The untold story from the Kashmir Files

The drive through the falling dusk was quite bumpy. Somewhere we took a right turn. The jeep's engine protested loudly, with the climb getting tougher before we braked at the head of a hillock.

"Come, it is down there," a local guide who accompanied me pointed towards a valley that looked like a deep pool of melancholic silence, something like the traumatic last moment of people trapped in a frozen lake.

For, a few hundred metres below were hundreds of tents enveloped in pain and uncertainty. Small lamps struggled to stay alive like anaemic fireflies. Tarpaulin sheets fluttered in the breeze, exposing thousands of Kashmiri Pandits to vagaries of weather.

In this refugee camp, somewhere in the outskirts of Jammu, one could see fear in a handful of dust and trauma in each spoken word.

For me, it was the end of a weeklong search for a Pandit family -- the end of a journey that began beneath the canopy of a lush tree on the campus of NSS College, Changanassery, Kerala, some 3500 km away from where I stood in Jammu.

It was the summer of 1989. The journey began some ten days before destiny brought me to this assembly of hapless victims. And this was just one among the many camps where Kashmiri Hindus suffered a terrified, putrefied and ignored life were left orphaned.

We were in our teens doing a degree in English. We were exchanging sweet nothings and readying for a temporary adieu as I was leaving on a family trip to Jammu.

"What do you want from there?"

"Nothing. Just a small favour. Can you trace Sunita and Adil in Kashmir?"

Though I had never met Sunita Jotshi and Adil Farooq Gurcoo, students of Srinagar University, during their visit to Kerala on a youth exchange programme, both were very familiar from the words of Piush Antony, who was part of the programme.

And she always had a worried tone while mentioning that her letter chain with both had broken since Kashmir turned volatile.

"Will surely try," was my promise.

The mission -- that I chose to accept -- was in the pre-Internet, pre-email, pre-WhatsApp, pre-Instagram and the pre-digital, pre-social media era; something quite hard to visualise today. And even an STD facility was a luxury, with many homes having no phone connection. Yes, it was 1989.

Throughout the train journey, my mind turned into a drawing board where many possibilities were plotted to meet Sunita and Adil.

Image: (From Left to right) Adil, Sunita and Piush are seen in a group photograph at the cultural exchange programme between MG University and Srinagar University

We were headed for Akhnoor. Our relative in the Army was posted there. And in the first possible chance I could snatch with him, the request was placed.

"Are you out of your mind? No one can go there. Srinagar is literally out of the question. Enjoy your vacation in Jammu," he was categorical.

Following days saw me asking anyone who came across -- friends in the Army quarters, shopkeepers in Akhnoor, taxi drivers, et al. -- about possibilities.

Time and years that passed by have erased some of the finer details of my search. But I still remember that it was a Keralite soldier who helped me. He was in the Signals Corps. A few days later, he told me that was there was no trace of Sunita's family, who were into the carpet business. His friends posted in the area searched and found out that their house had been burnt down.

The factory building had been occupied by "some people". They got some vague idea about a camp in Jammu where the family had been moved. As luck would have it, we could find them in the second such camp. But the misery and struggle in both the camps were no different. It was worse than the worst of slums.

We had to hop across puddles of wastewater, which had literally formed slushy swamps at many places. There was a stench of sewerage waste. None of them had had a bath in days. Like naughty dust bundles, kids frolicked around.

There was only an abyss of sadness in women's eyes; each of them had lost someone special. Some lost a son, another her brother, some their partners.

There was pain in every pair of eyes. And simmering sorrow I saw in the eyes of Sunita's uncle Joshi still haunts me though many parts of the search and journey have withered away.

"Look at this," he showed me his chest. There were two deep scars in the X-shape. "This was a token warning. We could not risk it anymore. That is when we left everything behind and ran away," he said, running hands through his receding hairline.

At that moment, Sunitha came in from somewhere. "From Kerala? Were you in the cultural exchange programme organised by the Mahatma Gandhi University?..." She kept posing many questions.

I showed her the group photo and said Piush was my friend and classmate. Her eyes welled up. Pasting a painful smile, she thanked me.

"Adil? No idea. Many Muslim youths also left Srinagar as they were forced to join terrorist groups. They did not want to be part of any such group. We know many Muslim families who send their youth out of the Valley. Adil would never have joined any group. He must be safe somewhere," Sunita said.

I still remember Sunita squatting with a notebook and writing a short letter for Piush. There was only one lamp in that tent where six or seven family members found shelter.

It was getting dark. We had to leave. My local friends had started raising safety concerns. We climbed our way up through the fading darkness with her letter safely in my pocket.

I still remember the one last look I took at the camp shrouded in the dark dust cloud. There were weak sounds talking, but voices were muffled like silent screams from a thousand souls ensnared and orphaned in their own motherland.

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