The bus proceeded at a leisurely pace, as all rural transport services in Kashmir do, picking and dropping passengers after every few minutes. By the time the bus reached Ganderbal and crossed the bridge on Sindh nullah there, it was late afternoon. But the camp was expected to be only a few minutes' drive away, on the left bank of the small river. The crowded vehicle drove on but Usha did not find any sign anywhere of tents, flags and other signposts, as she had been given to understand by the concerned authorities. She scanned the surroundings closely as the bus moved on leaving behind the river bank, but still there was no sign of the camp anywhere. When the bus finally came to a halt she still had not found her camp. 

The halt was at Khir Bhawani, quite some distance away from the place where the NCC cadets were supposed to be camping. As the bus was to move onwards to Safapur, Khir Bhawani passengers got down and a bewildered Usha got down too. She looked around for some guidance, accosted an old man and asked him whether an NCC camp has been recently set up anywhere in the area. He thought for a while and told her as far he knew there was none. Before Usha could look for more guidance, two Muslim youngmen, both in early thirties, approached her. One of them straightaway addressed her, 'Sister, you were asking that man about the girls' camp. We know about it. It has been set up in another village. We belong to that village and if you trust us we can take you to that village'. 

She gave the two men a close look. By urban standards they were certainly unkempt, but there was an air of pastoral simplicity she could sense about them. 'How far is the camp from here and how do we reach there'' she asked. 'It is only a few miles and we have a horse-cart', replied one of them. 

Usha decided to take a chance and they asked her to wait there till they fetched their cart. They took their own time to return with a ramshackle horse-cart, loaded with provisions like rice, wheat flour and edible oil cans. They had made a neat spot for her in the cart which she occupied and the journey started. 

By now it was well past 6 p.m. but as they had to cover only 'a few miles', Usha thought she would be at the camp well before the dusk fell. The horse trotted lazily and the two men whiled away their time singing every song they seemed to remember. Half an hour passed, then one, but Usha could not see any camp anywhere within sight. It started getting dark and Usha began to become fidgety. Doubts crept up in her mind and she started suspecting the intentions of the two men. She also began to curse herself for having accepted their offer, without weighing all possible consequences. Perhaps they were up to some foul play, she thought and cursed herself again and again. 

The rough road, running through vast rice fields and grooves of poplar and willows, was deserted with hardly any sign of people anywhere. After some time the cart stopped at a poorly-lit roadside shop and the two men went in, returning with some 'tandoori rotis' and boiled eggs. As they went in, Usha wanted to cry for help, but stifled herself for the fear that it might endanger her life still more. The two men offered some food to her but she refused, telling them that she was on a fast. She feared that they might feed her some soporofic substance in order to rob her or do something worse. 

Every moment that passes created more agitation in her mind. She was getting convinced that she was being adduced to some unknown place. She raged over the college authorities for having sent her there, cried for her two small children she had left behind, and prayed to god. 

Oblivious of the turbulence in Usha's mind, the two men kept on exercising their vocal chords. Then suddenly Usha saw some lights in the distance and as they moved closer, lights became clearer and outlines of tents came into her vision. This was the camp she jumped with joy and all the cheerfulness and confidence bounced back into her. 

After a little while the two men reined in the horse. One of them turned round and told her, 'Sister, this is your camp.' They helped her get down and informed the guard at the gate about the arrival of the lady. Within minutes a bevy of chirply girls surrounded Usha and the entire ambient air was hers once again.  But is was also a moment of remorse for her. 

She hated herself for having doubted the honesty and intention of the two village youths. She tried to make up for it by offering them a handsome amount of cash which they flatly refused to accept telling her they were coming home and it did not cost them anything to take her to the camp enroute.  She watched them with a deep feeling of gratitude as the cart disappeared in the darkness. 

Next day Ms Manvati was in her tent, having an afternoon siesta, when an NCC official called on her and informed her that there were some visitors at the gate waiting to see her. She had no friends or relatives in the area and she wondered who it could be who had come to see her. She came out and found the same two village youths at the gate who had driven her to the camp the night before. They greeted her with broad grins and asked her whether she had a comfortable time at the camp. 

One of the youths who was holding an earthen pitcher, extended it to her and asked her to take it. 'Last night you did not eat the food we offered you,' he said, ''here we have brought some fresh milk for you. It is our own cow's''. The pitcher contained not less than five liters of milk and after leaving it with her they left. 

Usha stood there, overwhelmed by this affectionate gesture to a stranger by two Kashmir village yokels, who had never seen her before and would perhaps never see her again. Silent tears rolled down her cheeks, and all that she could think of was that these two fellow Kashmiri rural youths were as clean, as harmless, as human, as honest and as simple as the pure milk they had got for her in a fresh earthen pitcher. 

So did I think when Usha Manvati related this deeply human and touching story to me, in Jammu recently. It was so moving that one felt like crying. And my heart cried for Kashmir that was and that now is no more. For Kashmiris that were there, but are there no more. 

The pain in my heart got sharper when I recalled the massacre of Wandhama in 1998, not far away from the site of the NCC camp, where 18 years earlier two guileless and simple-hearted Kashmiri youths had given a touching display of the great tradition of human brotherhood in Kashmir to a 'sister' from the city, whom they had never known before. 

The face of Dulari of Wandhama came up on the canvas of my mind. She had escaped the bullets of Pakistan-instigated tribals when they had stormed into Kashmir in 1947. She was five years old at that time when the tribals had reached her village, Sumbal, and gone on an orgy of killings looting and arson of Pandits and their properties. Her family had fled to a safer place and never returned home, which had been completely destroyed. Dulari grew up and was married off at Wandhama where the bullets of Pakistan-backed terrorists finally found her and she was massacred along with her husband and 21 other Pandits of the village. 

The pain was there as the face of an orphaned child in the arms of his grandmother, came before my eyes. It was back in 1991 when I saw the little two year old in Jammu. A terrorist' bullet had deprived the hapless child, hardly out of his toddling days, of his parents and the only uncle and aunt. They were gunned down by two Muslim youths, both fellow Kashmiris, at Ali Kadal in Srinagar, as the child slept in a corner of the room, the scene of carnage. It was an old lady in the neighbourhood who had later picked up the crying child. 

Kashmir has witnessed, over a short span of ten years or so, a degenerative and self-destructive cultural and civilisational metamorphosis. Values have been dying, traditions are trampled upon, heritages have been discarded and an entire ethos is crumbling down. What had been built over the millenniums has been dismantled in a decade. 

Will a Pandit woman, who had lost her way, ever again entrust herself to the care of two unknown Muslim youths in a forsaken rural setting? Will Muslims youths ever again act as 'brothers' and guardians of a stranger non-Muslims 'sister' in distress and escort her safely to her destination?' Will little children ever again be safe against being orphaned at an age when they know nothing about religion as such, let alone the religion of her parents, nor anything about the wide world around them? Many common people in Kashmir, like two 'brothers' of Usha Manvati, might perhaps say 'yes', though hesitatingly due to the persisting dominance of gun culture and consequent insecurity of life and honur. But do the separatist leaders of the so-called 'azadi' movement, and the trumpet-blowers of normalcy, have the moral courage and conviction to answer these questions in the affirmative?
 

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