Previous dusk’s flash came from silent neighbourhood of Srinagar’s Zakoora. It didn’t take forces much time to kill a guerrilla from Zewan and sent his body packing to his hometown only to trigger fresh mourning in Kashmir. By new dawn, Bilal Bahadur was amid mourners capturing the melancholic mood — Kashmir’s signature suffering
The fresh kill was Lashkar-e-Toiba member Sajad A Bhat, killed after forces acted on ‘characteristic’ tip-off, launched search Op in Tailbal’s Gusoo village before letting the guns to do rest of the talking. Back home, the torment badly derailed the mood.And all of the sudden, the lanes, bylanes, alleys of Zewan got flooded with mourners—shouldering Sajad to his final resting place. In an emotionally-charged atmosphere, mourners muffled how the young rebel left home a decade ago only to return a “martyr”.The womenfolk of this sleepy village left their homes and hearths behind for the day to match the footprints of men on streets. They pitch slogans to parching of their throats. Most never cease that sad streams coming from their eyes.It was a different photo-ops—where young and old competed to get the best shot of the son of the soil. Zewan, it seems, had plunged into the abyss of deep loss. Everyone was on their toes, to capture the ‘prized’ moment.And then, all of them stood tall inside Pampore’s Joinery Mill to offer the funeral prayers for the departed soul.What followed next, perhaps, needs no explanation—a signature confrontation between stone and smoke.Meanwhile, somewhere on the street, outside Sajad’s home, this kin of his was watching her brother’s funeral being blurred from her eyesight.
