The tragic city.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The Delhi Walla knows an unpublished poet in Srinagar, Kashmir. The great September flood in the city spared her life but not some of her most beloved possessions. The books she collected over so many years from the second-hand bookstores of so many cities and countries have been destroyed. The hand-woven carpet in her drawing room has been ruined. Her grandmother’s pheran (tunic) has gone away with the floodwater. It was embroidered with silver thread.

She said that Srinagar would never be the same again.

But her city has witnessed worse things in its long life, and it will return to its cheerless exquisiteness.

I visited Srinagar in 2012. The following images are my respectful memories of that city.

Her terrible beauty

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.