Ever since he shut his door on the Indian parliamentary delegation, the defiant old man was fighting a lonely battle with forgetfulness in his home captivity. In the wake of Syed Ali Geelaniโs quiet farewell, a senior scribe who reported the 2016 summer upheaval recalls his field trip to then seething south. The killing of…
SRINAGAR โ Kashmirโs top separatist leader, Syed Ali Geelani, who died late Wednesday evening was laid to rest at a local graveyard, against his will, and amidst extraordinary security measures. The funeral was tightly controlled by Police as only a few relatives of Geelani and some neighbours were allowed to participate in the prayers. Geelani,…
โWhenever I go to Badwan, I sit on the bank of Dam and keep looking towards the gushing waters. I see how the dam took away my home and my fields from me.โ Amir Lone, 26, often disappears from the bustling town of Bandipora and returns home with some refreshing tales. But whenever he walks…
For upholding kindness in the state of penury, Ahsan ended up reaping gold in life. Ahsan lived in an age-old kaput house with an unkempt courtyard. The ambience gave away the destitute vibes. But the headman always tried to tackle poverty and pathos with his day and night slog. The onus lied on him to…
Some Kashmiris who lost their loved ones to the strife situation have picked up an uncanny routine with time to bring some solace in their battered lives.ย The four visitors that defied the graveyard silence with their spoken sorrows made a summer day even more restive for the cemetery regulars. They came and whispered prayers…
Termed as the mastermind behind the recent assassinations of political workers and cops, Abbas Sheikhโs killing is seen as the passing of the rank recruiter.ย The surreptitious strike in the summer capital by a near dozen covert counterinsurgents may be a perfect potboiler plotline, but it has already become a shot in the arm of…
In the din over the Kabul coup, analysts are locking horns over the long-predicted change in the strife region. The day Taliban entered the Presidential palace in Afghanistan capital and heralded a new era in the war-torn country, Ayesha Siddiqa, an expert on military affairs, said what strategists and security experts had long predicted: โAfter…
Hunt has done an enormous service to Kashmir by preserving the representations, which often swing like a pendulum between a heavenly abode and a place ravaged by strife. By the time the seething summer of 2010 thawed, 118 people had lost their lives across the valley. Years later, the telling number would become an index…
The book does not tell us anything a common Kashmiri doesnโt know and it doesnโt tell it in a captivating way that might grab a reader from start to finish. Set in the seething summer of 2008 when streets exploded with rage over the controversial Amarnath land deal in Kashmir, scribe Shakoor Ratherโs debut novel…