The Aftermath

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.

Each activity in the joint-family home was given to routine interruptions. Because of Talib’s case, Dilshada, Amina and Altaf had all been added to the state police’s watchlist of alleged OGWs—overground workers for militant outfits—more than a decade ago. Altaf could be dropping his daughter to school, or Dilshada corralling the sheep, or Amina picking apples, when the one mobile phone shared among the 18 members of the family would ring. They kept only the one, in Dilshada’s possession, because they wanted to limit who could contact them. Any call from an unknown person or number could mean getting wrapped up in a false case. They knew those false cases were out there, waiting for them.

There were no secure jobs in the family. Among Amina’s children were men with postgraduate degrees—but they only worked for daily wages. Nobody would give a job to the child of someone named in the OGW list. They never got character certificates in the places they studied. Everyone in the village was cautious when speaking to them. Being friends with someone on the OGW list was dangerous. One whisper from a police or army informant—about a casual chat, an invitation for tea to the family’s house—could leave others in the same futureless state as them.