The Silent Erosion

As bulldozers climb mountains and lakes fight for breath, a young Kashmiri wonders if developmental dreams must come at the cost of its most fragile lands.

- Mohsin Gulzar

Kashmir has always spoken softly. In the rustle of chinar leaves. In the stillness of mountain air. And in the hush before the snowfall. But these days, that signature serenity is changing.

Explosions echo through the hills, roads snake across ridgelines, and forests are falling to the rhythm of machines.

India is building fast. And Kashmir, long isolated by geography and politics, is being pulled into that momentum.

Projects like the Zojila Tunnel and the four-lane Srinagar-Jammu highway promise better travel and economic access. But as the dust rises and trees fall, many here are wondering: what are we leaving behind?

In Ramban and Anantnag, locals speak of landslides in places where the ground once held firm. Farmers watch fields slide downhill. Debris from highway work clogs natural water channels.

A single storm now leaves roads cut off for days. It's hard not to connect the dots.

Then there's Dal Lake. The lake once mirrored the sky so clearly that poets lost themselves in it. Now, it reflects something else: plastic waste, dying lilies, and shrinking borders.