Global News by Tag: Kashmir
SRINAGAR, KASHMIR, INDIA – Passion drove Shahnawaz Bhat, 25, into theater.
“Theater is my first love,” says Bhat, who is not related to the reporter. “It is my passion, and I am pursuing it as my career.”
But in Kashmir, this is rare. Theater garners little social respect as a profession, though actors such as Bhat are starting to change this.
ARGENTINA, KASHMIR, KENYA AND NEPAL – May 1 marks International Workers’ Day, or May Day. It is a public holiday in some countries in honor of the international labor movement and an unofficial holiday in many others. Global Press Institute senior reporters from four news desks use the occasion to highlight traditional and unique jobs in their regions.
ZANGAM, KASHMIR, INDIA – Mohammad Subhan, 75, has been in the pottery business for more than 40 years in Zangam, a village in Jammu and Kashmir state. But he says that the industry isn’t what it used to be.
“The art has of course declined to a large extent,” he says.
OODENA, KASHMIR, INDIA – During the chilly winter season, Tahira Bano, 25, works on a carpet loom along with her younger sister, Batool Akther, 22, and father, Ghulam Ahmad Bhat, in a modest room in Oodena, a village in northwestern Jammu and Kashmir state. The trio of carpet weavers sits on a long, wooden seat laid over a few empty sacks as they work on a 6-by-9 carpet.
“We’ve been working on this carpet for last one month,” Bano says in Kashmiri. “It will take few months more to complete it.”
PATTAN, KASHMIR, INDIA – Nazir Ahmad rushes to approach the owner of a horse-drawn cart, called a “tonga” here, and begs him to carry his ailing mother to the hospital.
“She suddenly caught fever and complains about pain in chest,” says Ahmad, a resident of Trikolbal, a village in Pattan.
Ambulances are unheard of here in Pattan, an administrative division in the northern part of Jammu and Kashmir state.
DRASS, KASHMIR, INDIA – Horses raced around the playing grounds at a polo match last month in Drass, a town in Jammu and Kashmir state. Wielding long mallets, the players battled for the ball in front of thousands of jubilant fans.
SRINAGAR, KASHMIR, INDIA – Nazir Ahmad Dar, 35, belongs to a group of families who have been growing saffron, the famed Kashmiri spice, for generations in Pampore, some 20 kilometers from Srinagar, the summer capital. He talks about hearing the stories of the “good times” from his grandparents and parents, the times when the field turned purple because of the wealth of saffron flowers.
But now the flowers only dot the fields, thanks to climate change, he says.