THE AFTERMATH

Custodial killings, detentions and demolitions haunt a mourning Kashmir

- JATINDER KAUR TUR

IT WAS SOMETHING the family could never seemingly live down. Twelve years ago, Talib Lali—Dilshada’s husband and the brother of Amina Begum and Altaf—had been arrested. Investigative agencies claimed that Talib was a major financier for the militant outfit Hizbul Mujahideen. Since then, he has spent more than a decade in Delhi’s Tihar Jail as the case drags on. The family knows little about the proceedings. They are rarely able to visit Delhi to meet him. They cannot afford the trip, except when they get lifts from the vehicles of the Red Cross that pass through the dusty road between Bandipora and Srinagar and onwards to the national capital. During the meetings, the conversations tend to be quotidian.

Talib’s arrest has left two children without their father. His brother Altaf has four children to feed; Amina, eight. Dilshada embroidered pashmina shawls. “Depending on the time left after all the chores”—it was a towering joint-family home—“and my state of mind, I can take a few days to finish one shawl,” she told me. The shawls would be sold to eager tourists, at boutiques in the neighbouring cities. The income was meagre, but her own, unlike the earnings from the cherry and apple trees behind their house. Those added to Altaf’s income from buying and selling sheep to the other Gujjar denizens of Ajas, their village overlooking the Wular Lake and perched on the shoulders of the mountains at the northern perimeter of the Kashmir Valley.