Muzamil Bhat

Sharmila Joshi

Editor

large_01-IMG_9925-MB.jpg

medium_01-IMG_9925-MB.jpg

small_01-IMG_9925-MB.jpg

thumbnail_01-IMG_9925-MB.jpg

01-IMG_9925-MB.jpg

Jigar Ded is used to loneliness. She lives alone in a wooden hut near her houseboat on a ghat in Srinagar’s Dal Lake. It’s been three decades since she lost her husband and then her son, long years during which she has faced many hardships alone.Still, she says, “In this life I’ve been living alone for 30 years, I’ve not seen such hardship as during this last year. After the shutdown, just as the tourists were starting to come, this corona came and then the lockdown, which has kept all of us caged.”When the government abrogated Article 370 in Kashmir on August 5, 2019, the shutdown that followed created widespread losses. “I have not seen a single customer since then,” says Jigar. An official advisory at the time that all non-locals must leave had meant all tourists too left the Valley. “It brought us crashing to the ground,&quot; she adds. &quot;It brought great losses to our business. It brought disaster to my already devastated life.” She recalls that devastation, her long plunge into loneliness, clearly: “It was my sister’s engagement ceremony and all of the family was together, singing and dancing in happiness,” says Jigar, who estimates she is in her 80s. “My husband, Ali Mohammad Thulla, came to me and complained about pain in his chest. And then, when I held him in my lap, I could feel his body getting cold… At that moment I felt like the whole sky fell on me.” Ali Mohammad, who was in his 50s, left behind Jigar and Manzoor, their only child, “to live with sorrow.” Manna, as Jigar calls her son, was just 17. And they had the family houseboat on which their livelihood depended, the four-room Indoora, parked just across a short bridge from their hut. “Whenever my son would leave to bring tourists to stay in our boat, he used to tell our neighbours to look after me because he knew I would cry for his father,” Jigar says, sitting in in the one-room hut on a bed, looking outside the door. Photos of her husband and son adorn the wooden walls.She was still struggling with the sorrow of losing Ali when Manzoor too passed away, seven months later. Jigar does not recall the date or cause, but believes it was the pain of losing his father that took away her young son.“My whole world was turned upside down in front of my eyes,” she says. “The two heroes of my life had left me all alone with a houseboat full of their memories.” These, she adds, “keep haunting me all the time. Due to my ailments, most of my memories have faded away, but those haunting me every day remain fresh.”

02-IMG_9927-MB.jpg

Some of these memories surface as we speak. “My Manna used to sleep on this bed,” she recalls. “He was a very mischievous boy. Being an only child, he was very possessive about us, his parents. I remember once we bought a new sofa without telling him, and when he got to know about it, he did not eat food that day until his father and I asked for his forgiveness. O Khuda, I miss my child!”Since then, Jigar Ded has been trying to survive entirely alone on the waters of the Dal Lake, drawing an income from the houseboat left behind by her husband. She would usually earn Rs. 15,000-20,000 a month during the tourism season, from April to August. But with last year’s shutdown and the loss of earnings, she faced another blow around two months after August 2019, when her long-term helper and keeper of the houseboat left. “I had an employee, Ghulam Rasool, who used to take care of visitors. He was like a son to me and he used to also take care of my boat and help me get food and other items from outside.”When Jigar could no longer afford to pay his salary of Rs. 4,500-5,000 per month (and he could not earn tips either from tourists), Ghulam Rasool left. “I dared not stop him from leaving me alone, he too has a family,” she says.With her advancing age, Jigar Ded is unable to move beyond her houseboat to work or fetch groceries from outside Dal Lake, and needs someone to bring these for her from the market. Usually, an old family friend helps with this, but sometimes she has to wait outside the houseboat for hours for help to come along. “I cannot force anyone to leave their work and do mine. All I can do is wait until someone comes to help,” she says. “Earlier, when I had money, people would bring stuff [easily],” she adds, “but now I sometimes have to try for long to get what I need because they think I am out of money and won’t pay them.”And now, for the first time in 30 years, Jigar Ded’s savings have nearly all been spent due to the two continuous lockdowns and with no tourists hiring her houseboat. So now she eats only one meal a day, instead of two – usually rice and dal for dinner, and only the local noon chai, salt tea, for lunch. At times, neighbours on Dal Lake drop off food packets at her hut or boat. “I would prefer dying of starvation than imploring people to grant me favours; it would bring a bad name to my Ali and Manna,” she says. “I am not blaming anyone, as the situation is the same for everyone right now. With these lockdowns, our business has come to a standstill, we don’t have any money left. It is not only me who has not seen a single customer since August last year, many houseboat owners and shikarawalas share my fate.” With winter fast approaching, Jigar Ded is worried if the houseboat will survive the cold, since she has no money for its maintenance. Whenever the weather turns bad now, she says she cannot sleep. “I fear that if it rains, what will I do? I fear that my houseboat will drown along with me because it needs a lot of repairs to survive this winter. I pray to Khuda that I get some customers before the winter turns harsh, so that I don’t lose my only way to survive and my Ali’s gift.”

