Records of Divide

The records of this side of LoC are safe to a large extent compared to that of the PaK side. Sofi says, records of Poonch, Mendhar and Surankote are in a good shape, the Pakistani records have a problem. “Since nobody could touch them for all these decades because no application came pertaining of those records, it was easy for moths to chew them without ever being disrupted.” Some of these records, he said, are completely destroyed besides records of a few villages from Mendhar like Mankote, Mansai, Banwat. “I have already informed my seniors about that in black and white,” Sofi said.

The 2005 earthquake destroyed part of the Fort in which a precious library of an erstwhile Raja was destroyed to the extent that not even a single book could be retrieved. But now, the records will have to undergo a survival test. The district’s mini-secretariat is coming up in the periphery of the historic town.

“We will have to shift it and some of the documents will be touched for the first time,” Sofi said, adding, “It would be the real major task for us to ensure there is no damage and the new system is as user friendly as it is in the fort.”

Given their adherence to the old ways of keeping and accessing the records, the staff of the room is so efficient that they are able to get the particular records within a minute and the applications are disposed off within 30 minutes. Sofi is assisted by many of his junior colleagues in manual copying of the drawings.

The room has been kept dark on purpose. Sofi said, once when electric lights were fitted in the records room he registered his concern and got the electric supply snapped. “I took a strong note of it and took an application to the Deputy Commissioner that no land records room housed in such a complex can have electricity because it can trigger a short circuit and destroy records,” Sofi said. He and his staff usually use rechargeable hand held battery lights to navigate the room. Once they identify a particular missal, they take it out of the room and draft its copies on the fort balcony under sunlight.

There seem to be no plans to digitize these precious records. “Unless the ongoing settlement is over, I doubt we will be able to do it (digitization).”

While Sofi would lament over the moths and insects that have invaded the records, he would not even mention about rodents, usually a major threat to the records kept in a centuries old fort that remained mostly uninhabited after the 2005 earthquake.

“We are adequately protected from rodents thanks to the snakes,” Sofi said. Snakes, he said, have always been here in the Muhafiz Khana ever since it existed. “There are at least three different snakes that we know, who come outside and later return after moving around.” Never ever, Sofi asserts, did these reptiles attacked any of the officials working here. “We never felt bothered even about the species they belong to because they help us save the institution from rodents,” he said.