Naseem the Gem

Naseem is no more in the usual sense.She shall however continue to live in the hearts and minds of all those who came in contact with her.She was a lively vibrant person who radiated happiness and joy all around.A gem of a person ,i knew her all along her life .We spent our childhood ,our adolescense and early years of our adulthood together till the time i married her younger sister and she was married to a cousin who lived in what is known as"Azad kashmir".We kashmiris being a miserable people have to be a divided people.Them there, we here ,they theirs ,we theirs, across the line of"control" who controls what, i never understood.Our contact with Naseem was now limitted to an occasional letter duly censored in the national interest on both sides of the "control"or a greeting card on a birth day.Contact via telephone was forbidden then and is forbidden now.She did come once or twice since 1978 the year of her marriage, her last visit being in1997.We, that is me my wife and my son were the last among the family to have visited her and that was in 2000 ,the occasion being the marriage of her first daughterUzma. I found Naseem in a new avtar .She had matured in to a gem of a person extremely confident and fully in control of her life.She exhuded a brilliance, an aura of vitality ,a hallo around her being,a crystal clear transparency within and an innocence without.She was happy in the real sense, basking in the warmth of love that Niaz,her husband showered ,love that her lovely children offered.Everything seemed to be so complete and so perfect as to be unreal and therefore not everlasting. Now i know it was not unreal but yes it was not everlasting.Naseem laid down her life,while saving children of the school where she worked at Muzaffarabad on 8th Oct2005.SHE EXELLED IN HER DEATH THE WAY SHE EXELLED INHER LIFE.