In the morning I go for a drive up Srinagar's first flyover. Did I mention that? Srinagar has a 370-metre flyover now.
Also, a near-complete railway line linking it with the Jammu region, part of a 342-km effort undertaken two decades ago but shelved quickly; the beginnings of a superhighway; a new airport building that looks like a shopping complex; budget airlines usurping the duopoly of Jet Airways and Indian Airlines; 24-hour cash machines; a plethora of private banks (gone are the days of the government-owned SBI and J&K Bank); easy vehicle loans and perhaps three times the traffic; mobile phones (banned for 'security reasons' for years); Internet cafes, with the minimum charge up from Rs 10 to Rs 20; cable television (Pakistani channels available); no Subway or KFC or McDonald's but a Makdonald on Iqbal Road.
An open park on Maulana Azad Road with working water sprinklers; people in open public parks; joggers on the Polo ground early morning, football later; regular power supply and bills (a pre-cursor to militancy was the June 1988 protests against increased power tariff, which saw 35 civilians killed in police firing; most Kashmiris have put up with harsh load-shedding since, but paid no electricity bills); ice-cream parlours; mini version of wazwaan, the traditional Kashmiri meal, for Rs 140 at Grand Hotel on Residency Road, up from Rs 90; beauty parlours; a tea-shop called Sweet Lips not far from Jehangir Chowk; Hotel Ahdoo's, the haunt of 'parachuting' journalists (or 'viceroys', as Kashmiri colleagues call them) all through the years of militancy, with reduced business because of fierce competition and also most newspapers have posted Srinagar-based correspondents again…
Image: A Kashmiri woman chats on her mobile phone in Srinagar. Mobile phones were banned for 'security reasons' for years in the Kashmir valley. Photograph: Tauseef Mustafa/AFP/Getty Images
Also read: J&K youth ignore call to arms, line up for army
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