Bonizalla, Jammu and Kashmir: Aziz Bhat, 52, and Rasul Bhat, 45, are brothers who live in this small hamlet, some 34 km north of Srinagar city. They live in the same house, tend the same cattle, and eat food cooked in the same kitchen. But they have not been talking to each other for the last seven years.

It is highly unusual for Kashmir villagers to live strained lives. The joint family system, which has mostly been replaced by nuclear families in the cities, is still intact in most of valley's villages.

Why then are Aziz and Rasul living under the same roof and still are highly detached and tense lives? Their wives, Fazi, 47, and Zooni, 38, only communicate with each other in monosyllables, that too when unavoidable.

It all started in 1993, when Aziz's elder son Shafi returned to his village after obtaining a weapon from across the border. Shafi's arrival back into the village in 1993 must have been a celebrated affair because many of their neighbors still remember the day.

Initially, he must have been some sort of a local hero. Nobody in the village would give him out to the security forces. He was a "Mujahid" who had chosen the pious path of fighting for his motherland. Both his family and villagers were proud of Shafi.

That feeling has today vanished completely. Neighbors say Shafi revealed his true colors in 1993 itself. He disputed his grandfather's partitioning of family fields. He wanted the lion's share. His father Aziz, who initially opposed his son, fell in place when he realized the difference his son's newfound status in the village was going to make to his personal fortunes.

Without much fuss, Rasul had to agree to his nephew's dispensation. The fields were re-distributed between the two brothers by the village elders. Of course, to the preferences set by Shafi. Rasul has now roughly one-third of what his brother owns in the family fields.

This month, Shafi was killed in an encounter with the Rashtriya Rifles in his own village. He is reported to have died some distance away from where the encounter took place. Eye-witnesses say he dragged himself away from the encounter site while bleeding profusely. He breathed his last in a rice field. Ironically, the rice field, in which Shafi died, belonged to his father now. Earlier it had belonged to his uncle Rasul. Did Shafi need to possess this piece of land?

The death of the boy is mourned by his villagers not because he died for any cause. It is mourned basically because the gun had driven him away from his cause. Aziz and Rasul, the two brothers are still not on talking terms with each other. Shafi is no more, but the chasm he left behind between his father and uncle might never fill. He is no longer called a Mujahid, villagers say he was a renegade.

India Abroad News Service