Angsting in Kashmir

There is something about simplicty. When the sufis sang...they sang about simple things with a depth that touched the soul. And sometimes this art of simplcity reflects from faces.
Kashmir is a land bestowed with natural beauty. No matter how long you look at the landscape, you will not have enough. No amount of pictures can capture what you feel when you look at the rivers, lakes, flora and fauna, mountains and.....the people.

Just people doing everyday things. We go to work day in and day out, follow routine after routine. But here in Srinagar, I’d look out in the morning from my car window at the people of the valley going about their daily businesses....as art. Chidlren being rushed to school....or a man smoking a morning hookah in his shop....I found something so serene and simple in these passing images.

But every image that passed by me, was intersperesed with a figure. A solitary figure. An omnipresent figure. Of a soldier. Every 2 minutes you could spot him...looking at you....alert. It’s when I realised the price of the beauty around you, the price that it was paying and has paid. The conflict hits you in the face.

But sadly as life is - if there was no conflict...there wouldn’t be a story. Like everything else, this bittersweetness takes a character of its own in the Kashmir Valley.

Just go on.... that’s what I learnt here.

[Photo Credit: Harmanpreet Kaur]