by  Dr. K. Javeed Nayeem, MD

Last Sunday my wife and I went on a journey that we had wanted to undertake for the last thirteen years ever since she lost her brother who was serving in the army as an officer. Major S. M. K. Ghori, a former student of the Maharaja’s College here, laid down his life in the cause of the motherland while fighting insurgency in the forests of Baramulla District in the State of Jammu and Kashmir on 1st July 2001. Two of his most trusted men too went down fighting alongside him on that fateful evening. Four days later while we were waiting with all our grieving family members at the Bangalore Airport for his body to arrive, I told my wife that we should try and visit his unit not only to see where exactly he was serving when his end came but also as an act of homage to his sacrifice.

A trip to Kashmir somehow never materialised over the next thirteen years and finally when a chance came up last week in the form of a group tour with about a dozen doctors’ families, my wife and I felt that it was the right time for us to go there. Having finished our sight-seeing in and around Srinagar with the others members of our group we extended our stay by a further two days to accomplish what we had been looking forward to. Upon contacting the army top brass through my brother-in-law’s wife we were told that his unit was still stationed near Baramulla and arrangements would be made to allow us a visit.

Very soon a Colonel who was the chief of the unit called us up and said that he would be happy to show us around the place and also insisted that we stay back for lunch. We very politely declined this part of the invitation as we did not want to intrude on the time of officers and men who were expected to be in a state of operational readiness round-the-clock. However, we agreed to have a cup of tea with them without wasting much of their time. A friend in Srinagar who used to meet us every evening arranged for a trusted cab driver to drive us to our destination and back since he did not consider it safe for us to go there with an unknown person. As he was from the nearby town of Sopore where he had his ancestral house, he said that we should be his guests for lunch which would expose us to the traditional Kashmiri hospitality. This was a suggestion to which we readily agreed and left early in the morning. The drive from Srinagar towards the western border of the country was full of security bottlenecks with all vehicles being stopped and photographed by heavily armed men in combat readiness. The road lined on either side by tall poplar trees passed through some very fertile countryside, full of verdant apple orchards nourished by a maze of mountain streams with snow-clad hills in the not too distant background. The apparent tranquillity of the hills belied the turmoil that they have been witness to from time to time.

After a drive of about thirty kilometers from the town of Baramulla through some of the most remote and lonely stretches, we reached the army unit where we were welcomed with a warmth that we had never expected from men in uniform. The Colonel himself was standing with his deputy to receive us with fighting men’s iron handshakes and they escorted us to the drawing room of their barracks. It had a large life-sized portrait of my late brother-in-law on one of its walls since he was the only officer of the unit who had died in action since its inception while it had lost twenty-nine Jawans whose sacrifice was in no way less significant. Their photos too adorned another wall in a close cluster which perhaps was a reflection of the close ties they shared while they were alive.

The Colonel briefly told us about their life as soldiers and the uncertainty that comes with it. Later he himself drove us in his personal vehicle to the place from where we could see the hill across a lush valley at the base of which my brother-in-law and his men went down fighting. We stood in silence trying to visualise the final moments of their brave stand. Returning to the base we were a little surprised and even embarrassed to discover that the tea was almost a meal prepared and served by men in uniform in a manner that would have put the most talented hostess to shame.

We were then invited to stand alongside the painting of my brother-in-law and have a picture clicked as a keepsake of our visit which we did [see pic]. It was a very sentimental moment against which I had warned my wife well in advance and thankfully she put up a brave face.

After I signed the visitors’ book it was time once again for iron handshakes but this time to say goodbye. It was a very short drive to Sopore, a Spartan town with horse-drawn carriages and tin-roofed houses that seemed to have been frozen in a time warp like the rest of the Kashmiri countryside. The atmosphere seemed a little eerie as we found that every entry point was guarded by heavily armed soldiers alongside their armoured personnel carriers. We located our friend’s home which was tucked in a maze of narrow alleyways and were soon lost in another session of tea accompanied by some traditional Kashmiri snacks and dry fruits. The tea itself was a very distant cousin of what we drink here as it is salted instead of sugared. My host then suggested that he would take us for a traditional lunch to a resort overlooking the Wular Lake, the largest freshwater lake in Asia which was just a stone’s throw from his village. The breathtaking view from the place was something to be treasured forever in the mind’s e

ye. It is because of sights like this that Kashmir has come to be called a ‘Paradise on Earth’. After a hearty meal we parted company as it was time for us to get back to Srinagar. On the way back too we noticed unusually hectic military activity along the main road and on the outskirts of the town we even saw an ambulance and a large convoy of army vehicles parked around a house. We did not make much of it and reached Srinagar safely for a good night’s rest.

Early the next morning one of my friends who had been in our group and who had returned with the others a day earlier called me up from Mysore to tell me that Sopore had been the scene of a fierce gun-battle between security forces and insurgents the previous night. Since a civilian youth too was killed in the crossfire it appears there were widespread protests and an indefinite curfew had been imposed on the whole town with all roads completely blocked. Occurrences like these are a very common feature of life in Kashmir and the ensuing inconvenience is accepted as a normal part of living there. The whole of Monday and Tuesday, till we left Srinagar, life remained completely paralysed in the entire valley. My wife and I thanked God that we had been able to get away in the nick of time from what could have become a tricky situation blocking our exit. Our ‘Mission Kashmir’ had been accomplished at last !

e-mail: kjnmysore@rediffmail.com

source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home> Feature Articles / Friday – June 27th, 2014