gaon. I felt sad and helpless. My Gaon had
become a place of massacres,firings and bomb explosions killing thousands of
innocent people including old,young and small babies whose actual crime is
still unknown to me..

Many left their homes and hearths for good,and never looked back.I am one of
the children of those uprooted people who have become displaced in their own
country. Like me their children don't know their roots and the motherland of
their parents/grandparents. So the Gaon for me is just my imagination.

Today, I'm mature enough to define many things but I still don't know the
definition of my Gaon.

Can you define my "Gaon"?