J&K: Poet’s collection gutted at encounter site

Srinagar: Kashmir is a land of many tragedies.  For the over seven million population of the otherwise scenic Valley, the past 30 years in particular have been terrible. Thousands of people lost their lives in violence and many more were maimed.

Amid the hard times, also lost were what their owners would proudly value as their “treasure troves”.  The latest victim of blight is Madhosh Balhami, a poet and author, who lives at Balhama on the outskirts of Jammu and Kashmir’s summer capital Srinagar. On March 15, a group of three militants targeted the police guards of a local BJP leader Dr. Anwar Khan while he was on a visit of an institution in Balhama neighbourhood. A policeman sustained minor bullet injury in the sneak attack. In the retaliatory fire, one of the assailants was also injured. He along with two others fled the scene and then ran into the Balhami’s house, a beautifully designed structure made of timber and exposed bricks and devri stones.   “I was sitting in the lawn of my house writing some verses when three gunmen barged in. One of them who was in injured condition quickly vanished. The two others apologised for forcing their entry into their premises. They sought my forgiveness perhaps because they knew what was in store for them andfor me and my family,” said Balhami. The gunmen were being pursued by reinforcements from the J&K police’s counterinsurgency Special Operations Group (SOG), the Army and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). They quickly laid siege to Balhama and then zeroed in on the house of Ghulam Muhammad Bhat who uses Madhosh Balhami as his nom de plume. Ahead of the encounter between the holed up militants and the security forces, Balhami’s wife, two sons and daughter fled their home and took shelter in a neighbour’s house. Balhami too had to leave as guns began roaring soon.

The gun fight continued throughout night. With the first light next day all Balhami, his family members and neighbours could see were smouldering debris of what was until a few hours before a sweet home. The two-storey house had been built by Balhami’s father in 1967 and now all that had been left was  few broken walls pockmarked with bullet holes and soot and piles of broken bricks and concrete, ashes of the window and door frames and scalded tin sheets. All the three gunmen were lying dead under the smouldering debris.

The security forces had in their final assault against the militants used artillery that not only killed the latter but also destroyed three decades’ worth of works of Balhami. Also reduced into ashes were hundreds of books and manuscripts which were part of Balhami’s personal library. These included two of poetry collections ‘Saday-e-Abu Zar’ and “Dard-e-Furqat’ and other works of this popular Kashmiri poet. “I had composed hundreds of nazm (Urdu poetry normally written in rhymed verse) depicting all major events that took place in Kashmir during the past three decades and was planning to public them in book form. These too vanished,” he said. As the area shook up with the heavy explosions of mortar shells fired by the security forces into Balhami’s, the poet watched it unfolding from a distance helplessly as he could do nothing to save his ‘treasure trove’. He said, “My heart was sinking not that because my home was being levelled but the poetry I had composed over the last three decades was vanishing with it.” Mr Balhami tried hard to find his unpublished poetic work but failed to retrieve any. “I’ve lost my life’s treasure, my poetry of past 30 years. Everything has been reduced to ashes,” he said.

Using charcoal, he had written on a ramshackle wall of what until a few days ago was his abode in Urdu “Bahut lut chukay bharey ghar (Now too many flourishing homes have been plundered).” But Balhami said, “My grief is not over my losing our home but my poetic work which has gone with it.” He added, “Houses can be rebuilt. I’ve lost my life’s treasure. My grief is here to stay, and I'd appreciate it people don’t ask me to get over it.”