The last briefing

Each time I entered through the Batwara gate entrance to the Badamibagh cantonment in Srina-gar, where Purshottam had an office, I wondered why the security was so tight. To enter the cantonment, perhaps the best protected area in Srin-agar and that too from the Batwara gate, meantcrossing three layers of security. No vehicle could drive st-raight through. The army had taken precautions to prevent any vehicle from barging through the protective cordon. Three rows of sharp iron-nail-studded metal strips lay on the road. The tyres of any vehicle atte-mpting to drive through would burst on the strips. When army vehicles went past, armed military personnel removed the strips for a few seconds and then put them back.

Then there were barricades behind which ar-med soldiers stood. The third layer was the massive Batwara gate, always closed. Pedestrians entering through the small side gate were frisked at two places and identity cards checked. Then the guards called the officer concerned before permitting the person in. “This is more like coming to a jail to see you.” Major Purshottam would laugh. He always did.

In the last week of May even when journalists were queuing up outside his office seeking permission letters to cross Zojila to go to Kargil, screaming at the delays, he neverlost his cool. “When Srinagar is so cold, why are you so keen to go to Kargil? It is freezing there. Stay here, relax and enjoy a cup of tea with me,” he would beam, easing the tension. Unlike most government spo-kespersons he was aware of what was happening around. Being an infantry officer himself, his liaising with friends wielding the weapon was better and information flow swifter, more accurate.

Earlier in April when I had accompanied Ge-neral Ved Prakash Malik to Siachen and Srinagar, I went to meet Purshottam. He was on leave. "Aao Gauravji, chai lo." It was Naib Subedar B.D. Sh-arma, a fair complexioned, short-statured assistant to Purshottam, as hospitable and as knowledgeable about the media as his boss. Sharma and I became friends in Kargil when he came there with groups of mediapersons. “Gauravji, please leave Kargil tomorrow. The army is out looking for you. Go to Batalik for a day,” he advised. And it always worked. The list of soldiers gunned down last night had Sharma’s nametoo.

During my nine-week-long stay in Kargil, I ran out of money once. My colleague Muzamil and I made a list of persons from whom we could borrow money till the Srinagar airport reopened for civilian traffic. Muzamil borrowed some money from home and some from his frie-nds. But that was not enough. I tried to raise the rest. My relations with the army were not exactly smooth. Hesitating and half expecting a rebuff, I asked Purshottam. “Oh sure! I don’t have much. But whatever I have is yours,” he said and immediately loaned me Rs 2,000, which saw us through the crisis.

He even spoke to a friend of his in Sonamarg and asked him to take care of us in case of any problem. During our last meeting in early June, Purshottam said he was being posted out after almost four years in Srinagar. His wife, a major in the Military Nursing Service, is posted in Meerut and Purshottam was seeking a posting there too. “He almost got it. But we asked him to stay on in Srinagar for we could not find a replacement as goodas him,” the spokesman in Delhi said. Now they never will.