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e myth of the Kashmiri women’s dazzling beauty is nowhere more present than it is here in Srinagar – notwithstanding the massive popularity of Katrina Kaif. Women are in large part absent from any real public presence. As and when you see glimpses of them through uttering dupattas and burkhas, it remains a preview to hungry eyes. Where women are beautiful and hidden, there the callous display of their men is intriguing. I see them unmasked as butchers, woodcutters, bus drivers, vegetable vendors, oarsmen, bakers, wool dyers, in the old and the new. Men in a laborious mien. No one is re ned, there is no polish, no nesse; these men are designed by a living that makes no small change for vanity.
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