โIn the night of broken glass, I pray someone finds my diary, somebody knows my storyโ The cycle of dark nights had just begun, when I sat to scribble the saddest lines. It was 3:00 am, on August 4, 2019, and Kashmir was once again cut-off from the rest of the world. โThe sea of…
The hushed harassment inflicted on human soul within four-walls is about to become a courtroom campaign in the Valley. Three best friends, Tasiya*, Benish* and Samreen* have come together over coffee after a long period of quarantine. Having each otherโs back always, thereโs a lightness that the buddies feel in one anotherโs presence every time…
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…
Inside a downtownerโs detained world where devoured dreams and despondency lay bare a commonerโs helplessness in Kashmir. It was a striking piece of information from an anonymous cop vouching for the innocence of a wronged downtowner who had landed in then chief minister Narendra Modi-ruled Gujarat jail in 2010. The news came after the man…
How often do you actually remember him? You left the dessert half-eaten when suddenly his smile flashed in front of you. I do not. Instead, I devour my meals, my days, I spend engrossed in books where lovers unite in the end or don’t. Or die. Or are victorious against a tyrant. Someday I’ll know,…