Mindful of how the triple lockdown has left many vulnerable, isolated and in danger of participating in the ever dubious drug addiction activities, three young Kashmiri women, including author of this piece, have created a virtual space for the distressed youth of the valley where they freely express themselves and pass through a therapeutic experience.
As pellets once again returned to haunt Kashmir near a Shopian gunfight site, the victims of the duck-hunting guns continue to grapple with the enforced darkness. But one pellet-affected boy is showing the way by fighting his victimhood with the light of education.
100 days after he went missing in the woods of Naranag, a Kashmiri scholar’s case remains an unsolved mystery.
As the two-day downpour coinciding the sixth anniversary of the September floods has already created fresh concerns in the valley, Kashmir’s contractor community continues to await the flood repairing and rehabilitation bill since that devastating fall of 2014.
‘After our two-day stay in Gurez, we braced up to return to the monotony of our lives. On returning, I alighted on Razdan Pass. While taking a deep breath of fresh air in the mountains, I roved around amidst the click-clanking of camera shutters.’
After the abrogation of Article 370 last summer and the subsequent passing of the J&K Reorganisation Act 2019, seven important commissions in the erstwhile state were dissolved. Among them was the State Commission for Protection of Women and Child Rights—serving the interests of the marginalised gender. Its dismissal has left several Kashmiri women in a lurch.
I first met Agha, as he is widely known, on a July visit to his cozy Rajbagh home. The octogenarian educator was in high spirits and rare form: accusing me, the imperialist American, of most if not all of the world’s problems; brushing aside challengers for talking “rot;” and jovially lording over his kingdom like a knighted duke.
Amid internet blockade last year, many young Kashmiri felt ‘like caged birds who weren’t allowed out’. Not only the communication crisis affected their psyche, but also their careers, ventures and projects
Kashmir’s fiction guild is a parallel universe frequented by a bunch of wordsmiths lacking good publishers and wide readership. But that doesn’t stop them for meeting and fuelling the literary mood in the valley
At a time when a new book titled ‘Can You Hear Kashmiri Women Speak’ is presenting female voices of the valley, many strife-battered women are silently braving the everyday lockdown trauma in Kashmir. Among them are half widows whose endless wait is escalating due to existential crisis created by lockdowns
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