From the Archives: Deadly Delay

Bashir Ahmed Mir is no stranger to death. He has lived with it almost every day of his 45 years, with Pakistani artillery raining fire on his tiny village Jabla on the Line of Control (LoC). War has numbed him, so has devastation.

Yet nothing had prepared him for the havoc of Saturday morning. He was taking a nap, having had his pre-dawn Ramzan meal. At first there was a tiny creaking sound, the kind made while walking up and down wooden stairs. He ignored it. But not for long. Within a few seconds, it rose to a shattering noise. As Mir woke up and looked outside his window, his entire world changed in a flash. One moment his wife and one of his three children were running towards the fields. In another instant, he was out of the house. In a third, brick and mud rained down on him as the earth cracked and his home came crashing down.

On Saturday morning, while the rest of India enjoyed a morning cup of tea and planned the beginning of the weekend, Mir's two sons, bright and sturdy boys of eight and 10, were dead. His home, a 50-yearold house inherited from his father, was in a heap. In one of the most dangerous places on earth, it was nature, not man that wrought such destruction.

Aijaz Hussain