By Ahsanul Haq Chishti A night of ghazals comes to an end. The singer departs through her chosen mirror, her one diamond cut on her countless necks. I, as ever, linger. (From Agha Shahid Ali’s Farewell poem: I Dream I Am At the Ghat of the Only World) Let me put a [...]

A fortnight after Afzal Guru’s execution, the Valley continues to simmer with resentment. But it is the fallout on the peace and the political efforts to address Kashmir that makes hanging a fraught development for the state. The biggest casualty of the execution is the prospect for a fresh dialogue [...]

By Nasrun Mir After days of sitting in office next to the radiator in the wood-paneled newsroom, collecting facts around the last moments of Parliament attack convict Muhammad Afzal Guru – a walk on the streets of Srinagar was due on this sunny February afternoon. Curfew was still in place, [...]

There is a lot of noise and emotion over the death of Afzal Guru. In the din, there are several extremely significant things going unnoticed. I am no analyst, but I am a people watcher, and my not cheering for any particular outcome in Kashmir leaves me free to see [...]

As an adolescent in 1984, I vaguely remember the sequences of events that led to the hanging of JKLF founder Maqbool Bhat. The kidnapping and subsequent killing of a senior Indian diplomat Ravindra Hareshwa Mhatre certainly created a stir in my family and became a subject of discussion between my [...]

The execution of Afzal Guru was secretive and swift much like Ajmal Kasab’s. Besides that being in common, the hangings themselves seemed excessive in the way they were perpetrated…without the transparency that lies at the very core of democracy. The merits of their sentencing aside, it will be reasoned that [...]

So, the all-girl teenage rock band that had gripped India’s collective imagination over the last fortnight, as an attempt to break free from the shackles of a patriarchal clench that threatens to throttle India, has decided to quit. Their quitting is the latest in the string of caveats laid down [...]

Kashmir is back in the headlines once again. This time some anonymous kids on Facebook made it happen when they allegedly threatened Kashmir’s only all-girl rock band-Pragaash. The girls had performed well in a paramilitary CRPF-organized contest. But as soon as the news of virtual threats appeared in Delhi-based media, [...]

…When you hive off a portion of pain from the larger tragedy of Kashmir As a teenager in Baramulla in 1989, and brought up on a still steady discourse of Kashmir’s uneasy relationship with New Delhi, the outbreak of separatist militancy was eminently understandable. At that time, it was difficult [...]

For long, Kashmir was portrayed in Bollywood movies a beautiful place on earth where actors were shown eating in its magnificent houseboats, drinking from fresh spring waters and making merry in the Valley’s lush slopes. But away from its conventional habit, post 1989 Hindi movies on Kashmir slowly harped on [...]

Napoleon is rumoured to have advised that nations must learn to ignore the pinpricks of war if they were to avoid the cannon shots there were sure to follow, but the Emperor had no answer to Fourth Generation Warfare either, nor did he know of nuclear deterrence. In the realm [...]

Can you believe it? A Chinese–made shoe is holding hostage a population of over 1.4 million in Srinagar. It began in Central Kashmir’s Magam area. On 28 November, someone saw a white sports shoe with the name of the last Caliph (Hazrat Ali) printed on it. A close examination of [...]