Bussiness of death runs into bad days
The tombstone maker is carving marble name plaques for new homes. The elderly grave digger who has buried hundreds of bullet-ridden bodies is idle. And the post-mortem man in his spotless white coat now only deals with jilted lovers and jobless youth.
Times are changing: the business of death has run into bad days in Kashmir.
From the 4,510 deaths in 2001, the highest number for a year in the insurgency, militancy-related fatalities dropped to about 890 in 2007, officials say. This year, 84 people have been reported dead until mid-June.
So 20 years after the deaths began, three different men in different parts of Srinagar, with similar glazed emotionless eyes — Mohammed Maqbool Tramboo the tombmaker, Abdul Kabir Sheikh the grave digger and Mohammed Maqbool the post-mortem man — have little to do.
“Until a few years ago, there were times when I used to be working day and night, continuously. There is no doubt, the number of militancy deaths is much less and the levels of violence have gone down drastically,” said Mohammed Maqbool Tramboo, 37, a tombmaker who left his home in Anantnag town 15 years ago to make a living in Srinagar.
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Times are changing: the business of death has run into bad days in Kashmir.
From the 4,510 deaths in 2001, the highest number for a year in the insurgency, militancy-related fatalities dropped to about 890 in 2007, officials say. This year, 84 people have been reported dead until mid-June.
So 20 years after the deaths began, three different men in different parts of Srinagar, with similar glazed emotionless eyes — Mohammed Maqbool Tramboo the tombmaker, Abdul Kabir Sheikh the grave digger and Mohammed Maqbool the post-mortem man — have little to do.
“Until a few years ago, there were times when I used to be working day and night, continuously. There is no doubt, the number of militancy deaths is much less and the levels of violence have gone down drastically,” said Mohammed Maqbool Tramboo, 37, a tombmaker who left his home in Anantnag town 15 years ago to make a living in Srinagar.
To read the full article, click here...
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.hindustantimes.com
Labels: bad days, bussiness of death, grave digger, jobless youth, marble, post-mortem, runs, srinagar, tombstone maker, violence
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10:47 AM
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