Passion crime and the Internet

2

Tweet

The young and restless Kashmir has arrived big time on the web. All these years it has sliced quite a bit of the network pie. Action-filled videos are posted every day on Youtube and chats on social networking fibre are common. Also popular are Twitter and podcasts. Cyber crime isn't. It was never until Maisuma murder unfolded. A 20-year-old spurned lover allegedly bludgeoned his friend after the latter chatted with his Delhi-based girl friend on an Internet leisure space. The girl had deleted Imran, 20, from the friends' list and included Asrar instead. Jilted, Imran called Asrar to his house on Srinagar outskirts, hit him fatally with an iron rod. With a friend's help, he then dumped the body near a graveyard in Rainawari, three km from his Maisuma. The killing provoked wave of violent protests in the city and a defensive police watched helplessly as mobs....

Kashmir's Famous Five missing in action

3

Tweet

The big daddies and their spunky kids will sit out of the Lower House. Six unknown faces, with no or little repute in Delhi circles, will walk into the Lok Sabha complex. In a way it portends well, given that the old and jaded have failed Kashmir and its people. Among the daddy troika of Kashmir politics, the effervescent but non-serious Farooq Abdullah will add glitz and glamour to the Upper House. He will crack a joke or sing a papa number inviting laughter from his colleagues. The canny Ghulam Nabi Azad will sit next to him and laugh too. But that is not all he will do. He has a tough job to do, months after the PDP - People's Democratic Party - and God rendered him jobless last autumn. Azad's new job, a challenging one though, is to salvage the Sonia Gandhi-headed Congress in states....

Pen martyr

4

Tweet

Jammu's ace lensman Ashok Sodhi's love for stills will live on even after his death. The hands that spared Rs 50,000 for a branded camera, now part of an urn, will soon be dipped in Tawi or Chenab waters. That camera will surely make its way to Jammu from Delhi today or tomorrow but Sodhi does not live to hit click with his fingers. Sodhi, according to his friends, would itch to capture and capture `good' and it was this restlessness that he sped a good distance of 50 kilometres in few minutes before he went on to become a pen martyr. ``It took him 30 minutes to be on the spot and only three to leave it ... forever,'' his close friend Zorawar Singh laments. ``All good things come to an end but this is tragic indeed,'' rues Manu Srivatsava, his longtime companion. I remember having met Sodhi....

Kashmir's wintry highs and lows

9

Tweet

Winter in Kashmir is music. It lives in the notes of Santoor, in the long icicles creaking down from the sun-beaten roof of the desolate Gulmarg church. On the whoosh of a fast running stream melting down from northern glaciers or the rustle of the crisp brown autumn Chinar leaves. The valley winter is a recipe. Its aroma wafts from the secret kitchens dishing hareesa (a meat dish grounded with rice) and huksun (dried vegetables prepared in oil). Or the vapour rising from the hot cup of saffron kehwa towards khatambandh (ornately-carved wooden ceiling). It picks the tiny red nose-tip of a three-year old, his or her face beaten by the icy chill from the lake water freeze. It glows on the snow-sun-tanned white face of a Taiwanese girl descending on the skis from the steep slopes of khilanmarg. Winter beneath this....

Will the small people ever move the two big nations?

6

Tweet

Ismatullah Jami hates tears, emotions and Kashmir's extensive hospitality. He calls them Satan's inventions. Today, as he clung hesitantly onto the state's unkempt green and white bus, his face is deadpan and voice shallow. His younger brother Afaq runs his fingers to adjust the streak of grey hair that block his eye-line but avoids contact. Seat fastened, Jami hides his face in a spotless white handkerchief to escape embarrassment. Tears have defeated his steely resolve even as he tries vainly to make amends. His left hand clutching firmly the walking stick, he uses the right to roll the soaked white cloth back into the pocket of his nicely creased navy blue shirt, tucked carefully inside the grey pant. Jami loves to dress up and look dignified and won't mind spending hours in the washroom, ensuring every lock of hair sits on the right place or the 'phoren'....

Beauty on the fringes

4

Tweet

Not many sightseers know they are being cheated on Kashmir. They hear more about it but end up seeing little. Very little. Trust me, the Valley is not a postcard of the gurgling Lidder river, the rustling streams melting from the Thajiwas glacier, the snow peaks that rise seemingly to touch blue skyline or the lush green meadows linked through mountains. Kashmir is not Pahalgam, Gulmarg or Sonamarg, Kokernag. Neither the series of the Mughal gardens that lord the emerald Dal lake. It is more. It is an undiscovered wonderland, offering itself to be explored. Gradually as the plant of Indo-Pak thaw will grow into a tree of peace and trust, Kashmir would start revealing itself to the world. More enchanting places, never seen, never heard of before. To a true holiday-maker, Kashmir would unravel its dreamlands, hitherto blurred by the Line of Control. He would surely get used....

Kashmir needs one hell of weeping

10

Tweet

Kashmir, mumbled, the unkempt gray-haired sage of Anantnag, needs a nurse, a big towel to soak tears and a lot of loud cries and weeping. One understands the first two, a nurse who would heal physical, emotional and psychological wounds, the towel to dry moist eyes that capture horrible pictures. But then loud weeping. Is it a therapy? One wonders. The sage blurts out, "Actually no one is weeping loudly to get heard by Gods. That is why he does not come to the rescue of His people". He would have indeed come to the aid of the Surat tourist Bhavika who froze on the fateful day her child got killed in an attack on Srinagar suburbs. He would have extended a helping hand to eight-year old Rajdip whose father's body is being stitched inside the hospital and he is tirelessly punching his cellphone....

Mission Kashmir 2006: Ditto 2005

4

Tweet

Kashmir will log on to 2006 on Sunday, and like the holiday, things will move very slowly, perhaps not much should be expected to change in the next 12 months: the trickle from LoC will not go off completely, militants and security forces will fight ferociously in the hinterland, fidayeen will keep on testing their grid in the city, may be the year sees more of centre-Hurriyat photo-ops, Musharraf's straight talk and New Delhi's cautious trudge towards peace. More cross-Loc buses, opening of border points or more occassions for people of two kashmirs to meet each other. But on Ground Zero, Kashmir will move in a holiday style; slowly and clumsily. Things can go horribly wrong in one go between India and Pakistan. A single incident can spoil the current bonhomie achieved after decades of hostility and hard postering. Optimistically speaking, they will not. Optimism should rather lead....