By the Family of a 14-Year-Old Boy Who Lost Everything to War:
In the autumn of 1965, during the war between India and Pakistan, a bomb exploded near the Jammu airport. That single blast ripped through not only bodies, but entire lives, futures, and hopes.
It killed our grandfather and our father’s elder brother—two pillars of a household that, until then, lived with a sense of dignity and promise.
My father was only 14 years old when the blast claimed the men he loved most. He had been a bright child, deeply cherished by our grandfather, who had planned an education for him at home, tailored to his promise. The other sons were to be sent to boarding schools in neighbouring states. There was a vision, a plan, and the means to realise it. But it all ended that day.
The rest of the family was living in a royal palace near Udhampur at the time—that had, for generations, stood as a symbol of cultural richness and legacy.
Rations had been stocked for six months—because, back then, families planned for siege-like conditions. But what they couldn’t prepare for was what war would do to their hearts, their psyche, and their very identity.
After the death of his father and elder brother, my father became the eldest overnight. A 14-year-old child became a guardian.
In the years that followed, the wealth our family had accumulated over generations was lost. People around them—once known and trusted—saw opportunity in the family’s grief. The looting wasn’t just from outside; sometimes, it came from those who should have stood by.
By the time he was 20, my father had laid his mother to rest too. When she lay on her deathbed, seven years after the blast, the compensation for her husband’s death finally arrived. The price of a life lost came late and cold, its irony cruelly stark: her lifeless fingerprints were taken to authenticate the receipt. Even in death, she had to give proof to the state of her suffering.
There is one object we still hold from that time—a glass jug. It survived the blast. It has been passed down through generations, and it is now one of the few physical links to a time before devastation. That fragile vessel of glass withstood the shrapnel, the fire, and the wind that came after. But our family did not.
'Mental Health Struggles Triggered by Loss'
My father bore the weight of a family on his small shoulders. He descended into mental health struggles at a time when there was no language for it—no help, no understanding, just shame and silence.
He fought those demons his entire life, triggered not only by personal loss, but by the abrupt collapse of everything familiar: love, home, food, school, laughter. A child raised with care and comfort was forced to become a protector.
When the extended family came forward to take his younger siblings, promising care, my father stood like a wall. He did not let them go. His younger sisters and brothers have often told me how he shielded them, how he never let them feel abandoned. He gave up his youth so they could have a future. That is what war demands—not just from the soldiers who fight it, but from the children who are left behind.
This is not our only story of loss. Our family had already been uprooted during Partition in 1947. We had just started to rebuild in the years after, and then came 1965.
And now, again, the familiar noise is rising.
'War Means Fear, Children's Cries, Coffins, Loss'
In recent days, the noise around conflict has escalated again. Familiar justifications are being recycled. Well-rehearsed voices are shouting about retaliation, about history, about national honour.
But from the ground, especially in places like Jammu & Kashmir, what war means is simple: it means fear. It means children crying through the night. It means families waiting for a phone call. It means coffins. It means silence where laughter once lived.
There is a growing tendency—whether in political rhetoric, television studios, or even social media timelines—to romanticize war. To reduce it to strategic victories, glowing national pride, or strongman leadership. But those of us who have lived close to the fault lines—those of us who have lost sleep, lost family, lost peace—know that there is no such thing as a victorious war. There is only grief.
When public figures and commentators—no matter how credible or well-meaning—evoke comparisons to politicians from the past to critique current regimes, they risk sliding into a dangerous nostalgia.
We had political leaders whose tenure was marked not only by war but also by curfews, censorship, and the suspension of civil liberties. That is not a past to aspire to. Nor should war ever be the benchmark of strong leadership.
War is not strategy. It is not heroism. It is not trending hashtags or fiery headlines. War is loss. And it is always the most ordinary, the most vulnerable, who bear the heaviest burden.
'There is no victory in war. Only grief. Only silence. Only shattered lives'
To stand against terrorism is essential. To stand against injustice is essential. But let us not lose our moral compass in the process. Let us not trade one form of violence for another. There is nothing radical or brave about glorifying war.
There is only forgetfulness—of the people who die, the children who are orphaned, the lands scarred forever. Families affected by any form of violence—whether from terrorism, war, or state repression—deserve more than token gestures. They deserve justice that acknowledges their loss, and reparations that aim to restore some measure of dignity.
‘Compensation’ is too often reduced to a bureaucratic transaction, stripped of empathy or meaning. But even then, justice cannot be vengeance. An eye for an eye only ensures that grief multiplies, across generations and borders.
The real measure of a just society is not how loudly it retaliates, but how humanely it heals.
It was this pain, this inherited sense of injustice, that shaped my own journey as a writer. It is what compelled me to write about the 1984 massacres—another moment in our history when families were broken, children orphaned, women brutalised, and justice denied. In my father’s eyes, I saw the weight of unhealed wounds. And in writing, I tried to give voice to the silences that filled our home.
Wars do not end when ceasefires are signed. They echo across decades. They live in broken promises, in lost childhoods, in mothers dying without answers, and in glass jugs that survive when people don’t.
Our family is one of many. But this is our truth. And if we don’t tell it, the clamour for war will continue to drown out the human cost it leaves behind.
There is no victory in war. Only grief. Only silence. Only shattered lives.
Sanam Sutirath Wazir is a human rights advocate and author, acclaimed for documenting historical injustices through oral histories. His acclaimed work, The Kaurs of 1984, brings to light the untold stories of Sikh women who survived the 1984 anti-Sikh massacres.