As a reporter, I have first covered the struggle. I have run the delicate line that is quietly divided into different struggle areas. But in the last few days, what I saw in Rajouri, Jammu and Kashmir has been with me – not the sound of bullets, but the silence of a migration.
These migrant workers told me that the morning of Rajouri usually resonates with iron rods, bricks, bricks of people, bricks with brick. But this time, the rhythm was broken. Instead, fear of filling the wind was raw and heavy.
The line of control is always stressed, but recently, firing from across the border with Pakistan has been tireless – shells that remain calm of villages in Rajouri and Ponch. These border areas have always been on the shore, but what I saw was now different.
I saw people running away. silent. quickly. Without a plan. Not from their own homes, but from temporary people created by labor and hope.
In Jawahar Nagar, where hundreds of laborers from Bihar and Bengal live and work, exodus started at dawn.
I met Alam, a Mason Mohammad Intrak from Bengal. He went with a torn bag, pulling his belongings like a shadow behind him. His eyes were not with dust, but the nights of sleep were nervous. “My parents keep calling me, crying. Telling me,” Just save your life, son. You can earn later “,” He said, his throat is holding his throat on words. “
A few steps ahead, Mohammad Salik baffled his young daughter. He did nothing but his child. “What do you do next?” I asked “We haven’t thought. We just have to get out,” he replied, his voice is breaking. “We only want to live.”
This was the phrase I heard again and again- “We only want to live.”
Dilbar Alam, from Kindhganj in Bihar, stood near a closed shop with his colleagues. “We came to work … now we are running for our life,” he said, offering a weak smile. He had just started settling in the bus to get tea (tea), where the local contractor used to wait every morning. All of that now looks like another lifetime. Today, he is ignoring the land.
Another activist Kishan did not even decide how he would leave. “If we get a vehicle further, we will take it. Otherwise, we will walk,” he said. “We just need to get out.”
This is a matter of fear. It does not give you time to plan. It only tells you to run.
Mohammad Zahiruddin looked at the hills, where smoke is still penis from shelling. “This is the first time in Kashmir … and for the first time I ever felt so much fear,” he told me. “Every day there is shelling. I just want to survive.”
I have seen and heard a lot during my years in reporting. But these voices are different, humble, helplessly different. They did not come here in search of a fight. They came in search of a future.
Now they leave without money, no plan-to stay alive for a huge desire.
The administration says that it is establishing shelters, patrolling roads and providing security. But fear does not wait for assurance. There is a fear in the middle of the night with the sound of the mortar. It talks deeply in the eyes of children who do not understand why their toys are unnatural. It rests in the silence of the older men who have built homes for others, but now there is no one for themselves.
This is not just a story about the violation of the ceasefire, it is about those who helped build the houses in Kashmir, now disappeared from their landscape, leaving nothing, but a single echo of a shared prayer: “We just want to live.”
,Anurag Dwari is a resident editor, NDTV,
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
