My Wanderings - 68. Short Story No. 48. An Untold Story from the Diary of a Doctor

Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure ,as Freud believed , or a quest  for power as Alfred Adler taught, but a search for meaning . The great task of man is to find   meaning in his or her life. There can be three sources of meaning in life as taught by  our  great Philosopher  in  Shrimat Baghwadgita   . We may find it in work , in love or in courage in difficult times . 
      It was   month of November in  year Nineteen Ninety , when I was living  in RajBagh locality of Srinagar all alone as my family had already shifted to Jammu due to turmoil. Not only my family but majority of the  people of my community had shifted to Jammu and various other safe quarters of the country . I being a Practising Doctor felt very safe because of my self less service to the masses in general and  people living around me in particular . 
One evening two persons called me at my  clinic and requested me to accompany them for visiting  a  Patient . They drove me in a car and it took us hours together to reach the destination.  It was by their indifferent   attitude and changed behaviour that I could very well guess ; I was kidnapped . They threw me in a dark cell and advised me to change my clothes . They provided me with  some dirty , torn and misfit clothes and took away my new suit and other valuables including my watch and wallet . I had also to exchange my new shoes for their  torn and misfit shoes. I could not have a wink of sleep that night in that dark cell with empty stomach as they could only  provide me a  scrap of bread in the name of meals. Next day early in the morning  I was made to walk through unknown paths , mountains and ravines for hours together to reach a new destination , being a bigger hut in some remote hemlet ,  where I could  notice a group o fifteen persons lying on the floor of hut  in torn shoes and dirty clothes . I soon gathered that they were also the kidnapped persons just like me . 
The men including myself were herded , sometimes to one place and then to another ,sometimes driven together , then apart like a flock of sheep with out a thought or will  of the our  own for months together.  A small but dangerous pack of jehadis  watched us  from all sides ,well versed in methods of torture and sadism. They drove the herd backwards and forwards , with shouts kicks and blows. And we the sheep thought of two things only how to evade these dogs and how to  get a little food.
We had lost everything our clothes, our shoes, our valuables ,our identity , even our professional recognition . We were only moving in   our frail bodies with a little life in them. They used to call us by nicknames which they had designed for us . We were rebuked and reprimanded for no fault of ours . It is very difficult for  outsider to grasp our condition or what we felt as prisoners . Most of men among us had lost hope of their release . They had turned indifferent . But few among us including myself had not lost hope . We were trying to find meaning in  our life . I was mostly thinking about my wife and kids and I wanted to meet  them again  because I loved them .   Therefore , i was not leaving any chance to keep myself  alive . Every thing that  was not connected with  an immediate task of keeping myself  alive lost its value . Everything was sacrificed to this end . A man's character became involved to the point that he was caught in a mental turmoil which threatened all the values he held and threw them in to doubt. Under the influence of a world which no longer recognised the value of human life and human dignity , which had robbed man of his will and having made him object to be exterminated . 
We could lie all night  in our little corner in the hut and doze and wait for the daily distribution of bread and for daily helping of soup , watered down and also decreased in quantity . While we laid our bodies  against each other to avoid any unnecessary loss of  warmth and were too lazy and disinterested to move a finger unnecessarily , we heard shrill whistles and shouts from the square where the  jehadis were entertaining themselves . Once the  door was flung open , and the snow storm blew into our hut. A new herd of people who had recently been kidnapped were flung in the hut. 
I kept thinking of endless little problems of our miserable life . I had terrible sores on my feet from wearing torn shoes . I ventured to move outside , I limped a few paces  with horrible pain  but very cold  bitter winds struck and  held me back . I used to  daydream about  my release and joining my family , this thought entertained me much and gave me a little relief . Love is the only way to grasp another   human being in the innermost core of his personality . I could find the meaning of my life in love for my family and constant  suffering . I could attribute my suffering to  my family members , who were safe and sound and compelled me to live for them .   Many prisoners had  become indifferent towards life . They had lost all hope. It was  that lot which perished most and died in transit, due to lack of will or because they had lost Intrest in life . Some of them became easy target to the guns of jehadis because of their indifferent attitude .    Almost eight of our co-prisoners died  before our release .
One day while trying to sleep  in our hut , we heard sounds of gunfire and shouts of our guards for hours together outside the hut.  It transpired that security forces had invaded the hide out and killed many of our guards and others  have escaped . We could not believe  our ears that we had been rescued by the security forces and we were free.  It took us lot of time to acknowledge our freedom ,