Uri: As the clock struck five on the morning of 10 May, Mohammed Ashraf and his son-in-law Ishfaq Ahmed were awakened by a siren.
They ran to a shelter under the porch. Barely 10 minutes later, a projectile fell near their house and wrecked it.
On Sunday, Ashraf, his son Rizwan and son-in-law Ishfaq returned to the house to take stock of the damage, trying to salvage whatever was left. “It will be a waste of money to renovate this house now because what all can we fix,” remarked Ashraf.
The house in Bandi Brahmanana village is less than five km from the Line of Control (LoC).
In the days following 7 April, most in Uri were forced to abandon their homes and seek refuge either at the Government Degree College in Baramulla, or with relatives in other parts of Kashmir. In Uri town, meanwhile, everyday life ground to a halt.
In Lagama, about 10 km from Uri’s main market, Sajad Ahmed’s grocery shop was struck by a shell on the night of 8 May. “By midnight, I got to know about a fire in my shop, but I couldn’t confirm because of continuous shelling,” he said. “Even if we start our business from zero again, it will get shelled in months or years, we don’t feel like investing here.”
“It is easy to say temporary migration, but in the absence of your business, farms, home, etc., unattended are dead. I can’t even visit my kitchen garden because of the fear of shells,” said Maqbool Bandey, a resident of Uri’s ward number 10.
Bandey was among the few who decided to stay back and take shelter inside a mosque from 8-10 May, and at a local college on 11 May.
“We want Kashmir to be like any other aspiring part of the world with developments, jobs, tourism and, most importantly, normalcy,” said another resident of Ward 10 who did not wish to be named.
In 1947, the picturesque town with mountains in the backdrop and a flurry of pine trees had fallen to Pakistani tribesmen, who first entered Uri on 23 October 1947 with an objective to take the whole of Jammu and Kashmir. J&K State Forces led by Brigadier Rajinder Singh defended the town for two days but it was eventually captured by the raiders on 25 October.
On Sunday, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chief and former CM Mehbooba Mufti visited Uri town to interact with local residents. “There should be better facilities here,” one shopkeeper told her. Mehbooba responded: “To hell with bunkers. Will you live in a bunker for your whole life? You should say, Let there be peace, and we don’t need bunkers.”
Shelling from the Pakistani side damaged hundreds of houses, said Sajjad Shafi, the National Conference MLA from Uri. “Whenever there is hostility between the two counties, it is the people of border areas who suffer the most…There should be permanent ceasefire. We want to live like the people of Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Islamabad, and Karachi.”
Also Read: Amid fears of unexploded shells & ceasefire violations, Uri hopes for normalcy
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