The Boy Who Couldn't Breathe: A Kashmiri Story Of Survival

By Mahfooz Ahmad Bakshi

There were days when I envied even the street dogs of Ganderbal, panting in the summer sun.

They breathed without effort, lungs working like bellows, as if air belonged to them. To me, air felt like a privilege withheld.

Each inhalation was a battle. And every night, I wondered how something as free as oxygen could be so unreachable.

The trouble began in 2020, in the shadow of the pandemic. Until then, football was my religion. I would play from dawn until dusk, feet raw, lungs wide. Then the world shut down.

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