We were the story, we didn't need any quotes

We were the story, we didn't need any quotes
MUZAMIL JALEEL

SRINAGAR, AUG 11: Death waits around the corner. For us in Kashmir, reporters who have to record this daily ritual, it has become our staple diet, our necessary thrill. For our colleagues outside, we are the ``lucky ones,'' we inhabit a veritable pasture of news, we graze at random, harvest fresh horrors.

But after years of reporting bloodshed, we have turned into robots. Like some twisted puppet, all keyed up, we rush to spots, talk to eyewitnesses and try to capture the story alive. But today, we were the story.

Fighting back tears and often giving up, we rushed to the hospital not to get quotes but to find whether our friends would live.

I was in my office, just 500 metres away, when there was a blast. A routine grenade, routine for Srinagar, we know it, by instinct. So with a visiting journalist friend, I ran to the spot. For the news-hungry, to be the first is usually thought to be the best. I was a minute late, I am alive.

When I arrived near the tiny alley flanked by a bank and small tailors' shops, Armymen were ducking as gunshots rained from all directions. I was at the gate of the State Bank of India when I saw two photojournalists crying and running towards me.

Everybody is lying dead, shouted Fayaz Kabli of Reuters. Shocked, he was unable to walk. Behind him, ANI's cameraman Bilal was crawling, blood dripping out of his hand and face. At the spot, bodies lay scattered. Not an uncommon sight, an improvised explosive device always creates such devastation.

However, when the police began taking the bodies away, their faces unrecognisable, I saw a camera on the street. The young man lying next to it was a familiar face. Pradeep Bhatia, The Hindustan Times

photographer had been hit by a flying shrapnel even before he could know what was going on.

Zee cameraman Irfan, the youngest in Srinagar's journalist family, was being carried by colleagues to a car as he too had been hit all over his body. Writhing in pain on the hospital bed, he fears amputation if not rushed to Delhi for immediate medical attention. In the hospital, a ward is full with injured journalists. The fellow photographers were crying, not clicking any pictures.

Pradeep had arrived in Srinagar just yesterday on an assignment. In fact, he had called five minutes before the incident to our office inquiring whether anything was going on. ``If there is any photo opportunity, please let me know,'' he had said. A minute before the blast, Pradeep had hugged Tauseef Mustafa of AFP. ``I clicked a few pictures and then left towards the bund. I had walked a dozen yards towards the rear bund when everything around shook. I looked back and saw a ball of fire going up with shrapnel raining all around,'' Tauseef said.

``I saw two policmen running with blood-soaked faces and torn uniforms. There was dust all around. I felt everything is over and all of us will die. I started crying. Pradeep was no more.''

After a few hours of running around hospitals I, accompanied by a few journalist friends, reached Police Control Room (PCR) to look for the bodies. Coffins were being prepared for the cops, with wailing relatives around the bodies. In a corner, a few journalists were sitting next to a body. There were no notebooks or cameras out. Nobody was asking how many had died. Today, the news had come home.