Compassion in the High Valleys of Kashmir
Thirty‑six‑year‑old Sajad Ahmad Bhat earns his living selling the fine, hand‑woven woollen shawls for which the hill town of Pahalgam is famous. Yet on 20 April 2025, it was not commerce but compassion that defined him. A sudden militant attack and subsequent panic in the lush, motor‑free meadows of the Pahalgam‑adjacent Baiseran valley left scores of holiday‑makers bleeding and stranded. When the emergency text from Abdul Wahid Wani, head of the Pahalgam Pony Owners’ Association, flashed on Sajad’s phone, he did what mountain folk have always done in crises: he left home without a second thought and ran toward the danger.
“Humanity is greater than religion,” Sajad would later say, summing up an ethic older than the Himalayas themselves. By 3:30 p.m. he and a handful of fellow volunteers had negotiated the steep, rutted track that no ambulance can climb, each astride a motorbike or pony. What they found resembled a battlefield: tourists weeping in shock, some unable to walk, others slipping into unconsciousness as blood and alpine mist mingled in the thin air. Sajad handed out water, tore up shawl‑cloth to improvise pressure bandages, and—when legs would no longer carry bodies—hoisted complete strangers onto his own back. Social‑media clips of him trudging downhill with a wounded traveller cradled in his arms soon went viral, but heroism was not on his mind. “Their visit lights the lamps in our homes,” he explained, pointing to the fragile economy that binds Kashmiri livelihoods to the happiness of guests.
Among those lying still in the grass was Indian Navy Lieutenant Vinay Narwal. Together with Narwal’s distraught wife, Sajad loaded the officer onto his bike, transforming the two‑wheeler into an impromptu ambulance. Halfway down the trail he paused, fingers to the officer’s neck. The pulse had gone. A wave of dread passed over him, yet he chose mercy over blunt truth. “He is alive; please don’t worry,” he whispered to Mrs Narwal, aware that the full horror, delivered too soon, might break her before help could be reached.
Only after handing her to professional medics at the base hospital did Sajad allow himself tears. “When I saw tourists pleading, I forgot my own life,” he said later, voice thick with exhaustion and unfinished grief. He blamed no one, preached nothing, asked for no reward. His single plea was that Kashmir be spared such sorrow in the future.
Sajad’s story is a reminder that the valley’s real wealth is neither saffron nor shawls but the ordinary people who, in moments of chaos, choose to protect the stranger. In a region too often reduced to headlines of conflict, his act reframes the narrative: empathy can outrun fear, and a shawl‑seller can carry more than merchandise—he can carry hope. So long as men like Sajad Ahmad Bhat answer the call of another’s pain, the high valleys of Kashmir will remain—despite every darkness—a territory of light.
