‘We are beggars now but even the alms don’t come’

Everywhere here, they talk of the dead in numbers. Guvalta, a small village, has already buried 200 and is still counting. Except for Army personnel, a few groups of young men from Sopore and a dozen BSF men, nobody’s arrived here with relief. The state government did send four policemen to take down the death toll but they, too, skipped this village.

Two dozen stretchers, each with a body covered with shards of cloth, are carried by groups of men so tired that for them, it’s a struggle not to trip. As we near Udoosa, the stench of death gives it away.

Sixty labourers from adjacent villages, working with Border Roads Organisation, were killed, buried beneath a mountain of rocks and mud. Their bodies were recovered today by their families.

Mir Ishaaq’s is the first body to be pulled out. ‘‘I identified him by his shoes,’’ says his brother, Ajaz Ahmad Mir. ‘‘We have been digging for eight hours.’’

Entire families are gone. Habibullah Mir carries the body of his son. In his wake, come the bodies of his two brothers, carried on stretchers.

Next is Mohammad Aslam who carries the body of his brother, Mushtaq Ahmad, while the body of his cousin is just a few metres behind. This is a procession of the dead.

The first halt is at Sidwani, a picturesque village overlooking the Jhelum river and the road. All its 30 houses are gone. Ten, most of them children, were killed here. ‘‘I am hungry. Do you have some bread?’’ asks five-year-old Yasir. His aunt was killed; his father, Riyaz Ahmad, says they have spent the last two nights in the open. ‘‘It is very cold. And there is nothing left. We dug out a bag full of rice from beneath the rubble. There is a pot to cook but no plates. Last night, we had dinner in cardboard plates.’’

Grief has been temporarily pushed aside by the needs of survival.

As father and son point to their rubble, a frail woman, Muneera, walks by. Behind her, villagers carry the body of her nine-year-son Shahbaaz Nazir. ‘‘He was studying in the Army school,’’ says the mother before she begins to cry.

We walk through bushes, skirting rocks, we are now in Dardkote village. Or what was once Dardkote. Here, even the mountain ridge has cracked. Villagers have already buried 32 men, women and children. It’s here that two children, 7-year-old Yasir Khan and 3-year-old Mohammad Yaqoob, died of cold last night.

‘‘I have lost four family members. But there’s no time to mourn,’’ says Mohammad Eliyas, Dardkote’s numbardar. ‘‘We have nothing. Within seconds, this earthquake has turned us into beggars,’’ he says. ‘‘And even the alms don’t come. Our houses are in ruins and we are hungry,’’ he says. ‘‘Can someone send few hundred tents and blankets?’’

He says that the only help that the village received came from the Army. ‘‘They (the army) were themselves in trouble but they sent doctors on the first day itself. Then they also sent some food for our children,’’ he says. ‘‘The Government is nowhere.’’

A mile across a deep gorge is Isham village, now a sprawling pile of rubble. Thirty villagers died here, 20 are still missing. Even most of the cattle are dead. ‘‘We don’t have even shovels to dig,’’ says Ali Akbar Abassi.

Moulvi Manzoor, Imam of the village mosque, is furious. ‘‘Let these people come to ask for votes. We will show them,’’ he says. ‘‘Our children will die of hunger and cold. Why doesn’t anybody help?’’

And as we move closer to the LoC, the level of devastation too increases. The next village is Chakri. Here 10 villagers were killed. Survivors have nothing but the open sky and the clothes they wear. Across the Jhelum, on the right flank of the road, is Dulanja. Here, there is no sign of life. Of either the living or the dead.

Exhausted, we stop at Udoosa, the last village on Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road before it pierces through the LoC. Here, seven villagers have died. ‘‘When the road was reopened, we thought finally it is our time to be lucky. We didn’t know what was to follow,’’ says Tawseef Ahmad. The only consolation is the news from across. ‘‘When we hear what has happened just miles away across the Kaman post, this seems like nothing. This road leads to hell.’’