The Art of Saving Hearts in Kashmir

World Heart Day reminds us that from Kahwa to walnuts, Kashmir's old habits can still heal modern hearts.

- Iqbal Mehraj

At 5:30 a.m. sharp, Asma's alarm slices through the half-light like a muezzin's call, yanking her from sleep into the day she hasn't yet faced.

She rolls over in her Srinagar bed, with a distant view of Dal Lake if you squint hard enough through the haze.

At 32, she has the job everyone envies: a rising star in a tech firm, deadlines piling up like winter snow in her homeland. Her back aches from hours bent over screens, and her evenings echo through a flat that feels too big for one.

In silos, she often wonders: where did the laughter go, that childhood wandering through apple orchards, and those endless cups of noon chai with neighbours who felt like family?

Buried under emails and ambition, that's where.

Asma's story is the new soundtrack of Kashmir, a low hum of hearts giving out too soon. The numbers are chilling.

Reports show that 29.6 percent of deaths in Jammu and Kashmir are linked to heart disease. A quarter of those lives are lost between 25 and 69, people in their prime, chasing dreams that silently and suddenly turn into nightmares.

The question is, why is it happening to us?

Change, though, is possible. Asma is trying: a handful of walnuts at breakfast, a call to her mother, an evening stroll under chinars turning gold. She sips her Kahwa now. It's a start, a ripple.