“In wars where faces lie, truth often dies in silence.”
-
Anonymous combat note scribbled in frost, Tral, 1993
The ash of Sopore still clung to our boots when Tral called us next - not with radio orders, but with a rising wave of human voices. After Hazratbal’s siege and Sopore’s smoke-stained aftermath, we thought we had seen the worst of what fury and faith could do to a people. But Kashmir wasn’t done with us. Where fire had failed to shake the world’s conscience, now slogans tried. In Tral, 1993, the battlefield changed its face: the enemy no longer wore camouflage or carried guns. This time, they came wrapped in shawls, carrying slogans sharper than shrapnel.
The air in Tral always carried a certain weight, thick with the scent of damp earth and lingering gunpowder. The fog clung to the valley like an old, tattered cloak, swallowing everything beyond a few meters. It was a place where silence whispered of unseen dangers and every shadow hid a potential enemy.
Our battalion headquarters was set up in Tral Rest House, a building that bore scars of past violence - walls chipped by bullets, windows shattered, gaping like wounds refusing to heal. Our ‘D’ Company, along with another unit, was stationed near a sluggish canal that meandered through the terrain like a dried vein in the wintered earth.
One afternoon, without warning, a large crowd emerged from the town, voices rising in rhythmic slogans that echoed off the hills.
“Aadhi roti khayenge, Pakistan jayenge!”
(We will eat half of the bread but go to Pakistan!)
We had heard that chant before. What unsettled us was the composition of the protest: women at the forefront, faces grim and eyes hardened - not just defiant, but desperately rehearsed. Behind them, men walked in silence, eyes shrouded in unreadable calculation.
Instincts flared. This wasn’t spontaneous. It was orchestrated. A shield of femininity used to mask the threat beneath. Our officers remained calm but firm:
"Hold your positions. This could be a cover. Watch the men behind them."
No gunfire was exchanged. No baton raised. We watched. They marched. For half an hour, tension coiled in the air like a live wire - then, as suddenly as they had come, they dispersed into the mist.
It felt unfinished.
Two days later, we learned why.
Soldier’s Field Note – Tral Diary, 10 January 1993
· Sometimes, the ghosts in this valley don’t wear white. They wear pherans and silence. Today I saw a boy wave at us. Not with a hand, but with the dead stare of someone who’s seen what grenades do to bone.
· I cleaned my rifle thrice today. Not because it jammed. Because I didn’t want to clean my thoughts.
· The women came. Then they left. And something about their eyes told me they’d return - but not alone.
· It’s the waiting that kills more than the bullets. Waiting to be wrong… or too right.
Routine can kill
Every morning, a 1-ton truck left from our unit to the Tral Rest House to collect rations, soldiers' inland letters, and new orders. The same route. The same time. Predictable. A soldier’s death trap.
That morning, the fog lay heavier than usual, painting everything in shades of slate and sorrow. As the convoy moved, its tires crunched over loose gravel. The birds took flight too suddenly.
Then came the sound - a whoosh in the fog.
A grenade lobbed from the rooftop arced like a meteor and landed with a soft thunk on the truck’s roof.
Seconds later - an eruption of flame and steel. The vehicle buckled. Shrapnel tore through metal and flesh. Soldiers leapt out, diving to the ground as the truck bled smoke into the sky.
Panic unfolded. Civilians ran screaming. One of our jawans, half his arm drenched in red, still clutched his rifle. Another rolled out of the smoke, his face scorched but alive. Others weren’t so lucky.
Rage replaced discipline.
We stormed the house from where the grenade had come. Room by room, rooftop to stairs - but the militants had melted into the alleyways, faceless as fog. On the street, amidst the frozen crowd, a soldier’s gaze fixed on a familiar face, the woman who had led the protest two days ago.
She was trembling, her eyes shifting between us and the smoldering wreckage. A soldier grabbed her arm, fury barely contained. When the officer arrived, his voice was flint:
"Who were they?"
She hesitated - lips quivering, but tears unshed.
"My family is under threat. I didn’t want this," she finally whispered.
And then it unraveled.
She confessed. The protest had been a cover. The militants were there - blending in, reading our response. They wanted us to fire, to act harshly, to reveal habits, break rules. We hadn’t. So they planned a bigger blow. And used her. Used all of them.
It shattered something in us. Not because we didn’t expect it - but because it came with a voice, a face, a confession. The realization was heavier than the explosion.
This was not just war with bullets. It was a psychological ambush. A war waged through the coercion of civilians, the subversion of rituals, the manipulation of empathy.
This wasn’t just the enemy hiding in the hills - it was the enemy hiding inside the fear of women, the silence of children, the compliance of mothers.
The woman was taken away - not as a prisoner, not quite a witness - but something harder to define.
In Tral, the fog never lifted. It merely waited - morphing into faces we couldn’t trust, voices we couldn’t follow. We learned that in some wars, bullets are optional. Guilt is not.
And some protests don’t chant slogans.
They bleed.
That protest in Tral bled more than bodies - it bled belief, from both sides of the barbed wire. It taught us that rage wasn’t always loud, and death not always expected. The line between civilian and militant had begun to blur, not in uniforms but in intent. And just when we thought it couldn't get more surreal, we would face the unthinkable: a woman lunging for a soldier’s rifle, her eyes not pleading, but burning with purpose. Next chapter would not be about war or protest. It would be about something darker, when the dead rise firing.
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