Bilal Ahmad Khanday:
Dard-e-dil ke waste paida kiya insaan ko,
Warna ta’at ke liye kuch kam na the karobariyan.
(Man was created to feel compassion for others’ pain;
for worship and obedience, the angels were not lacking.)
It was an ordinary day in June when one of my nephews from Soura called and asked me to accompany him to the District Court in Srinagar. Traffic Police had seized his vehicle two days earlier for some traffic violation. I drove to Soura to pick him up, and we reached the court by 11 in the morning. As anyone who has dealt with courts knows, the procedures are lengthy and cumbersome; we were finally freed by 5 in the evening after obtaining the release order from the concerned magistrate.
We then rushed to District Police Lines Budgam, where the vehicle had been kept in custody by the Budgam Police, as it had been seized at Humhama Chowk. The moment we arrived, we were stopped by the concerned official—we were short of one legal document, the Gate Pass, which we had to obtain from the Traffic Police Rural Kashmir. We were exhausted, but we resolved to reach the PCR as soon as possible to get the pass, for it was already quite late. Here, to our good fortune, despite the clock reading 6:30 p.m., the officials were still in office. The PCR was abuzz with hundreds of officials, their PSOs, and the vehicles that ferry them, as some higher official was taking stock of the security situation ahead of Ashura. Somehow, we obtained the pass by 7 in the evening and hurried back to DPL Budgam. Finally, after some formalities, we got the vehicle released when the clock read almost 7:30 p.m.
Now, here began the real ordeal.
The moment we tried to start the vehicle, it failed. To our dismay, we discovered that the traffic cop had probably forgotten to switch off the lights, which had completely drained the battery. As it was already very late, we decided to push the vehicle out of the DPL gate. After a few minutes of hard toil, we succeeded and reached the outside of the gate. We paused for a moment, heaved a sigh of relief, and tried to think calmly about our next move. I waved at several passing vehicles, but to our misfortune, none stopped.
This scene was being quietly observed from a distance by a nearby electronics shop owner named Akeel Khan, who introduced himself later when he came over to ask what had happened. He approached us and asked, in a sober and gentle tone, what was wrong with the vehicle. I replied that the battery was probably dead because the lights had been left on by the official. After listening to the tale of hardships we had faced throughout the day, he consoled us, saying not to worry. “Everything will be alright soon. Stay calm and patient,” he said, pulling down the shutters of one of his shops. He entered the adjoining shop and returned with pliers and some pieces of wire. “Let me see what has happened to the car,” he said.
He examined the car meticulously, like a professional mechanic, for a couple of minutes, then declared, “Battery chu dead”—”The battery is dead.” Without wasting a minute, he told my nephew to follow him. I stopped my nephew and handed him his phone, which he had left in the car. Then they left and went to a nearby street. I was now deeply worried, somehow feeling the loneliness, as the clock read almost 9:30 p.m.
A few minutes later, they returned with a battery and two pieces of wire. Akeel, single-handedly, connected the wires to the two terminals of the car battery and joined them to the terminals of the battery he had brought. He told us to rest, as we were dead tired, and urged us to get something to eat from a nearby restaurant, even offering us some money, thinking that we might be short of cash. We did not go; instead, we stayed with him to see how he fixed the car. Unfortunately, the battery he had brought was also discharged. His next move was to bring his own car from somewhere nearby within minutes, intending to connect the terminals with the wire. But destiny had something else in store for us: the wire was too short to reach the front of his car, where the battery was fixed, as his was a heavy vehicle—probably a top-model Fortuner.
He did not give up. Instead, he called one of his acquaintances to bring his car to the spot where we had been stranded for the last few hours. Shortly, his friend arrived. Akeel joined him, and together they worked to fix our car as quickly as possible, for it was already very late. The clock read almost 10 at night.
A few minutes later, the car was finally fixed, thanks to the laborious efforts of Akeel and his friend. What moved me most throughout this entire episode were the selfless, tireless efforts of a complete stranger—someone who did not even know who we were or where we were from. He helped us for the sake of humanity alone. Akeel’s altruism left an indelible mark on my personality and on my perceptions about a society in which the majority thinks only of vested interests.
Since that day, my perception of people has changed profoundly. I have come to realize that there are good and bad people in every society. If bad people make a society fragile and weak, good people, on the contrary, make it worth living in.
In conclusion, I salute good people in general, and Akeel in particular, with whom society remains intact and humanity endures.
