News Desk
They were on their honeymoon.
Lieutenant Vinay Narwal, not yet 27, had just married Himanshi. A naval officer from Karnal, posted in Kochi, he wore his uniform with the calm confidence of someone who believed in duty, and perhaps, in the promise of tomorrow. Himanshi, radiant in the wedding photographs, wore joy on her face the way young brides often do—without irony, without fear.
Their plan had been Switzerland. But visas take time and the mountains of Kashmir were closer, gentler, and just as picturesque. So there they were, in the famed Baisaran meadows of Pahalgam—sitting in the grass, laughing over a plate of bhel puri. There’s a photo of them from that afternoon. The sun paints them in gold. Their eyes are crinkled from smiling. You could print it on a postcard. Frame it as proof that the country still makes room for happiness.
And then: a man walked up, asked Narwal his religion, and shot him dead.
Himanshi didn’t scream. She didn’t run. She sat beside his bleeding body in the middle of that paradise-turned-nightmare, uncomprehending, unmoving, until the police arrived—an hour later.
At his cremation in Karnal, the air was thick with grief. But just days later, at a blood donation camp held to mark what would have been his 27th birthday, Himanshi stood before the cameras. Her voice didn’t shake.
“This going against Kashmiris and Muslims, we don’t want this. We want peace, and only peace,” she said.
And then, the second heartbreak began.
What Himanshi received for her courage was not applause, but abuse. Right-wing trolls filled her feed with venom. “She should be shot too,” one post read. Others claimed she’d been bribed, or wanted to remarry, or had Muslim friends in college—anything to discredit her resolve.
But she stood firm. “I know what I said and why I said it,” she told a reporter. “I don’t want innocent lives to be impacted by this, whether Hindu or Muslim.”
Across the country, many watched her and wept. Among them was Lalita Ramdas, daughter and wife of Indian Navy chiefs, who penned an open letter that now reads like a moral compass for a country struggling with its soul.
“You are the perfect Fauji wife, Himanshi,” Ramdas wrote. “True to the spirit of the service, the Constitution, and to our secular values.”
She continued: “This is a personal tribute from possibly one of the oldest Navy daughters/wives alive today… to the newest and youngest among the special fraternity of Naval wives. I am so proud of you… Your extraordinary strength, composure, and conviction when you speak out against hate… is truly remarkable. And so badly needed in our times.”
Himanshi’s humanity was not an isolated act. In the shadows of tragedy, a wave of compassion rose from unexpected corners.
That same morning in Pahalgam, Arathi Menon, a working mother from Kochi vacationing with her family, found herself in the crosshairs. She was walking through the meadow with her father, 65-year-old N. Ramachandran, and her six-year-old twin sons. They heard what sounded like firecrackers. It wasn’t.
“As we were moving, a man emerged from the woods. He looked straight at us,” she told The New Indian Express. He spoke in a language they couldn’t understand. “We said, ‘We don’t know’—and then he opened fire.”
Her father collapsed. Menon grabbed her sons and ran into the forest.
“We ran for nearly an hour,” she said. “The ponies had started running too, and I just followed their footprints.”
When her phone finally caught a signal, she called their driver, Musafir. He came instantly. Along with a man named Sameer, they stood by her all night, through the mortuary, through the paperwork, through the unbearable.
“They became my brothers,” she said. “I have two brothers in Kashmir now. May Allah protect you both.”
She was not the only one who found shelter in the Valley.
Arvind Agrawal, a BJP youth wing member from Chhattisgarh, was on vacation with his extended family when the bullets began to fly. His four-year-old daughter, Samriddhi, ran into the open. His wife Pooja chased her. Just then, Nazakat, a local pony handler, picked up Samriddhi and shielded her with his own body.
Nazakat told the terrorists the child was his daughter. They moved on.
“You risked your life to save ours,” Agrawal later wrote on Facebook. “We will never be able to thank Nazakat bhai enough.”
Nazakat’s own cousin, Adil, had just been killed while trying to protect tourists. But Nazakat didn’t go home. Not yet. He stayed by Agrawal’s family, saw them safely to the airport, only then returned to mourn.
“The attacks mark the death of humanity,” Nazakat said, “and it should not have happened at any cost. I just find happiness in the fact that I could rescue those 11 people and make sure they reached home safely.”
There was also Syed Adil Shah, a humble daily-wage pony handler. He earned barely Rs. 300 a day, renting ponies to guide tourists through the mountains. When the terrorists opened fire, he tried to snatch a gun from one of them. He was shot three times and died on the spot.
“He left home that morning after three days of rain,” his father recalled. “Who knew it was the last time?”
Through tears, he said, “He showed his humanity, and that allows us to live on.”
In another corner of Kashmir, a tourist family from Maharashtra took shelter in the home of their taxi driver, Adil. “Adil bhai gave us food, kept us in his house, encouraged us, and took us to a safe place,” said one of the women in a video that’s now gone viral.
A shawl hawker, Sajad Ahmad Bhat, carried an injured tourist on his back for an hour, running through difficult terrain until he reached a road. “It was our duty as Kashmiris to save them,” he said. “This was murder of humanity.”
He wasn’t alone. ATV operators, shopkeepers, pony-wallahs—all rushed to help. And as fear gripped the valley, something extraordinary happened: Kashmir shut itself down.
Not in fear. In mourning.
Shops shuttered. Schools closed. Public transport disappeared. Spontaneous rallies filled the streets. Candlelight vigils burned in the dark. Placards read, We Are Sorry. Kashmiris lined the highways, offering water, food, and shelter to fleeing tourists.
In Shopian, a man named Bashrat Maqbool, leader of the Keegam Youth Trust, helped set up food kiosks. “We pooled money from our own pockets,” he said, “and distributed fruits, water, and other essentials.”
Auto-rickshaw drivers ferried tourists to the airport—for free.
“We aren’t responsible for it,” said Shoaib Mehraj from Srinagar, “but since this attack happened in Kashmir, we feel we owe an apology to our guests.”
And there were darker echoes, beyond the valley. In Agra, less than 24 hours after the Pahalgam attack, 25-year-old Mohammad Ghulfam was shot inside his biryani shop. Another cousin was injured. It was retribution, some said. A warning, others claimed. But here, we leave this as a passing shadow—a reminder of what we must not become—because kindness in Pahalgam was not a story to be foggotton, but one of unimaginable grace.
This is a portrait of a nation in grief.
But more than that—it is a record of its humanity.
Only in India, they say. And sometimes—sometimes—they say it with awe.
