We find them at every signal. Every red light. Outside every mosque and shrine. On roadsides and steps of bridges. In busses. Many times at our door steps as well. Most of the times we choose to look away. Claiming theyโre all pretending to be in need and that they do not need our help.…
As peace continues to drive diplomatic discourses and backchannel talks, the discord-dented commoners of Kashmir still wonder about the elusive calm in their homeland. I pictured Manzoor Ahmad as a frown figure inside his rundown shop in Downtown Srinagar. The 65-year-old tailor was working on someoneโs pheran. He enjoys working when the bright sunlight illuminates…
On the day when Kashmiri Pandits are celebrating Herath, Mountain Ink presents the living legend of Mohini Raina โ the beloved nurse who sought salvation in her sisterhood and spiritual roots to overcome an overwhelming situation in her homeland when her tribe members migrated from the valley. When Indian Home Minister Mufti Sayeed played his…
Kashmirโs Persian connection mightโve elapsed from public memory amid the blitz of the distorted narrative over the years, but a sanctum sanctorum in old Srinagar is still making these ties as obvious as it was back in the reformerโs time. A turret rising from a rusty pyramid-shaped rooftop in downtownโs defiant pocket populated by polemic…
As a medieval martial method, beheadings are used to scare soldiers and collect war trophies and wage psyops. When the same tactic consumed the 2003 LoC ceasefire before its revival in 2021, it almost pushed the two nuke-armoured neighbours on the warpath. A month before Delhi would secretly execute Indian Parliament convict Afzal Guru inside…
In Kashmirโs literary circles, some people are asserting that a poet from Sonawari might be the worldโs only poet to write and read poetry in circles.ย The poetic vision burnished in Zareefa Jan, 55, when she was out to fetch water from her village brook.ย Carrying a pitcher on her head, she soon drifted in…
Prominent pulmonologist Naveed Nazirโs tweet about the possibility of a second Covid wave has only shifted focus on Kashmirโs vaccination drive still grappling with misinformation and speculations. Inside his crowded clinic at Sanat Nagar junction in Srinagar, a doctor stands isolated. Attending patients behind a transparent glass wall and addressing them through a mike, he…
Love stories and dreams often die a silent death in the larger political din of Kashmir. But when a cupid from north lost both his dream and love in the war, he became loner, went into an exile, only to return and die as a miserable man. As the sun shone on a โghost houseโ,…
His โIndian Muslimโ shrill mightโve cemented the slot his โbuddyโ promised during an emotional farewell, but in Kashmirโs Congress camp, the former chief minister remains the leader whose central canvassing continues to baffle even his contemporaries. The silence from the Delhi-based Congress headquarters over the retirement of the โGandhi family loyalistโ Ghulam Nabi Azad has…
Being a bibliophile does not merely make one a well-read person. It is like carrying all the people, all these characters in oneโs heart as if they were people in real life. It was a bright beautiful day. The sun was high up in the sky, burning up intensely. The light was blindingly bright due…