Category Archives: Kashmir

Recycling This Old House

Published October 26, 2008 / by Jehangir

These days I am busy building a new home for my family. Our new home is being recycled from the old house which had to be dismantled due to age-related weathering, compounded by structural damage caused by the devastating earthquake that struck Kashmir in 2005.

100% of the wood and bricks and most of the stone used in the new house will be sourced from the dismantled structure. This will significantly reduce the impact our new home would otherwise have had on the environment.

No trees will be cut down, no fossil fuels burnt in kilns, and no rocks or earth will be excavated on our account. I will sleep a little better as a consequence.

I have designed the new house myself with a few inputs from an architect friend who is an expert on heritage buildings of Kashmir. Here are a couple of pictures of my 'self-inflicted' design at the current stage of development:

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Update: Click here for a quick tour of 'Al Anqa'

Stereoscopic Kashmir

Published October 5, 2008 / by Jehangir

In an unusual burst of creativity triggered by the boredom of Sunday's curfew, I decided to try my hand at animating old stereogram images of Kashmir.

The technique I used is called Wiggle Stereoscopy. These photographs use animation to produce a 3D effect by alternating the left and right images of old stereogram images of Kashmir, originally intended to be viewed in a Stereoscope.

We can imagine the scene as the photographer must have pictured it in his 'mind's eye'. The images may be somewhat jerky but it is a unique method to create the illusion of depth in photographs. Plus no special 3D glasses are needed 🙂

Enjoy.


A Sahib in his Ekka.


Sitar Player.


Village life.


Hopscotch.

No Caption Needed

Published September 14, 2008 / by Jehangir


image © www.greaterkashmir.com

If ever a picture said a thousand words…

This photo is from today's edition of the Greater Kashmir online newspaper. I used contribute occasionally to Greater Kashmir a few years back but discontinued partly because I did not agree with some of their editorial policies.

There is no denying however that Greater Kashmir has matured enormously from its earlier days and I admire its vigorous championing of environmental and heritage issues. It is the leading English-language daily of the valley and also the main source of homeland news for the Kashmiri diaspora.

Besides, Greater Kashmir features the enormously talented Malik Sajjad . Malik Sajjad has a uncanny ability to sketch whatever is uppermost on the minds of his people, much like his senior Bashir Ahmed Bashir of the Urdu-language daily Srinagar Times.

It has been years since I read that paper, but I recall how one could instantly grasp the meaning behind the Srinagar Times cartoons even without reading the caption. A wag once commented that the artist should have been dubbed Bashir Ahmed 'Kashir'. Malik Sajjad is a worthy inheritor of that mantle.

With apologies to Ghalib:
Dekhna tasveer ki lazzat ke jo usne likha
Main ne yeh jaana ke goya yeh bhi mere dil mein hai

Malik Sajjad has his own website at www.maliksajad.com and it is well worth a visit.