Sorrow in Kashmir

On 8 October, an earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale killed around 85,000 people. The destruction was immediate and total: villages erased, homes reduced to rubble, children and families buried beneath concrete and dust.

Walking through the affected towns and villages, the scale of the loss is overwhelming. The streets are silent, broken walls stand at impossible angles, and the earth itself seems scarred. Dust rises in the weak sunlight, coating faces and clothes, lingering in the air like a quiet reminder of what was lost.

The people of Kashmir move through a state of shock. Fatalism, understood as the will of God, underpins their grief — a sorrow so deep and absolute that it is almost unreadable to outsiders. Behind the politeness, behind the small gestures of care toward strangers, there is a profound, almost frozen despair. 

Shadows stretch long over dust-covered streets, lending an almost surreal weight to every corner. This is a landscape shaped by catastrophe, where every detail — from the tilt of a wall to the stillness of a courtyard — speaks of mortality, loss, and the incomprehensible scale of human fragility.