“A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.”
— Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
“An aggressive war is the great crime against everything good in the world. A defensive war, which must necessarily turn to aggressive at the earliest moment, is the necessary great counter-crime. But never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead.”
—Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
When the rays of the sun fell on them, the glass shards emitted a strange, blinding light. It seemed like you were walking on embers. But this is Kashmir that normalises everything. It is a place that must make you numb, very careful and extremely on edge. This was the site of a “controlled blast” in the home of a suspected terrorist in Pulwama, on April 26, after 26 people had been killed by terrorists in Pahalgam four days earlier. Most of them were Hindu tourists, except one, a Muslim pony operator who tried to save the lives of the tourists and was killed.
The women in Moran village in Pulwama spent their entire morning on April 26 collecting glass shards that were everywhere, after the windows and doors blew out in what the police and security personnel called “controlled blasts” the previous night.
That라이브 바카라 the first thing you notice. A lot of glass shards. Transparent, green and blue. The second is the sound of these being crunched when you walk over them. The blast here was not so controlled after all. At least four houses were reduced to rubble. They said this was collateral damage. Windows and doors of many others shattered that night with the impact, while the residents were locked up in the nearby mosque. They had been evacuated in the evening and when the first blast didn’t cause enough damage, they went for the second, which is when everything was splintered. Three goats were buried under the rubble.
The third is the wailing of the women in a room in a house that was still standing. They had collected to mourn what was lost. Their homes.
In the rubble, if you looked closely, you’d find remains of everyday things. A box of porcelain cups, a red pheran, a suitcase full of wedding clothes. A young man was trying to make sense of it all. He was to get married on May 10. In a room that was all dust and broken bits of walls, a photo frame survived the intensity of the crackdown. It remained in its place. On top of the window pelmet. A black-and-white photo that showed the young man as a toddler with his parents and his brother. He had lost his parents when he was young and was brought here by his uncle. The 22-year-old is a daily wage labourer and had taken out a loan of five lakh rupees to rebuild his house where he would move in with his new wife. There would be no marriage now. Not at least on May 10. Recovery takes a long time. Sometimes, an eternity.
The young man showed everything with a precision that was unusual. He took out two pairs of shoes, dusted them and said that these were for his wedding. His house was next to the house of suspected Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) member Ehsan-ul-Haq at Murran; a 23-year-old, who residents said had disappeared in 2023 and nobody had seen him again. It is said that he joined the militancy and was a suspect in the Pulwama attack.
Demolitions as retaliation to Pahalgam
The demolitions started within 24 hours of the terror attack in Pahalgam, where 26 innocent people were killed. Overnight, hate campaigns began on social media. People became bloodthirsty. Nothing short of a war with Pakistan would satisfy the collective conscience of those who insisted that this was an attack on the Hindus and must be avenged.
The retaliation started with demolitions. Police sources said these local militants had joined LeT and the Hizbul Mujahideen.
The fourth thing you notice is the reluctance of anyone to talk. They said there would be repercussions. They’d get picked up in the night. This is Kashmir. There is a cost to pay.
“This is not right. This alienation has gone on for too long. We are not supporters of terrorism and we have condemned the terror attack and we know that there will be consequences that we will face from terrorists. But why demolish the houses of the poor and their neighbours? This will make more young men join the militancy,” one man said.
They sat there listlessly as spectators and the media thronged to the site. This is collateral damage.
In Tral, women had gathered as they always do. To mourn, to wail and to wait. The house that stood by the road and against the backdrop of mountains had been blasted the night before. But some doors and a few windows had remained in place. Once wasn’t enough, so the police came the next afternoon to assess the damage.
“We will send the photos to our seniors and then they will decide the next course,” one of the personnel said.
A television journalist was trying to figure out how to do a broadcast. He said they had been told to not speak with locals but show the damage and give their take.
“How is that a ground report?”
He shrugged.
The Pahalgam attack has made us angry and rightly so. But anger should not lead us into an abyss of hate. Revenge is not what we need.
The women said they will wait outside until dusk. They’d return the next day. In Kashmir, waiting is a state of being. On the night of April 26, the security forces blasted the house of the parents of Aamir Nazir, a militant in the Khasipora area of South Kashmir라이브 바카라 Tral. That night, a list of 14 terrorists in Kashmir Valley, eight belonging to LeT and three each from Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Hizbul Mujahideen who are “active,” was being circulated. Then, news of more blasts started coming in. Videos of smoke and fire came in.
War, War, War.
The noise has only grown by the hour. It has become unbearable. We have seen enough deaths and destruction over the last few days. We have seen enough rhetoric and no accountability. We have seen enough isolation and fear over the last few years. Thousands of buildings have been damaged in counter-insurgency operations in Kashmir.
***
Covering the Pahalgam attack
On the night of April 22, videos of the attack were out. You could see bodies scattered across the meadows. Gory, horrific and very difficult to watch. Our colleague said we should not post them. We decided not to carry any videos from the crime scene. We decided to be discerning in what we put out there in terms of quotes. These were conscious decisions because we live in an age of numbness and journalists know this well. We won’t fuel communal rage, we said. The horrific act doesn’t need any such angles. The perpetrators went on a rampage, killing innocent people. They wanted a particular narrative to be put out there, and some media outlets obliged. Terrorists don’t have any religion. Their religion is murder.
In today라이브 바카라 interconnected world, the role of the media becomes very crucial in shaping perceptions and narratives and its influence on communalism. We have a profound social responsibility when it comes to reporting. Communalism demands that religious identities become tools of political mobilisation. A tragedy should not be reported as a case of conflicting interests. By night, the cry for war got louder. On television, on social media. Revenge became a keyword. Television anchors, at least a few of them, started to delegitimise everything, including the Kashmir elections that happened last year. Nothing short of a war would work, they said. Media trials began by the evening of April 22. No restraint was exercised.
The dilemma for a magazine then is how do we report a terror attack. Do we resort to speculations? Do we become conspiracy theorists? Or do we retain our humanity in the face of such an inhuman act? How do we act responsibly?
How does one look at an image of a newlywed woman sitting next to the body of her murdered husband? How does one confront a loss like that?
She said they shot him in front of her.
A newsroom is a strange place. We don’t have pauses here. We have to continue to report, to confront such grief, to write about sadness that can’t ever be expressed.
We decided to respect the loss. Stand and wait until they are ready to talk, we said to the reporters. If they want to remain silent, leave.
Ever since the abrogation of Article 370 that granted Jammu & Kashmir autonomy, the region has suffered violence and blackouts and a strange restlessness that has only grown over the years since 2019.
The Pahalgam attack has made us angry and rightly so. But anger should not lead us into an abyss of hate.
The woman who lost her husband didn’t deserve any of this. The people whose homes have been demolished didn’t deserve this either.
Revenge is not what we need. We need answers to questions about the security lapse. We need dignity in reporting; we need empathy in reporting. We need to stop the noise and ask questions that matter, investigate more and not become warmongers.
This issue is an homage to those who were killed in the terror attack. This issue is a chronicle of those who are being rendered homeless because they are collateral damages in this war on terror. This issue is a space of voices that we must hear and not just dismiss.
This issue is a plea to stop the noise and report the facts.
We don’t want to tell the story of a war.
Chinki Sinha is Editor, 바카라 magazine
This article is part of 바카라라이브 바카라 May 11, 2025 issue, covering the Pahalgam terror attack and the old wounds it has reopened. It appeared in print as ‘The Night Of The Broken Glass'.
