The Kashmir section of 15th Anniversary issue of India Today published in 1990 ends with a photograph shot by Prashant Panjair. It’s a Migrant camp. Other than the evocative footnote photograph, there is no mention of the migration in the reports that trace the origin and consequences of what must have been back then a disturbance. Maybe no one thought it possible, something like this almost never happens, certainly not to people who have possessions, migration must have seemed like a temporary situation, so these desolate people were referred as Refugees, people who may not need refuge anymore someday. Or that the situation threw some uncomfortable questions that were best ignored for greater good. So all we have is a photograph of a camp which in this case, from the looks of it, for the looks of its walls and floor, was probably the Dharamshala next to a temple whose courtyard in old city of Jammu seldom saw sunlight, the coolest camp which soon with the coming of monsoon proved to be the dampest. A place that now reminds me only of paracetamol and phenol, sleep and steel trunks, .
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