On November 10, 1990, when the VP Singh government fell in Delhi after an 11-month stint, Mark Epstein, correspondent of l’ Express, a French weekly magazine, was in Kashmir, reporting on the security situation in the valley as opposition to the Indian state peaked.

Epstein stayed in Srinagar’s picturesque houseboat, Clermont, where he met boatman Ghulam Rasool Dar aka Lassa -– then 42, now 67. It was through him the scribe could visit places to file “scoops”. In those haunting times, staying back and reporting from Kashmir would not have been easy for several newsmen had there been no “media-fixers” like Lassa around. The stories of Kashmir’s conflict were told by journalists, but access to these stories was made possible only by local Kashmiris like Lassa.

Like many journalists who ended up staying in Clermont then, Epstein left his remarks in a blue-jacket guest book, the document of Kashmir’s painful past. Before leaving Kashmir, Epstein summed up his reporting stint thus: “These boats are still a paradise of a kind. But outside, the military sometimes seem to outnumber civilians. Banks and post offices are practically closed. Electricity is a cherished rarity (state employees are on strike), etc. Private cars have been kept off the streets by militant groups. Some of which have also banned smoking. Add the killings on all sides and it’s been five pretty tough days.”

Over the years, such guest books have piled up — so have first-hand accounts, evocatively describing Kashmir’s strange duality: Beauty and conflict. Post-1990s, grim remarks, especially, stand out among the rest.

“Then,” says Lassa, dressed in a pheran and a cap, sitting idle in his Hazratbal home, “it was a fight between David and Goliath in the valley where armed Kashmiris were fighting the Indian state for their rights.”

Lassa, who has never been to school, talks in fluent English, while recalling how the state of affairs in the valley in the nineties forced European and American countries to issue travel advisories on Kashmir. “That was the last nail in the coffin of Kashmir’s tourism,” he says.

Being a poor patriarch of his family living entirely on tourism, Lassa shortly went out of job. It was then he saw an increase in footfall in Clermont owing to journalists flocking to Kashmir for stories. “All of a sudden,” he says, “Kashmir had become a newsman’s paradise.” Those “journalistic footfall” originating in 1990 lasted till 2005 –- if you look at the remarks recorded in Clermont’s guest books.

Scribes coming to the valley needed media-fixers to visit places and interact with locals. Once Lassa realised this, he saw an opportunity. “After giving it much thought, I volunteered for the job for the sake of my family’s survival,” he says.

And with that began the journey of a man who saw tumultuous events in Kashmir unfold before him, while helping journalists of all nationalities report both breaking as well as challenging stories.

One of his first assignments involved accompanying the award-winning photojournalist, John Issac, to the battered hamlet of Kunan Poshpora in North Kashmir. On February 23, 1991, some 40 odd women of this hamlet of all ages alleged that Army men had surrounded the hamlet the previous night and had taken turns to rape them.

“The villagers claimed that the Army had warned them against talking to the media, especially to the international press,” Lassa recalls. In fact, he says, Issac could report and capture the story of Kunan Poshpora only when he mentioned his Indian roots to Army officers. “As I said,” he continues, “the Army was more comfortable with Indian journalists than foreigners.”

Lassa witnessed this selective media treatment from the forces stationed in Kashmir quite frequently. Once, during 1993, when the restive Downtown Srinagar was up in arms, he says, “foreign newsmen were barred from covering anti-Army demonstrations, while reporters from Hindustan Times were given the green signal.”

He recounts a more shocking incident that took place in 1994 at Srinagar’s Maisuma — the bastion of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chief Yasin Malik. An Italian journalist named Franco Franzee working for an Italian magazine arrived at the spot to report on the situation. “But before the stone pelting could begin in the area,” Lassa recalls, “Franzee started quizzing a security officer who was not pleased with his blunt queries.” The moment clashes broke out, he says, the same officer targeted Franzee — firing a tear gas shell directly towards him.

It was Lassa who rushed Franzee to the hospital after recovering his camera and accessories. “For many days to come,” he says, “I drove myself crazy, thinking why only Franzee was made a target when the place was packed with many local and national journalists.” The question continues to beguile him.