03-IMG_9931-MB.jpg

04-IMG_9933-MB.jpg

05-IMG_9930-MB.jpg

06-IMG_9942-MB.jpg

07-IMG_9941-MB.jpg

08-IMG_9935-MB.jpg

09-IMG_9936-MB.jpg

10-IMG_9946-MB.jpg

The sorrows of Jigar Ded

ਜਿਗਰ ਦੇਦ ਦੇ ਦੁੱਖੜੇ

ജിഗർദേദിന്റെ ദുഃഖങ്ങൾ

জিগর দেদের দুঃখ গাথা

ஜிகர் டெட்டின் சோகங்கள்

ಜಿಗರ್‌ ದೇದ್‌ನ ವ್ಯಥೆ

ଜିଗର୍‌ ଦେଦ୍‌ଙ୍କ ଦୁଃଖ

जिगर देदची व्यथा

जिगर देद के दुख-दर्द

جگر دید کے دکھ درد

Srinagar

medium_MOBILE-COVER-IMAGE-MB-The sorrows of Jigar Ded.jpg

small_MOBILE-COVER-IMAGE-MB-The sorrows of Jigar Ded.jpg

thumbnail_MOBILE-COVER-IMAGE-MB-The sorrows of Jigar Ded.jpg

MOBILE-COVER-IMAGE-MB-The sorrows of Jigar Ded.jpg

At present, we can only accept donations in Indian rupees by Indian citizens. All donations made to the CounterMedia Trust are eligible for exemption under Section 80G of the Income Tax Act, 1961. Here is a copy of our exemption certificate.


India is bigger than New Delhi. And people need to know more about the rest of this vast nation.


Younger, media-saturated generations are growing up knowing little about their country, but a lot about the elites of a few metros and towns. For a narrowly-owned, commercially-driven media, the dumbing down of a nation is part of standard operating procedure. The last available data of the Centre for Media Studies (CMS, Delhi) show us that reports from New Delhi account for 66 per cent of news on the front pages of major dailies. The CMS data also found that just about 0.24 per cent of front page news came out of rural India. The TV channels are not much better.PARI exists to change that.We are a non-profit organisation. We publish under creative commons, and do not charge readers a subscription fee or put-up advertisements. Nothing is behind a paywall and we are completely free-to-access by anyone. We guard our independence and receive no direct grants from governments and corporations, nor any funding that could dictate our content. So, we are dependent on volunteer labour, donations from individuals, foundations and institutions that see value in independent and free media.PARI is changing the way Indian journalism reports and documents the rural.India is more than the elite of a few metros and towns. We report on rural lives and livelihoods, languages, communities, migrants and more. We need your help to pull off this most ambitious of Indian journalistic endeavours. The scale of this effort costs money. Donate generously - and spread the word about PARI.&nbsp;

Donate FAQs


Let’s get you acquainted

Welcome to PARI

All our content is, and will forever be free to consume. If you enjoy our work, you can support us by becoming a volunteer or by donating to help fund our work.

Want to republish this article? Please write to <a href="mailto:zahra@ruralindiaonline.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">zahra@ruralindiaonline.org</a> with a cc to <a href="mailto:namita@ruralindiaonline.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">namita@ruralindiaonline.org</a>

The sorrows of Jigar Ded

For decades, Jigar Ded has lived alone in a hut and houseboat full of memories on Srinagar's Dal Lake, after her husband and then her son died. But it's the hardships of the two lockdowns that have left her defeated

Related stories

A rain-scented walk in Sivagangai

Living on ravaged land

Biswas and the bamboos on his bike

Recycling energy, Godda style

Bhadels of Goa

Pookadai: still throbbing with morning life

Koli Kadlas

Malnourishment high among children of migrants: study

Wheels of the rural Indian West

Living Under a Red Cloud in Bellary

Vedla – earrings of the Maher community

Dreaming of water, drowning in debt

Kali: the dancer and his dreams

Farmer's diet worse than a convict's

In Yavatmal, life goes on

Suicides are about the living, not the dead

Death of a carpenter

Hoisa Shigmo!

Women farmers: weaving a life in Anantapur

Defiant in Dhinkia

Spice and all that's nice

Kerala's Green Army

The ‘jugaad’ not-a-mobile

Health as someone else's wealth

Calibrating in a Kudumbashree assembly unit