The unhappy land. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] In its issue dated 21 April 2012, Open, a Delhi-based newsweekly, published a cover story on Kashmir titled “Sorry, Kashmir is Happy.” The author Manu Jospeh asks: “Why is it obscene to accept that a historically wounded people are ready to move on?” In the story, he writes: Srinagar does not have pubs or discos or cinema halls. Most young people there do not drink. A popular form of fun is sitting in a café and having coffee with friends. They are still uncorrupted by city slickness and there is an endearing honesty in their words. The Delhi Walla is in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, a divided region under the control of India and

The unhappy land. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Situated on the southern side of the Hari Parbat hill, the Sufi dargah of Makhdoom Sahib offers the most spectacular views of the old town. The Delhi Walla is in Srinagar, Kashmir’s capital. The valley is considered a land of Sufis. The old Srinagar is dotted with dozens of dargahs. In a paper for Carnegie project on “Globalization, National self-determination, and Terrorism”, development economist Deepak Lal, writes: The Kashmir valley, which had been predominantly Hindu, was converted to Sufi Islam in the 14th century. The syncretic Hindu-Muslim culture which resulted was a mixture of mystical Hindu Vedantism and Islamic Sufism. The concept of Kashmiriyat stresses the commonality between the Hindus and Muslims of the valley, as

The unhappy land. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] A pizza-maker at Café Arabica. A police constable at the Jamia Masjid. The Delhi Walla is in Srinagar, Kashmir’s capital. An old woman at the Boulevard. A tailor in Maisuma. A Tolstoy lookalike at the Hazratbal shrine. A steward at the Ahdoo’s. The faces of Kashmir. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

The unhappy land. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] A pathway by the Jhelum, the Bund teems with Kashmiris, not tourists. The Delhi Walla is in Srinagar, Kashmir’s capital. In the afternoon, schoolboys sit on the riverside slopes, while schoolgirls stand around chaat stalls. Others lounge in a garden that is opposite Ahdoo’s, a hotel popular with Delhi journalists who periodically land in the town to cover the unrest in Kashmir. The Bund has many tailoring shops and a few abandoned houses, whose wooden balconies look down towards the empty houseboats. Congested alleys link the quiet Bund to the bustle of Residency Road. A Christian cemetery lies nearby. Hardly any woman is seen during the evening hours. Men walk alone. Some stand by the river

The unhappy land. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Pigeons soaring up from Lal Chowk. Mist coming down the snow-capped mountains. A soldier with a gun, he is smiling. A veiled woman inside a bus, sitting on a window-side seat. An empty alley. An abandoned Pundit house. A ruined houseboat on the muddy-brown Jhelum. A white hand plucking white flowers. Lal Chowk as seen from a first-floor restaurant. The Delhi Walla is in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, one of the world’s most heavily militarized regions. The valley has two layers of beauty. The outer skin has superficial loveliness of snow-clad peaks and scenic lakes, a common trait of all the vulgar hill stations of South Asia. The inner layer reaches out