On a quintessentially frosty midwinter morning, a lone conifer stands tall, cursed with eternal greenery, looking onto the icy virgin snow by the glacial river while basking in the glory of the icy peaks behind it. This is Kashmir. Paradise on Earth. When the winter clears, the land will coruscate with its verdant scenery all around, completed by the frolicking of animals, birds, and children. Or rather, if winter clears. For the wintry dark hands of indifference, deceit, manipulation, hatred, and jealousy control Kashmir now. Where there used to be nature and villages, forming the milk of human kindness, there are now ugly machinated military camps and their soldiers, forming the dung of inhumanity. Where there once was heaven, there now is hell. Kashmir is a land that has been long embroiled in the Indian subcontinent’s gratuitous power struggles. These struggles and their subsequent pyrrhic and temporary victories have extracted a heavy toll from Kashmir. Who can we possibly blame f