Farooq pulls audience from his hat, then talks through it

Without this lumbering caravan of mud-spattered lorries, the chief minister’s sparkling helicopter is better grounded on a forlorn corner of the tarmac at Srinagar airport. ‘‘If the trucks don’t leave ahead,’’ an NC organiser says matter-of-factly, ‘‘there will be no meeting because there will be nobody to address.’’

Unfortunately this afternoon, Dr Abdullah’s chopper arrived at Chrar-i-Sharief a good half hour ahead of the trucks and the truth got full play on the compounds of the renovated shrine.

There were not so many as a handful on the barricades and when someone on the podium began shouting welcome slogans as Dr Abdullah walked up from the helipad, he heard only his echoes from the loudspeakers in response.

Dr Abdullah was furious. ‘‘Why, why,’’ he demanded of an aide, ‘‘Why do you get me into situations like this? If you cannot organise a meeting, don’t call me and I am happy sitting at home, but don’t get me into this.’’

From where he stood, on a makeshift bridge behind the shrine, he could only see policemen and paramilitary commandos pottering about.

‘‘I haven’t come here to address policemen, where are the people?’’ The people were there, of course. The shrine of Chrar is a draw for devotees any and every day.

But very few of them were even bothering to concern themselves with all the bluster and commotion that a Chief Minister’s public meeting can create.

‘‘Yeh tamasha bahut dekh liya, said one of them as he walked away after paying obeisance at the sanctum, Yeh neta log, khas kar yeh Abdullah parivar ke log, sirf humse lena chahte hain, dena nahin. Ab hamare paas inko dene ke liye kuchh nahin. (Enough of this tamasha. These leaders, specially the Abdullah family, only know how to take, not how to give. Now we have nothing to give.)’’

Someone came on to the public address again and announced the Chief Minister had arrived. ‘‘Please come, wherever you are, Dr Abdullah has come to address you, come and gather in the compound of the shrine,’’ he appealed, ‘‘Please come, please come, the Chief Minister has arrived.’’

A few came but their act only accentuated the embarrassment; it was evident that most people in the hamlet of Chrar, settled on semi-barren plateau overlooking the shrine, had decided not to bother.

Dr Abdullah would not mount the podium. He stood at the back surrounded by an anxious gaggle of party leaders and policemen. ‘‘Just a few minutes sir, just a few minutes, there was some misunderstanding about the timing of this meeting perhaps,’’ one of them pleaded, ‘‘the people will come, just a few minutes.’’

Dr Abdullah stood there, at once angry and mortified, his lips pursed, his fingers tapping on his knuckles. ‘‘This is what terror does to you,’’ he said.

‘‘These are my own people but they will not come out for fear that if they do they will be killed by the militants. This is just fear, this is what Pakistan has done to Kashmir, they are trying to kill democracy here.’’

But the constituents in Chrar-i-Sharief’s one lane bazaar mocked at Dr Abdullah’s feeble attempt to seek advantage in adversity. ‘‘It is not the fear of anybody,’’ a shopowner said later, ‘‘it is just that he and his party have done nothing for years, why are they trying to seek ideological cover for their lapses? Dr Abdullah himself never comes here unless he is in trouble of some sort. Does he bother when we are in trouble?’’

You don’t hear these voices in Chrar alone. You hear them Gulmarg and in Ganderbal, in Pattan and in Pampore, in Chadoora and in Zkhoorah, in the towns and hamlets and villages all across the Valley: We do not want the Abdullahs because the Abdullahs have not given us the feeling they wanted us.

Dr Abdullah eventually did get onto the podium and the meeting did get off the ground, but not before the hired caravan of trucks had arrived, laced in the NC’s colours thrumming with drumbeats.

The same people, singing the same songs and shouting the same slogans as they had at the previous rally in Chadoora, downhill from Chrar in the Budgam countryside.

‘‘It is such a pleasure so see you turn out in such large numbers,’’ Dr Abdullah opened his speech, ‘‘I have come from a meeting in Chadoora where too I had a similarly enthusiastic reception, where too people had defied the fear of the gun and turned up, just like you…’’

How true that was and how false it all rang.