Flowers on a Kargil Cliff

At 15,700 feet, I was clinging for dear life. Like a lizards belly, I had pressed my body tight into a cliff of the Kargil War. There was no safety rope around my waist to secure my passage along the cliff wall, which was near-perpendicular in stretches. My hands and feet had the barest of holds and pressing against the wall was the only safeguard against the forces of gravity that would send me plummeting thousands of feet into Gragario nullah.Posted with The Indian Express in Kashmir and later, during the Kargil War, Vikram Jit Singh is that rare breed of war correspondents who took grave risks to their lives in the line of duty. Embedded with Armys seek-and-destroy columns, he climbed Safapora mountains at night to hunt down killers of 23 Wandhama Pandits.Incorporating unpublished photographs of Point 5353 in Drass taken by Pakistani intrusive patrols in Oct 1998 during the Kargil build-up, the book establishes how 5353 and Bajrang Post were captured. Photos reveal Gen P. Musharraf and his entourage of generals across LoC in March 99.A diehard romantic, Vikram Jit collected alpine flowers while under fire on the cliffs of Kargil for his anxious fiance. The book narrates powerful human stories of love and loss. Of the widow who did not part with her sindoor & bangles even as her husband lay dead in a Kargil cave. Of Capt Jintu Gogoi and Anjana Parasher whose love triumphed death.The book brings alive untold stories and captures the zeitgeist of war reportage in Ernie Pyle style. The refusal of Capt Manoj Pandey (PVC-P) to obey suicidal orders. The 244 unclaimed Pakistani bodies in Kargil. The Gurkha who used his khukhri. Since valour doesnt adhere to a line of control, it includes one of Pakistani young officers and soldiers.As Lt Gen Sanjay Kulkarni, the Siachen legend, put it, Vikram has been baptised under fire as a war correspondent, and has operated less as a correspondent and more as a soldier in Kashmir...truthful reporting is his forte.