Rajouri, Jammu:
“You individuals are leaving, your work is completed – sure, anyway what’s the want of media folks right here now” – the sentence was dropped in passing, like an offhand remark. However it hit me like a stone. A lady worker on the lodge in Rajouri stated it to us. Her voice did not tremble. Her eyes did not blink. They had been nonetheless, nonetheless just like the mountains round her. However there was one thing in her gaze – unflinching, immovable – that pierced me.
Typically, reality does not shout. It simply stands there, quietly, making you cease in your tracks.
That second hasn’t left me. Not whereas I used to be filming, not whereas scripting this. And I do not suppose it ever will.
As a result of the query behind her phrases was not simply hers.
It belonged to Rajouri.
It belonged to Poonch.
It belonged to each face that did not make it to our screens.
Does Jammu and Kashmir solely exist in our headlines when there’s violence?
Have we, the so-called mainstream media, shrunk their lives right into a single lens – terrorism, border shelling, and battle with Pakistan?
In each village we went to – each charred wall, each shattered residence – these questions stood silently within the background.
They regarded again at me from the eyes of males like Devraj Sharma in Patrada Panchgrahi. He confirmed me what was left of his home – damaged bricks, a ceiling half-gone, a mattress blackened by fireplace. After which he requested, with nearly childlike honesty: “Will a spot within the media for someday rebuild this home?”
What do you say to that?
You nod. You swallow. You faux your digicam is simply too heavy to hold, simply so you do not have to reply. As a result of the reality.
In different villages, younger males got here to us, offended, betrayed. “You folks solely come when one thing burns or explodes,” one among them stated. “To you, this can be a breaking information. To us, it’s our life.”
And they’re proper.
For 5 days, we lived in dread. Drones buzzed by the skies at night time like ghost birds, shells echoing in valleys like a warped lullaby that drives away sleep. Every little thing in Poonch was shut.
In Rajouri, even our lodge emptied out. Solely two or three courageous staff remained, scrounging for meals, checking on us as if we had been their very own. It wasn’t only a story we had been masking – it was concern we had been respiratory.
Then Saturday night got here, and with it, a ceasefire.
A momentary silence – a collective exhale. A hopeful lull.
And but, as I sit again now, making an attempt to jot down about all of it…
It isn’t the sound of explosions that echoes inside me.
It’s that one voice – calm, drained, unmoved: “What’s the want of media folks right here now…”
As a result of past the bullet factors of shelling, past the figures and the political reactions, there’s a reality we not often inform – that this land isn’t just struggle and demise. Additionally it is longing, and ready, and resilience so profound that it humbles you.
Kids nonetheless draw with damaged crayons on partitions which may fall tomorrow. Elders nonetheless sit in sunlit verandas, sipping tea, speaking of the times when all borders had been imaginary.
And labourers, poor, exhausted, return to their properties in Bihar and Bengal, forsaking shattered goals, as a result of the shelling has made even survival unsure.
Sure, the administration is making an attempt.
Sure, bunkers are being ready.
Sure, troopers are doing what they need to.
However what in regards to the tales that do not fireplace bullets?
Who will inform them?
Will we come again when there isn’t any struggle?
Will we return when peace is the one factor to report?
I haven’t got a prepared reply. However I carry the query with me now – like a wound that should keep open, so I always remember. So none of us neglect.
(Anurag Dwary is a Resident Editor, NDTV)
Disclaimer: These are the private opinions of the creator
