One of the prominent youth Muslims leader of Kargil sent Kashmir Dispatch an open letter addressed to the chief minister Omar Abdullah over the communal clashes that have gripped Zanskar since past few months. Here is the letter:

Esteemed Sir!

 

With due regard I would like to submit the following lines before your goodself :-

1. That, your goodself will be aware of the fact that few Buddhist families in Zanskar, Kargil converted to Islam with their own free will and onset without any...

Kashmir has been hot as a thousand devils this year. Yasin Malik, with his trademark grim grin, thinks that it is due to our sins and the unresolved ‘Maslay Kashmir’. In absence of any metrological connection between sin and the sun, many would say that it could be about the ‘core issue’ only. As both parties – India and Pakistan – get busy with other non-essential stuff, where is the time to follow through on Kashmir? Alas Manmohan Singh, that clean fellow, always spotted in...

Azad Essa is a very rare tribe. With an unusual chutzpah, he dons several hats: that of an Al-Jazeera journalist, blogger and a keen observer of peoples and cultures around the globe. It is not surprising that his first book ‘The Moslems are coming’ cuts through the usual fakery about the most pressing issues that confront us. In simple words the book has balls.

Divided into seven major chapters, each of which is further sub-divided into mini-chapters, Azad launches into a no holds...

Only the curer whose love makes me drunk
Only that hand, if it wants can cure me!
Requirement is not a test of my tears
Eyes, not carriers of rain laden clouds!
~Shahi-Hamdan, Amir-Kabir

The Gilan province in Persia is lush green. It is called the city of rain. A beautiful river known as Haraz flows quietly nearby. Nearly a thousand years ago, one fine morning, an old poet who lived nearby decided to send his emissaries to Kashmir. It was the 11th century, most historians agree. And we were...

More than 359 babies have died in Srinagar's GB Pant hospital in five months. 35 newborns died in the last fortnight alone. This is the city’s only paediatric facility. Mind you we ain’t backward. We have two world-class golf courses in Srinagar. The grass at Royal Springs is of different shades with a famous par-3 fifth, professional 18 hall, par 72 track, besides comfort stations and massage parlours, not to speak of the ultra modern underground sprinkler irrigation. There are only...

Kashmiri scientists recently cloned the world’s first Pashmina goat and named her ‘Noori’. Omar Abdullah, of local genus Shera (lion) – a very Kashmiri codification of our political creatures – visited the animal this morning. (Dropping by achievements has historically been classy. Next stop: traffic light at Lal Chowk) The CM got a few pictures taken with Noori in his lap and quickly shared the same on Twitter, captioned: Noori and Me. While puritans would say that ‘Noori and...

Before the knives come out, let us come clean. Gay used to be the same thing as happy and carefree before Englishmen sexualized the term in the early 20th century. Be as it may, many a commentators on Kashmir these days, in their bouts of journalgasm (happens by the Dal and also in Potato farms) think that there is some embargo on ‘being happy’ in the tiny little vale of ours. Pray, we never stopped lining up for mutton, even in times of daily gun-battles!

Now that the barrel of gun has...

We may have our iPhones alright but the first sprinkling of snow in Kashmir upends just about everything. Power transmission lines, roadside trees and civil administration cave in on each other and in that order. Ergo -- light, water and most means of communication disappear. The winter of 2011-12 is no exception. Local government was caught with its pants down, God knows doing what, in the season’s first – and subsequent – snowfalls.

Tourists from mainland India, with monkey caps...