Politics, policy paralysis and pandemic have collectively derailed Kashmirโs wheelers now selling their buses as junk for survival. 3D effectโDoom, Distress, Demolitionโis quite blatant in the WBS (Western Bus Stand) in the heart of Srinagar.ย In this buzz-bereft bus yard, Abdul Rashidโs grease-smeared face gleams in the summer sun. The transporter has arrived for another…
As spring became synonymous with tulips in the valley over the years, many refreshing signs heralding the new season took a backseat. Among them are Srinagarโs purple flowers reinforcing Kashmirโs Central Asian connection and the change of heart in an emergency enforcer. In the rumbling convoys of the early nineties, Ram Lal came as an…
A young promising life perished lately in Srinagar after battling addiction-ailment for weeks. In the backdrop of this fresh fatality, leaving another Kashmiri family shattered, the author reproduces a former druggieโs firsthand account of his dope life.ย I was in my flourishing youth, about to do something big as I thought. But life had a…
Before eviction drives would uproot nomads from the jungle last year, a trip to Shopian slopes amid Covid curbs recreated the old world trek. But now, when nomads are about to return, will their summer home be the same? Home captives were yet to go for a retreat in mountainsโwhere forest guards would play jungle…
On the day when Kashmiris are observing the 175 years of the inhuman Treaty of Amritsar (the pact which sealed the fate and sold the valley along with its people, livestock and trees to Dogra rulers), many are recalling the treacherous regimeโs prime minister for his principled conduct with the Fourth Pillar of Democracy, now…
After Akbarโs invading army faced an โoppressedโ hatredโโPogi moghulโโfor being the first alien arm-twisters in the valley, the koshur slang only progressed with political shades and slurs throughout its โNaya Kashmirโ resurgent phases.ย As the two political pals rose to address the monarchy-liberated masses in Kashmirโs Red Square in the late forties, the celebrated Persian…
Thirty one winters later, Ghulam Mohammad Dar still carries the first carnage of militancy-era in his head like a nightmarish strife. Besides changing Kashmir, the bridge butchery altered this erstwhile newsagent forever. Itโs been a sad transformation, he says looking at a dead pigeon floating on frosty waters under the bridge. That day, he recounts,…
Breaking free from hackneyed foreign accounts, Kashmir over the years witnessed the rise of native narratives with fresh and deep insights. A young visual storyteller in this photo story is only trying to capture one such description of Srinagar cityโs not-so-overt shades of life. Life in Sun City is an elegy of its rundown glory…
โWhen the guests started pouring in, I saw them all more like examiners, and the big day like an examination which they would evaluate as per some standard which keeps updating its regulations more frequently than UGC which I was piling my fright about.โ Itโs been almost a month now that the wedding of my…
When โstatusโ fell last summer, the romantics, like Shakeel and Zehra, of the Valley found themselves at the crossroads of the enforced crisis. Suddenly when messagesย stopped coming from mountains last summer, Shakeel struggled with his pining heart in his Delhi apartment. The first night was getting excruciatingly long and unbearable for the IT guy. Along…