Taking a walk on the banks of Dal Lake is a sign “of peace and normalcy” in Kashmir.” And promenade of tourists on the Boulevard is assurance of peace. Last year Prinyanka Chopra’s forays in dusty downtown too were construed as a symbol of peace. What followed the visit, we all know.

Death of people in road accidents is also a sign of peace. It is nothing but normalcy-related deaths, which is being given wide coverage. At the end of the year, they tell us that more people die in road...

Public opinion runs unabated in the media - this notion is one of the most spectacular achievements in the world today. Masses are made to believe that the media is liberal, when it is only propagandized to advocate the conservative corporate interests and to obey an esurient political class - the ever powerful lobby which has the power of distribution, of decision making, of production and of financial operations. By rationale, masses have been induced to thralldom for generations.

Media...

There is a different kind of terror prowling the streets of Srinagar now, that of dogs. Residents of Srinagar have been frustrated by the alarming number of street dogs and over the past few years their numbers have been multiplying manifold. The reported cases of dog bites and attack on humans have also seen a steep rise here. In year 2006, 4500 dog bite cases were recorded by the main SMHS hospital of Srinagar which rose to 9000 cases in 2010. On March 14 this year 10-year-old Omar Farooq...

For most Indians Kashmir remains an epitome of ‘nature’s bounty’ on earth and as a child I too was fascinated with the cliché of Kashmir as the ‘heaven of the earth’. But having grown up in the nineties, the conflict and its history gradually came to interest me. An opportunity to visit Kashmir, however, had eluded me till now. An invitation from a friend this summer finally took me to the Valley. Though Kashmir is touted as one of the leading tourist destinations by India, the...

The isolated world of Ladakh is set to be opened up for all weather if a push for accessibility by a group of youth is successful. A group of youth mostly from the twin districts of Ladakh i.e. Leh and Kargil, are calling for the quick construction of the all-weather Zojila tunnel connecting Ladakh to Kashmir valley and the outer world.

The youth formed a focus group called Zojila Watch, to create greater urgency for the tunnel, to foresee the developments and to disseminate the...

Few years back the front pages of local newspapers in the valley revealed the story behind the killing of Asrar, a youth from Maisuma, who was apparently killed by his two friends for the folly of chatting online with a girl. Around the same time, a smaller news item got lost on the obscure pages. It was about a Kashmiri youth creating a website to answer to queries of students about academics and career options. While some got busy immediately jumping to conclusions that there was something...

 

Few years back the front pages of local newspapers in the valley revealed the story behind the killing of Asrar, a youth from Maisuma, who was apparently killed by his two friends for the folly of chatting online with a girl. Around the same time, a smaller news item got lost on the obscure pages. It was about a Kashmiri youth creating a website to answer to queries of students about academics and career options. While some got busy immediately jumping to conclusions that there was...

Every breeze which passes through the modest towns of Kashmir contains stories about warfare and unceasing captivity. Sometimes, thinking of the conflict, which we are sucked into, a series of images flash in my mind. And they are always about common Kashmiris, and less about politicians and extremists. It’s the common people of Kashmir whose somber stories have been missing in this territorial dispute.

The very first bomb blast, the very first casualty has killed the truth here. Everyone...