Srinagar, Jan. 6 -- The sun had not yet crested the jagged peaks that guarded the valley, but the air was already thick with the scent of woodsmoke and the rhythmic clatter of life beginning anew. I stood on my small wooden porch, after Fajr prayers, watching the blue-grey mist cling to the caves of the houses in my Mohalla. It was a scene of timeless beauty, the kind that poets had praised for centuries. Yet, as I looked closer, the pastoral perfection began to fray at the edges. Tucked into the corners of the stone walls, caught in the brambles of the hawthorn bushes, and floating listlessly in the roadside gutter were the colourful, crinkling ghosts of modernity.I watched my elderly greyed neighbour, a man who had walked these same pat...