Winter in Kashmir, has been a tedious season for ages altogether, but with the global weather changes the impact of winter had begun to decimate, but from last few years, the heavy snowfall and chilly winters are back, and the results in a sudden crash of facilities like electricity, water supply, eatable supply, road and air connectivity as well as phone as well as internet connection.
Heavy snowfall and chilly winters are not a new thing to Kashmir but in yester years people had a good understanding of all the problems and thus had developed solutions to counter all these miseries.
With advancements in global construction practices, modern and concrete constructions are being heavily followed here also, which are no where suitable for Kashmir, as concrete buildings require heavy heating arrangements in winters which are nowhere possible here owing to scarcity of electricity as well as gas, while as the traditional houses had heavy and thick walls, which acted as insulators in winters there by preventing loss of any heat generated. The floorings used to be of wood or mud, which has quality of slow heat up as well as slow heating down, while as concrete or marble floors result in heat loss.
The people in earlier days used to store huge quantity of dried vegetables, pulses, fish, eggs as well as had in house milk to could be used for survival even if there was not outside supply for days altogether, nowadays we have to nowhere to go even if tunnel gets blocked even for a day, as we have become ultra modern, people consider it a shame to own a cow, rear poultry or try have a kitchen garden that could supply vegetable even for a few days.
Traditional hearths or the “Daan” used to be an integral part of kitchen which would be used to cooking purposes as well as heat up our kitchen areas and people had less to rely upon blowers, electric blankets, Gas heaters that are virtually defunct in absence of electricity and Gas.
The water bodies that Kashmir was bestowed with could provide us with water for drinking and for other necessary activities, when the electricity run power pump stations would get defunct, but we have already destroyed them by our greed and lack of foresight.
At last I would like to divert your attention towards the above mentioned points, so that we would not be have to face the recurring problems every year.
Development and modernisation must not come at the price of our survival.
By Suhail Ahmad
Aripanthan Beerwah