"You people are leaving, your work is done - yes, anyway what is the need of media people here now" - the sentence was dropped in passing, like an offhand comment. But it hit me like a stone. A woman employee at the hotel in Rajouri said it to us. Her voice didn't tremble. Her eyes didn't blink. They were still, still like the mountains around her. But there was something in her gaze - unflinching, immovable - that pierced me.
Sometimes, truth doesn't shout. It just stands there, quietly, making you stop in your tracks.
That moment hasn't left me. Not while I was filming, not while writing this. And I don't think it ever will.
Because the question behind her words was not just hers.
It belonged to Rajouri.
It belonged to Poonch.
It belonged to every face that didn't make it to our screens.
Does Jammu and Kashmir only exist in our headlines when there is violence?
Have we, the so-called mainstream media, shrunk their lives into a single lens - terrorism, border shelling, and conflict with Pakistan?
In every village we went to - every charred wall, every shattered home - these questions stood silently in the background.
They looked back at me from the eyes of men like Devraj Sharma in Patrada Panchgrahi. He showed me what was left of his house - broken bricks, a ceiling half-gone, a bed blackened by fire. And then he asked, with almost childlike honesty: "Will a place in the media for one day rebuild this house?"
What do you say to that?
You nod. You swallow. You pretend your camera is too heavy to carry, just so you don't have to answer. Because you know the truth.
In other villages, young men came to us, angry, betrayed. "You people only come when something burns or explodes," one of them said. "To you, this is a breaking news. To us, it is our life."
And they are right.
For five days, we lived in dread. Drones buzzed through the skies at night like ghost birds, shells echoing in valleys like a warped lullaby that drives away sleep. Everything in Poonch was shut.
In Rajouri, even our hotel emptied out. Only two or three brave employees remained, scrounging for food, checking on us as if we were their own. It wasn't just a story we were covering - it was fear we were breathing.
Then Saturday evening came, and with it, a ceasefire.
A momentary silence - a collective exhale. A hopeful lull.
And yet, as I sit back now, trying to write about it all...
It is not the sound of explosions that echoes inside me.
It is that one voice - calm, tired, unmoved: "What is the need of media people here now..."
Because beyond the bullet points of shelling, beyond the figures and the political reactions, there is a truth we rarely tell - that this land is not just war and death. It is also longing, and waiting, and resilience so profound that it humbles you.
Children still draw with broken crayons on walls that might fall tomorrow. Elders still sit in sunlit verandas, sipping tea, talking of the days when all borders were imaginary.
And labourers, poor, exhausted, return to their homes in Bihar and Bengal, leaving behind shattered dreams, because the shelling has made even survival uncertain.
Yes, the administration is trying.
Yes, bunkers are being prepared.
Yes, soldiers are doing what they must.
But what about the stories that don't fire bullets?
Who will tell them?
Will we come back when there is no war?
Will we return when peace is the only thing to report?
I don't have a ready answer. But I carry the question with me now - like a wound that must stay open, so I never forget. So none of us forget.
(Anurag Dwary is a Resident Editor, NDTV)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