One of the reasons the forces kept foreign journalists at bay, Lassa believes, was their “fearless” reporting of Kashmir where some men in uniform stood accused of human rights abuse. Among the prominent journalists Lassa met was Christopher Kremmer, author of the book The Carpet Wars, then working with the Sydney Morning Herald. The boatman-turned-fixer accompanied Kremmer to every possible part of Kashmir including Kargil. “I remember,” Lassa says, “how Barkha Dutt and other Indian journalists were covering the war mainly from the point of view of the Indian Army, which was preventing foreign journalists like Kremmer from digging up war details.”

On June 12, 1999, with fighting still raging on the hilly ridges of Kargil, Kremmer left her impression in the Clermont guest book, “We come, we go. This time, it’s military helicopters buzzing over the lake and endless Army convoys heading for Kargil…”

Speaking about the differential treatment by the Army, seasoned journalist Ravindra Dubey, who reported in Kashmir during the tumultuous 1990s, says he never faced any problems either from the government or the Indian Army. “On the contrary, we as a TV crew enjoyed the hospitality of the Army. On one occasion we even spent the night at the Army barracks as we had to shoot in the morning.”

While the Delhi media was treated well, Yusuf Jameel, a local journalist, says Kashmiri and foreign scribes were barred from covering security sensitive incidents. Jameel says the Army would bar local journalists fearing they were militant-backed. “But in most cases, such selective treatment only backfired — as many national or Delhi-based journalists would instead toe a different line by writing mostly against the Army. I remember certain pieces on the Army by Shankarshan Thakur, which even I couldn’t have thought of writing.”

Shiv Kunal Verma, who filmed and wrote extensively on the security forces stationed in Kashmir during the nineties, believes the selective treatment depended on individuals. “Some Army officers were at ease and comfortable with the media, others would shy away while yet others could be downright hostile,” he says. “Institutionally, the Army has come a long way since the early 1990s; they would certainly have done a lot to streamline their information systems. There is also an inherent tendency of security forces to try and ‘manage’ the media, which they feel may not happen with the foreign press.”

In 1995, Verma says, when militancy was at its zenith, he was filming with the Army in some militant hotbeds, including Bandipora, Sopore and Anantnag. “I never had a problem because they [Army] felt I understood what the parameters and dynamics of the conflict entailed. Apart from the physical cold and general horror of the low intensity conflict, I had no problems.”

Col NN Joshi, Srinagar-based defence public relations officer, however, states that all media persons were treated equally. “Coverage of operations is permitted to media persons after appropriate clearance from the defence ministry. Any media person is free to obtain the clearance.”

A defence security personnel stationed in the Badami Bagh cantonment also said that there is no such conscious policy to allow or disallow foreign journalists or Indian journalists. “But during that period [nineties] there used to be more infiltration from the LoC, many operations and encounters, but less availability of resources like mobile phones and Internet — that was the reason why journalists were not able to cover or get details at the right time. There was a definite language issue. Some security personnel were unable to understand the language of foreigners. There was also a glaring security issue. And, finally, it was important that a journalist should get permission from the defence ministry and information and broadcasting ministry to cover encounters or go near the border or LoC.”

In all this, Lassa’s proximity with journalists was at a different level. They would discuss culture, diplomacy and the Silk Route with the uneducated boatman. “You know,” he says, “Kremmer would even share details of her stories with me, like how innocent civilians were shot dead like flies and how their bodies were dumped at anonymous places.”

Lassa has now quit being a fixer. After 26 years, like Kashmir, he is back to square one. As a wintry hush prevails over tourism in Kashmir, Lassa spends his days at home, telling tales to his grandchildren.

Among the many tales, the one gripping story is about Marc Epstein of L’ Express. After spending five terrible days in Kashmir in November 1990, Epstein returned to Kashmir in 1991 to report many blood-soaked scoops with the help of Lassa.

Later, he left his Kashmir impression in one blue-jacketed guest book inside Clermont: “I returned here to see how the situation had evolved since my last visit… only to find that the fate of Kashmir lies less and less, it seems, in the hands of Kashmiris. The whole place is drifting, like the floating gardens on the lake. While the shootings, the arrests… go on outside, there are people here who plant flowers, mow the lawn and cook banana fritters. Despite the tragedies, life goes on….life is here.”