In January 2019, a 21-year-old militant, Syed Rubaan Hussain, lost his life in an encounter along with his two associates in district Budgam. Rubaanโs elder brother, Syed Tajamul Imran, writes about the void his brother has left behind; recounts what his death has brought to him and his family and the painful memories they have…
WHILE PROTEST REVERBERATESย on the streets of Chile, Catalonia, Britain, France, Iraq, Lebanon and Hong Kong, and a new generation rages against what has been done to their planet, I hope you will forgive me for speaking about a place where the street has been taken over by something quite different. There was a time when…
Thereโs a strange dynamic to the architecture of hotels in Kashmir that have existed during these times of siege since the last few decades. Today, as I walked through the barbed wires boldly glistening in the faint sunlight of an unbecoming winter, I noticed that most of them, or least of all the ones I…
At a time when George Orwell was struggling to make sense of the Spanish Civil War in Barcelona in the 1930s, the Himalayan region of Kashmir had made a transition from economic awakening to political awakening. Prior to this,ย the philosopher-poet Dr Iqbal had written a Persian poem titledย Saqi Namaย in the Nishat gardens in Srinagar. The…
Throughout history, there are numerous examples of how the divide-and-conquer tactic has been used as a precursor to total destruction. We know that much of the science of anthropology was born in genocide โ to meet the need of their empires to understand a people, and ultimately to destroy them. I think this is perhaps…
โPassive harassment for people of Kashmir, the unintentional remarks like quoting the infamous statement to justify the ill-bred occupation, is a concerning issue. It goes unnoticed and normally even the listener wouldnโt care to think about it in most cases.โ Kashmir had become stifling. It burdened me to realize that the world wonโt stop for…
We will meet,somewhere, sometime,in the nuptial embrace ofour grey and white memories. With your blessed arrival;The celebrated idols of our dark history,(their faces yet so rough and ugly),The explosives implanted in thewombs of our senile mothers,The bloodied trails on the ashenheads of our brides,The gunpowder, growling underthe rubble of our beloved palacesโEverything,Everything would get metamorphosedInto…