Srinagar's Jhelum Cafe is Providing a Stage for Local Kashmiri Artists

With a multidisciplinary art and music festival conducted in October last year, there’s a regular gig series called Bund Sessions, promoting singer-songwriters, beatboxers and more

- ANURAG TAGAT

Although it started in January 2019, Jhelum Café in Srinagar can claim to have only haltingly run in the last two years, but they’re on their way now. “The past two years have been hectic but we’ve scored a good number of people within Kashmir and elsewhere as well,” says the café and restaurant’s co-founder Adil Khan.

In what is almost indicative of the continued struggles of businesses and the general population in the newly formed union territory, Khan says they ran until August 2019 when the special status of the then-state was revoked, leading them to shut shop immediately for six months. He along with co-founder Asim Khan – both 26 years old – then resumed operations only in February last year. “We worked until March and at the end of the month, we heard about corona and we had to again shut shop until July,” Adil says.