Dateline Srinagar: Surviving Journalism In Kashmir

A few months into joining Indian Express over two decades ago, a friendly voice in the Newsroom asked if I knew 'ABC.' Of course, I did. He was my close friend and classmate in journalism school in Kashmir. It was not an unlikely question as I was far from home, and a fellow Ka🧸shmiri could enquire about another. However, I did not get the response I expected.

"He has been shot at and is critical; sꦜome say hꦅe might have even passed away,"

The last sentence seemed to come from a distance as I almost collapsed in my chair. He and a few other friends were interning with a local newspaper in Srinagar. We had barely finished our journalism course, and he wasn't even that 'big' a byline. His🌊 stories barely made it to the paper, and having 'enormous' implications was out of the question. Even Srinagar was relatively peaceful compar🎃ed to our childhood in the 1990s.

There were so many 'whys' in my head✅ that I needed to find answers to.

Cell phon𝕴es were the luxury of a sel♊ect few in Kashmir, as the government had not made mobile devices accessible to the general public in the state years after their advent in India.

The stoic and shy me was vacillating across the newsroom, asking people ꧟for updates. It was long before real-time news, and wires were still the only source of information. The vacuum in information had me howling and crying. Friends and colleagues tried to comfort me while making calls to find out more.

I also made failed attem♌pts to reach the landline number of the office concerned and the homes of other friends working there. After hours, my then-friend and now-husband ca🍒lled to inform us that our friend had survived.

The bullet fired at the back of his neck by a gunman posing as a delivery man had passed through his skull, piercing his no🌼se. It was a miracle, according to one of Delhi's top neurosurgeons, that the bullet had not caused any permanent damage.

My friend later joined one of India's most popular news networks🍸 and worked with them for decades. He was the recipient of many top awards, including the Ramnath Goenka Award, during his years of work.

While he says it was just the "hand of God that🔯 repurchased him from the de🦩ad", others were not lucky.

In the past decades, there have been attacks, blasts, many lives lost, and some miraculous escapes. Born and raised in Kashmir, I began seeing death when I was in Class VII. I can put hu🐽ndreds of faces to the names of those killed. One afternoon, almost three years after I had left Kashmir to work in Delhi, a casualty once again became not j✃ust a number—it was a beautiful young face with a sparkling smile.

Asiya Jeelani, a young journalist working with a human righ💧ts monitoring group in Srinagar, my senior in school and then my junior in the journalism department at Kashmir University, was killed whi𝕴le on a work assignment when a landmine blew up her taxi. Another colleague of hers lost his limb.

News of journalists losing their lives was not a rare occurrence; as children, we would hear di❀nner table talks about one newsman or another falling to bullets. The assailants are always unidentified gunmen.

As we grew, we understood what it meant when the news started hitting closer ho🐓me.

We were in school when my best friend's family shifted to her ancestral homꦇe on the outskirts of Srinagar from their residence in the press enclave after a journalist working with AFP died in a parcel bomb attack in the BBC office.

My best friend's father, also a renowned journalist, had his office a few feet away. The entire 1990s saw many such𓆏 killing𝕴s: the director of the state-owned Doordarshan, a television anchor working in the same network, the owner and editor of a newspaper, freelancers, and even a calligrapher with an Urdu daily.

While still in journalism school, news of a Hindustan Times journalist killed in a car bomb while covering an assignment made not just our🍸 parents wary but also had us question the choice of profession for a while.

During my🥀 initial years as a reporter in Delhi, covering health and visiting the swanky offices of renowned doctors made me feel guilty thinking about the fraternity, colleagues, and friends back home who had to fight bullets and batons every time they were out to cover a story.

Years later, when I went to ไhead t🦩he bureau of one of the most prominent newspapers in India, I got a first-hand feel of the danger.

Jo🐓urnaﷺlist, and that too a female, was not an easy designation.

I chose to go back to work in Srinagar for family support to raise my son, because "the situation" was supposedly getting better. However, being embedded in the m🔴ilieu of conflict reporting is never easy.

Every line you write, every photograph taken, every social media post can put you in har𝓀m's way. You can get hurt, arrested, or even killed.

My husband, a fellow journalist, would never take the same route to the office and back; he would take alternative routes if things got tough. Covering conflict impacts your life in more ways than one. It ta🌜kes a toll on your physical and mental health, and even your family is not immune.

🐠The fragile peace was not lasting and during the seven years I was stationed there, I saw four summers marred by protes🌸ts and killings, the most devastating flood that ever hit Kashmir, and the second phase of rise of home-grown militancy with young men joining militant ranks in hordes.

As a reporter, when you encounter death ever🃏y day for years, the initial shock and the welled-up eyes during assignments go away, and you gradually tend to get desensitised.

In 2016, as young boys and men were falling, the pressure of breaking news had me screaming across the newsroom, asking💛 for the numberꦐs of dead. At that time, it was just the "death toll" I was bothered about.

However, when the protests waned and Kashmir started limping back🥀 to normalcy, the fact that the dead were young boys, mostly in the age group of 15 to 25, hit me hard.

It was hard because I also lost an unborn child to the days of challenging bike rides through the pits and potholes in the na🎃rrow lanes and bylanes of Srinagar, to ꦯgive a miss to both the angry protestors and the security forces.

I wouldn't be able to close my eyes in the night. I slept with lights open for days, as my walls would appear splattered with red spots under the night lights. Whether the spotsꦆ signified the youth killed or my unborn child, which didn't grow beyond an empty shell in my womb, the trauma of covering Kashmir became unbearable after a while. I had to leave, so I did with the hope and prayer that no casualty figure should have a fac🥃e for me.

However, you canno🌄tꦇ stay lucky for long when your roots are in a conflict zone.

On June 14, 2018ꦐ, Shujaat Bukhari, editor of the Rising Kashmir, a much respected senior colleague, was shot dead outside his office in Press Enclave, Srinagar, by bike-born gunmen. A few days before Eid, the phone rang again, and I was told attackers fired from close range, and a critically injured Bukhari succumbed to his injuries in hospital. His two bodyguards were also killed in the attack.

The public killing of Bukhari was a devastating shock for those who knew him. Before this murder, the last journalist assassinat▨ion had happened a decade prior. The killing remains a mystery but it again highlighted the fact that for those covering Kashmir threats, assault, attacks and censorship are part of being a reporter in Kashmir