Walnuts, Kahwa, And The Art Of Saving Hearts In Kashmir

By Iqbal Mehraj

At 5:30 a.m. sharp, Asma's alarm slices through the half-light like a muezzin's call, yanking her from sleep into the day she hasn't yet faced.

She rolls over in her Srinagar bed, with a distant view of Dal Lake if you squint hard enough through the haze.

At 32, she has the job everyone envies: a rising star in a tech firm, deadlines piling up like winter snow in her homeland. Her back aches from hours bent over screens, and her evenings echo through a flat that feels too big for one.

In silos, she often wonders: where did the laughter go, that childhood wandering through apple orchards, and those endless cups of noon chai with neighbours who felt like family?

Buried under emails and ambition, that's where.

Asma's story is the new soundtrack of Kashmir, a low hum of hearts giving out too soon. The numbers are chilling.

Reports show that 29.6 percent of deaths in Jammu and Kashmir are linked to heart disease. A quarter of those lives are lost between 25 and 69, people in their prime, chasing dreams that silently and suddenly turn into nightmares.

The question is, why is it happening to us?

Experts say we sit more than we move, glued to desks or doom-scrolling on phones. Greasy takeaways replace home-cooked food. And stress, years of unrest now mixed with the grind of modern hustle, wraps around us like barbed wire.

Walk through Srinagar's streets, past shikara hawkers and honking autos, and you can feel it. Markets buzz, roads jam, and hearts race from the clock.

The Indian Heart Journal spells it out: urban Kashmiris are drowning in risk. Cigarette stubs smoulder in alleyways. Blood pressure spikes like summer mercury. Bellies round from too much rice and too little burn. Obesity creeps in, hypertension follows close behind. And then there's the mental toll.

The valley carries deep scars from years of strife. Add the corporate grind, family pressures, and the endless scroll of bad news, and you have a cocktail that clogs arteries and knocks heartbeats off rhythm.

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