Healing drug abusers is not a circus!

He is barely 21, maybe 22. With a beard yet to fill in. Height still growing. He wears ripped jeans in the name of fashion. Drives an electrical auto to earn a living. His days unfold in the bustling lanes of old Srinagar. His name is Jamshed.

From a distance, he seems like any other cool, young lad, tossing around humorous remarks like sprinkles on a cake. With a heart as wide as the sky, he wouldn’t mind giving you his blood if you asked. He calls everyone with a loving suffix ‘Saab’, and people adore him, albeit with a strange caveat. None really loves him behind his back.

God knows what evil eye befell him. Wherever you see him, he is half-high and half in his senses – stoned most of the day. Seeking the welfare of the people with contorted visage and raspy voices: a picture both tragic and tears-worthy.

I was startled the day he asked me for an ‘injection’, insulin type. We don’t have a patient battling diabetes, so I told him I had none. I didn’t have the guts to say much, lest he should get violent. His eyes were desperate. Hands quivering. Voice slurred. He left as quickly as he came to me. And he now lives his life this way – everyday.

This isn’t fiction. It’s not an opener for an article. It’s real and raw.

Introduce some person living remotely to this case; they will curse him. No second thoughts given. No sound suggestions worth offering. No empathy. Immature thinking, animalistic analysis, and harsh resolve – these big three have become our trademarks now. We are the perfect version of the ‘Terminator Three’, but at least the robotic human could analyze. We don’t even try.

How many seminars and campaigns have we held to raise awareness about drug abuse and its implications? Thousands. How many of them have been successful in metamorphosing a drug abuser into a healed, whole being? Hardly any. Therefore, for a problem as sensitive as this, trivial formalities and showboating don’t work. It’s not a circus.

Politicians, along with civil society members and bureaucrats, gather in a ground studded with overhead banners, 24-carat microphones and glittering lights. No way there is any scratch on a podium. Not a chance medium quality juice is served; only ones either imported from ‘Videsh’ or of the highest quality made in India. Everything looks perfect except for the purpose.

How do we expect to heal the ‘dryness’ and ‘drowning’ of our society when we are so thirsty for applause, ego-pleasing speeches? I haven’t seen a politician – or their equals – visit the family of a drug abuser, let alone the addict to keep a check on them, and offer real help. We are a doomed nation, rotting with an appetite to prove ‘Me-Hoon.’

Enter the police, and the narrative spins. Headlines saying so-and-so drug peddlers are arrested by the police have become a routine now. And it’s something commendable. However, seen closely and the crack appears, hinting at the other complexity: the inability to weed out the big shots consigning drugs to the drug sellers. It’s enigmatic enough to implode my neurons.

Where are we failing in crushing the legs of these evil, disease-selling monsters? Why can’t we dig past the surface into the deep rot? Or at least use the surface as a yardstick to track the chain of people engaged with the malevolent, profitable business? Why can’t we reach the devil(s) using peddlers as rooks and users as pawns? Kingpins remain in shadow and untouched: safe.

These are hard questions, needing deep thinking, intelligent teamwork, and concrete efforts. Something seemingly missing.

Jamshed is ruining himself. His sense of agency is gone. His mind clouded. He will ask God one day why he was neglected. Why did people from AC rooms scribble ‘say-no-to-drugs’ slogans when they could have done something real.

And that little boy – younger than Jamshed, tipsy in the broad daylight, and abandoned – he will ask, too: why didn’t anyone care for him. He was too young to understand drugs. Too drunk to find his footing.

Chills come down my spine as I recall their anxious faces. A tragedy!