Floods and beyond: Local volunteers rise up to the occasion to help Kashmir recover

Srinagar, Sept 20: Not just army and disaster management teams, many local volunteers are also working day and night to help Kashmir recover from the wound left by the recent floods.

An NDTV report finds out that local volunteers, cutting across community and religion, have come out to help each other in Kashmir. Many local volunteers are working among children and elderly people, providing medical assistance and opening up mass kitchens, the article says. Youngsters from the area have been tirelessly working to provide help for the needy and local doctors have been providing medicines and services for free.

To help them recover from the trauma, children at the Jama Masjid in Hyderpora in Srinagar are provided art counseling everyday by local volunteers. It has been noted that most of the paintings made my the children has water, boats and rain as a major theme. Most of the kids lost their homes in the floods.

Floods opened a gate of freedom for Kashmiris with people allowed to move freely without having to fill up forms or be stopped by police and army.

The report quotes Arshad Mushtaq, a theatre personality from Srinagar who holds art therapy sessions, "The local people are sustaining Kashmir. So, this was really a period of freedom, where one didn't have checkpoints, where you didn't have people stopping you, where you didn't have forms to be filled, i-cards to be shown and machines to be used. This was people-to-people contact. This was heart-to-heart contact and this was definitely a dream come true. We definitely are going to see a stronger Kashmir after this--stronger with will, with passion and a heart which is very soft out there to help the needy."

The flood situation erased the barrier of religion too. The report quotes Ravinder Pal Singh, a pharmacist, "The Sikh Community doesn't look back. Guru Gobind Singh has told us Nischay kar apni jeet karo--when you have something in your heart that will be your jeet."

Oneindia News