SNOW IN JANUARY

Science and tradition suggest that an early winter snowfall is good for Kashmir ecology but the fragile service delivery systems sent people crying, reports Yawar Hussain

- Yawar Hussain

As the year’s first snowfall draped Kashmir, beginning on January 2, life came to a standstill with people and the administration both choosing to stay homes till sunshine brought back the sheen to the streets.

The people reacted to the snowfall as per their own requirements: tourists were happy that they will have fun; Harisa-makers were excited that they will have better footfalls; workers in PDD, SMC, and the PHE had their share of the crisis in managing the impact of the mess. People, by and large, were tense because snow, especially a heavier fall, seriously compromises the services. That was perhaps why, amidst a congratulatory campaign on social media, people responded in a way as if a calamity had hit Kashmir.

SNOW CANVAS

Yasin Dar, a Srinagar resident, was not just enthralled by snowfall but he built a giant snow octopus in his garden to commemorate the day. Like Dar, scores of people across Kashmir took to snow sculpturing. In continuation with the Covid-19 theme, Safiya Mehraj, an artist from Srinagar paid her tributes to the Covid warriors by building a representation of a doctor donning a Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kit while treating the patients.

Nadeem Hussain from Shalimar (Srinagar) made an African Simbah, a snow lion. Besides, he made a portrait out of snow of great Kashmiri poet Mehjoor.

These portraits were quickly put on virtual media. The most shared remained the one in which somebody had written “return the bodies’, a demand that three slain Pulwama youth’s families have been seeking. Though the actual works melted away, these remained on social media forever.

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