As an undisguised commoner on streets, a Kashmiri girl is keeping the community spirit alive in a pandemic with her kind acts. Novel coronavirus had just returned with vengeance and enforced another lockdown in Kashmir when a young mother admitted in Srinagarโs Gousia Hospital was getting anxious about her newborn. Shortage of baby food and…
To counter the lockdown-created destitution, one man has taken up the responsibility of 62 neighbourhoods in Kashmir. In a hot and humid summer day in Srinagar, a boy in his early 20sโwearing shabby clothes and holding a paper slipโwas looking for a man whose address he was carrying in his palm. He walked past the…
They collect charity during the day and deliver it at the doorsteps of the needy in the dead of the night. As the invisible enemy behind the โThird World Warโ stormed the valley in the spring of 2020, Maimoona grew fretful. Mindful of her dried-up ration stock, hungry kids, and no scope of work in…
They came as brides in one Dar family some sixty years ago and became each otherโs shadow for a lifetime. They sit akin to meditative matrons mulling over their beloved loss. Amid their poised posture, masked women intermittingly walk in twos, and threes, to pay condolence for their departed sister, Jiger. Their silent stares speak…
The islet where farewell moments were once performed by Muslim cremators has now become a shimmering example of loyalty. Birds chirping and insect shrilling evocatively echo a ghost islet in the backwater of iconic Dal Lake. The shed under which pyre was once prepared still stands under the shade of mighty Chinars. Dead would arrive…
When pills donโt help, people seek platonic ways to deal with their health problems. Haggard and pale, Uzair Khan, 24, is bedridden at a drab corner of his room. At his right side, a stack of tablet strips and syrups are making his morbidity blatant. As he sighs in agony, his woeful parents watch his…