Grim Messenger
WE were in the telegraph office in Srinagar on the army base. I was trying to get through to Delhi to get them to give instructions to give me permission to get into Kargil. The usual hustle and scramble any reporter does to get in. A soldier walked in. Dusty and battle-worn. He looked exhausted, red-eyed, traumatised. He gave four names. Their families had to be informed with the standard telegram. A telegram none of the families would want to open. They'd know from the envelope. Four dead comrades. Four bodies. His friends. He'd brought the four bodies back from Kargil in the usual black-flagged army truck. Raghu Rai, the photographer, was also hit by this soldier's pain. He offered him a chair. 'Yaar, baith to jao,' Raghu's low voice breaking. 'I can't sit. I can't eat. I can't drink. I can't do anything,' he whispered. We couldn't look at him. We couldn't swallow. We stopped breathing a bit. For us, that was the beginning of a life-changing experience of Kargil.
No Comment
SONMARG, the checkpoint where your permits are checked and a point you have to make before one o'clock or you get stuck behind the army convoy. The colonel was most gracious. Invited us into his tent, gave us tea and apologised for his 'field conditions' bathroom. To make inane conversation while waiting for our papers, I asked him: 'So how long have you been here?' 'That is a military question.' 'Sorry. How long do you think it will last?' 'That is a military question.' 'Oh! Do you think the Pakistanis will withdraw?' 'That is a military question.' 'Hmmm...Which was the last movie you saw?'
Just A Kid
IN Sanjak, Maj Sanjeev Dutt of 12 jakli, one of the heroes who captured Point 5203, spoke of Capt Amol Kalia, who was leading the assault from another area on Point 5203. 'We lost his radio contact and I prayed we'd only lost the radio contact, not the captain. But after we captured the peak, I found he had been shot,' the major said. 'What did you feel at the time?' 'He was my student in the Defence Academy. I told his parents on his graduation he would make a great officer. The first thing I will do when I get leave is to go meet his parents.' He pursed his lips tight and closed his eyes: 'He was just a kid.'
The Toughest Part
Capt Mridul Kumar Singh led his company in capturing three important peaks. His peers marvel he is still alive. 'What was the toughest part of your missions? Was it the rough climbing while being shot at, no food, restricted water etc.?' 'The toughest part was seeing my people die,' his lips quivered and he turned and walked away.
Madness Of War
ONE TV team, led by Uday Upadhaya, stayed five days and nights on a combat mission on a mountain. 'It was a kind of madness and I'd never do it again,' he said. He had witnessed incredible things. He saw Indian soldiers cut a Pakistani cable line from one mountain, take it down a valley and up another mountain. He was so stupored out, he forgot to shoot. 'They're doing crazy things. Hand-to-hand combat, one-to-one, like never before.'
A gossip campaign was under way about Barkha Dutt being responsible for deaths because of reporting while firing was going on. The common Indian viral epidemic of khar-itis had broken out because of her excellent reporting.
Adventurist journalists had created projects and assignments in order to grab the opportunity to report on the war-like. Not only journalists but every adventurist was there. Roop Chand, an artist, with a flowing white beard and hair, would sit in his white kurta-pajama and Kulu cap and sketch shells falling around the hotel.
The reporters who cajoled, manipulated and pushed got their stories. One or two considered themselves too senior and ended up bitching, 'Army ne hamari khatir nahin ki.' Losers. There is no question that because the J-T were able to move around in Kargil, interacting with officers and soldiers, India not only won but hammered the Pakistanis in the Information War.
The Media Army
THERE are only journalists and a handful of locals in Kargil. These journalists are a new breed. Tough, hard-core, hungry for stories. There's a choice of two hotels. Siachen Hotel, renowned far and wide for its bed bugs and its added disadvantage of no food, and Hotel D'Zojila owned by Fida Ali and run single-handedly by Bodhnath, whose concept of cleaning a drinking glass is to scrape the dirt off and blow on it twice. In spite of the continuous shelling around the hotel, the same daal-chawal for every meal, high altitude-induced physical problems, no journalist ever whined. This war-life has evolved a new kind of journalist. They're risking their lives. Knowing they're not going to get any medals, their families will not be taken care of and no one will write glory stories about them. What they haven't reported or admitted to their editors is that Kargil is an almost unreportable war. Actual combat was on terrain which meant a 10-12 hour mountain climb at night. Not a hike or trek through forests on a narrow mountain path, but a climb on sheer rock, some of it at 70° angles. They would have to deal with high-altitude sickness, headaches, and breathlessness. To stay with a unit, a journalist would need extraordinary physical stamina and a mind of steel. The biggest hurdle would be to find a commander willing to take him. A few reporters did venture into areas of real combat but most of the reporting was done from visits to the army bases, talking with commanding officers and jawans. This isn't as simple as it reads. Getting to these bases meant 4-5 hour drives on narrow, kutcha roads carpeted with big stones. Getting to an operations room to interview an officer meant praying your car could take the steep climb and not roll back, the operations rooms being located in a dugout etched into mountains. Their reports were patched with press briefings and gossip. Except for the pti troop, the government media (which didn't make use of the advantage of easier access for them) sat in the hotel all day inventing their reports from the Journalist-Troops who'd return at night. The J-T would then spend the evenings trying on impossibly temperamental phone lines to get their stories through. Feel their panic. Stories they'd risked all to get could miss their organisation's deadline to make the morning newspapers.