Author: Kashmir Newsline

What is it about our culture today that makes us unable to admit that we are who we are? by Soni Razdan An actor at the BEEB (slang for BBC) was chatting with me while I was on one of my walk-on-part episodes. “If you have gotten a place at Guildhall”, he said, “on no account must you give it up. Write to all the charities you can find to get a grant. Do anything, part time jobs, anything, but do not give up that place.” A chap after my own heart! That was all the advice I ever needed.…

Series of excerpts from Not Just Cricket by Pradeep Magazine. The common opinion among many elderly people was that because India is so big and powerful, it behaves like a bully. Their wish was that it should instead be like an ‘elder brother’ and take care of its weak, estranged ‘younger brother’. Kashmir: At Home without a Home It was around that period I started visiting Srinagar more often, finding any pretext, sporting or otherwise, to get my office to send me there for reporting. I was trying to renew my connection with my homeland to make sense of the…

Having made it to the Limca Book of Records for having more than 80,000 books and being the only library-bookshop located on an island in India, Gulshan Books is a model bookstore. Saqib Mugloo In the last week of July, as rains splashed over the streets of Srinagar, two young girls braving puddles and showers made their way into one of the oldest and the most frequented book stores of Kashmir: Gulshan Books. “I can’t believe it, after two years of hard work I am finally going to publish my own book,” one of the girls exclaimed as others around looked…

Yinderser is a trekker’s paradise that every alpine explorer would appreciate. by Shahnawaz Khanday On a sultry July afternoon, I sat with my friends and colleagues in the canteen of our workplace flirting with the idea of visiting Yindersar- a rarely explored alpine tarn located high up in the Astanmarg meadow of Pir Panjals in Kulgam district. I had been ‘visiting’ this place for some months, albeit on Google Earth, trying to find the easiest, shortest but not entirely unchallenging trail. And it was not long before we found ourselves packing up for a day trip to this relatively lesser…

Six teams from Asia are going to wrestle for the coveted trophy. by Bilal Ahsan Dar The T20I Asia Cup 2022 begins on August 27 in the United Arab Emirates with Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) serving as the hosts. The grand finale is scheduled to take place on September 11.The highlight of the tournament would be the August 28 marquee duel between India and Pakistan. If the two sides don’t meet again in the finals, that is. Five teams, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan are direct qualifiers for the main event. For the sixth slot, a qualifier tournament…

The economic data that is emerging from around the world is grim and points towards a dark future. The recession, it appears as of now, is imminent and it is going to impact all sectors of the society. Take, for example, the situation in the United Kingdom where inflation surged to a new 40-year high in July on rising food prices, worsening the cost-of-living crisis. The Bank of England has warned that inflation will climb to just over 13 percent this year. In the United States of America, the inflation jumped to 9.1 percent in June which is the fastest…

Ignorance about the risks in digital transactions is playing a major role in the surge in digital frauds. by Sajjad Bazaz The Covid-19 pandemic has transformed the way people now take care of their health. Today we observe a dramatic change in their behavior to thwart another onslaught of the virus. To put it simply, people are observing healthcare precautions such as use of face masks, social distancing and frequent hand-washing to neutralize the impact of the virus. However, there is another viral danger which has already enveloped the people at large scale and they need to combat it too. Despite…

In the deftly woven imagery, the author paints with potent words the horrifying atrocity that unleashed in the Jallianwalla Bagh more than a hundred years ago. by Lily Swarn On April 13, 1919, around twenty five thousand unarmed Indians had gathered in Jallianwalla Bagh, Amritsar. There were several children amidst the crowd listening to speakers denounce the inequities of the Rowlatt Act, which had been imposed on the country by the British. Many of them were relaxing and catching up with friends. Brigadier General R.E.H. Dyer entered the Bagh with a detachment of soldiers a bit after 5 in the…

The inside story of how a scam involving political leaders and government officials was packaged as ‘land jihad’. by Staff Reporter On April 5, 2022, a posse of some influential businessmen from Srinagar visited New Delhi as the emissaries of ‘Naya Kashmir’. With the Lieutenant Governor’s office, Raj Bhavan, inviting capitalists from Dubai to invest in Kashmir, this select group of natives – apparently unnerved by the tightening noose – had mellowed down their terms and conditions. After all, they had started sensing they were living in BJP’s ‘Naya Kashmir’ that came into being on august 5, 2019 after the abrogation…