Shopkeepers urge people to shop locally to help keep Kashmir businesses afloat. Srinagar โ As the business establishments in Kashmir valley struggle to stay afloat due to three years of the crisis caused by political upheaval and pandemic, the traders in the region are grappling with evolution in spending habits of people, something they find…
On International Literacy Day, Mountain Ink brings out the story of the two young girls from Kashmirโs situational-hit families who chose earning over learning. Her home is a piecemeal world of woes where sheโs slogging to bring some smiles on the situation-stricken faces.ย But the perpetual pathos that has come to define the indoor life…
After redefining rhythm and routine, a waning second wave has now restored some old order, including the mosque camaraderie. In this piece, the author talks about one such comradeship curbed by the coronavirus. When I became a captive of the red zone, that old mosque mate of my grandfatherโs age felt like a castaway company.ย …
Theyโre involved in the community cause when even blood relations arenโt coming forward for the final farewell of their loved ones. The call came when Bashir Ahmad was battling a bug in home isolation. But more than his own wellbeing, he was getting restless for his ailing elder admitted in the Covid-designated hospital at the…
โI was so anxious that I started crying,โ Naseem recalls her hospital visit a fortnight later. โI wasnโt worried about myself, but for my baby.โ Just when Naseem had lost the track of cases and concern, she felt those startling signs making one a fitting case of Covid. The symptoms surfaced when a barrage of…
Two boats of two eras saved lives in Kashmir caught in two pestilence periods. But between Now and Then, the vale is struggling to come out of the Shakespearean curse: โA plague on both your houses.โย The change was sudden and shocking. The man who till yesterday would plead the case of his community had…
As young are increasingly falling to the second viral wave in Kashmir, the health infrastructure of the region directly controlled by Delhi has once again made it a desperate situation for the lockdown-laden people. A telling image made much noise on social media lately when efforts were being made to stockpile oxygen in the valley.…
Kashmirโs community concern and crisis management is once again becoming a silver lining amid the gloom created by the second Covid wave. As pyre-lit crematoriums are running short of spaces and JCBs digging โmass gravesโ in cemeteries, a Kashmiri trader is firefighting for life amid Delhiโs deadly wave. Mushtaq Khan is mobilising welfare support for…
Iโm writing this anonymously because Iโm afraid my mother will face the repercussions. Should such fear be expected from the educational sector of the government? Is this normal? Only days before the holy month would commence, weddings were being conducted, feasts held, markets flung open without social distancing, and officials at the airport, the ones…
When contagion plagued the previous spring, a young Kashmiri photojournalist became part of the โuntouchableโ crowd inside an isolated ward where he experienced a close death encounter and decided to document his dreadful dungeon. After covering blistering riots in Delhi, I was planning to come home when bogeyman grounded all the flights.ย As someone coming…